Moving on

If you are interested in why I left the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, read my guest post at the Shiraz Socialist blog.

To find out more about what I am doing now, visit the website of The Commune

Response to Sean Matgamna on "What if Israel bombs Iran?"

No doubt, Sean Matgamna intended his "discussion article" to provoke debate. Certainly, it does facilitate discussion when comrades are honest and make their views clear. But the article, which includes only minimal and superficial reference to independent working-class politics and any idea of working-class agency, instead dishonestly zigzags between empathising with Israeli hawks and using figleaf, weasel words to avoid openly 'advocating' an Israeli strike against Iran in advance. He says we should "least of all" support Ahmedinejad, as if we were under any compulsion to pick sides and support Olmert a little bit more instead.

(Throughout Sean also takes for granted the idea that the Iranian regime is indeed developing nuclear weapons. This claim is highly tendentious - it is not the opinion of US intelligence - and Sean does not cite any evidence in support of this assertion. Sean clearly uses this only for the reason that if true it helps justify his broader argument in an article light on analysis of what is actually going on in the Middle East as opposed to on the British left. The same could be said for his over-simplified drawing of an equals sign between the Iranian regime and al-Qaedist suicide bombers. However, since my opposition to Sean's position is far from reliant on any illusions in the peaceful intentions of the Iranian regime, I shall ignore this for now).

Sean begins: "An attack on Iran will most likely lead to great carnage in the Middle East and beyond as supporters of Iran resort to suicide bombings in retaliation. There might well be large scale Iranian civilian "collateral" casualties. An attack would strengthen the Iranian regime and license a smash down on its critics, including working class critics, inside Iran. It would throw Iran back into the worst chaos". The only part of the article citing reasons why Sean would be critical of an Israeli bombing raid on Iran (we may assume that a ground invasion would be impossible) this paragraph is interesting in that its main argument is simply that an attack could well be counterproductive for Israel because of how Islamists would react. Note that the opening sentence tells us that the cause of the carnage would in fact be that "supporters of Iran" would retaliate! And Sean's focus is not the interests of the labour movement or the tasks of Marxists in the (potential) belligerent countries, but rather hoping for a balance in the world of geopolitics, military manoeuvre and weapons competition. The reference to Iranian workers is only in passing, even though sabre-rattling and sanctions against Iran, Ahmedinejad's "anti-Zionist" rhetoric and Israel's oppression of the Palestinians all serve to foster a generalised chauvinism in the region and create enormous obstacles to the development of an internationalist labour movement. Sean's view is crude and one-sided and he is far from condemning the Israeli government's effort to cling onto its status as the leading regional power by force: if he realises that such a bombing run would hamper the possibility of workers in the region "uniting to fight for a socialist Middle East", he certainly doesn't show it.

From then on Sean confuses what is "rational" in the interests of Israeli imperialism and great-power realpolitik with what is "rational" in the interests of humanity. As if gazing into his crystal ball Sean predicts that Israel "will not tolerate" and "will act to stop" Iran's nuclear proliferation; Israel "will bomb Iran, with or without the agreement of the USA and NATO"; Israel "will act" on its interests; "Israel will act to stop this Muslim fundamentalist regime". Yet here the word "will" almost seems to be used not to mean that these events are likely but rather as an expression of defiance - you may have doubts in its leaders' confidence, but Israel will stand up for itself! Sean asks us to see the situation from Israel's point of view - "In Israeli eyes the facts and alternatives here are stark" - but is clearly talking about the alternatives as seen in the IDF leadership, ignoring the question of how an attack would be viewed through the eyes of any class-conscious Israeli (or indeed Iranian) worker. He focuses on the tasks of the Israeli government and indeed nearer the end of the article he neatly concludes: "the harsh truth is that there is good reason for Israel to make a precipitate strike at Iranian nuclear capacity".

What an awful, awful thing to write. Good reason for "Israel" to do this: or do you mean that the Israeli military would be justified in attacking Iran? This just playing the game of speculating on manoeuvres the great powers might make with their armies and airforces to guarantee stability, while discounting out of hand as utopian any possibility of the working class acting independently in the regional crisis. Of course, as a "left" figleaf Sean writes that he would rather it was the Iranian workers than the Israeli bombers who got rid of Ahmedinejad, as if the two eventualities are in any sense comparable or would have any similar results. Sean does not want to "advocate" or "endorse" an attack: but this is just playing with words, and clearly given the tone of the piece and the fact that he is so keen to defend the rationale for an attack which is not yet on the cards the article can only be read as offering justification for Olmert et al. How can you say there is "good reason" to do something but not "endorse" it?

Indeed, Sean denounces those who would "condemn" the Israeli government for "refusing to stand idly by", an argument which - if you believed that Saddam Hussein could launch an offensive in 45 minutes - could equally have been used to justify the invasion of Iraq in opposition to those who would prefer to "appease" the Iraqi dictator. Much in the same vein of those on the far left who accuse Third World tyrants of being insufficiently ardent in their opposition to US imperialism, Sean is incensed by "idlers" who would sit on their hands rather than stand up to Ahmedinejad, by fair means or foul.

Sean asks "In the name of what alternative would we condemn Israel?" (having decided that the only choices on offer are (i) Israel attacks Iran or (ii) Iran attacks Israel) and goes on to score easy points against those who say that Israel has no right to exist or that Iran has a right to nuclear weapons. His conclusions do not automatically follow though - thinking that there is "good reason" for a pre-emptive bombing attack on Iran is not merely the logical corollary of the belief that, whatever its government's crimes and whatever its history, the Israeli nation has the right to self-determination and to have a state alongside Palestine if it so chooses. You do not have to be "kitsch left" to oppose an Israeli attack on Iran, nor do you have to be "kitsch left" to refer to Israel's hypocrisy in keeping its own nukes, which Sean avoids reference to. We can say these things whilst posing a positive alternative opposed to all "sides" in the stand off. Even if working-class forces are currently weak in the Middle East, Marxists cannot put off building this independent class camp for the sake of taking sides in some more 'immediate' conflict: doing so and fostering jingoistic illusions actually makes our main objective more difficult to realise.

Sean makes occasional, tokenistic references to 'the workers': these are abstract and separate from the general thrust of the article, and indeed Sean makes no effort to delve into the tasks of the working class in the region or how it might intervene in the crisis. Nor, for that matter, does he refer to the oppression of the Palestinian's or the utter hypocrisy of Israel, the region's sole nuclear power, posturing as "anti-nuclear".

Indeed, one among the "kitsch left reasons for criticising Israel" Sean throws up in his list is of a rather different character to the others: "Because for choice we would live in a world where the workers of Israel, Iran, Iraq were united in opposition to all their rulers, and strong enough to get rid of them and bring to the region an era of socialist and democratic peace and understanding." Sean clearly thinks this is just utopian, and portrays this approach in a carping and dismissive fashion. Of course, none of us think that there's going to be a worldwide socialist revolution in the next week, month or even before Iran is bombed. But that is our sole objective, and the way Marxists respond to more 'immediate' national disputes does indeed shape the possible future outcome: it is impossible to just mix and match between fighting for revolution and playing at imperialist geopolitics like Sean does. You can, however, oppose both regimes and their militarists.

We are not armchair generals willing the Israeli government to stand up for themselves against the "Muslim fundamentalists" or hoping that the big Western imperialist powers will be able to maintain some sort of ersatz "safety" for the Israeli Jews by keeping Israel's rival regional powers weak until that bright, sunny future day when the workers storm the Knesset and take power. Not only do we refuse to put our confidence in the Israeli generals, but we must ardently denounce their aggressive and imperialist stance, the very mirror-image of the Iranian theocrats and one which puts working-class unity further down the agenda.

Trotskyism in occupied France

I have translated the complete surviving collection of Arbeiter und Soldat, the clandestine paper produced by the French Trotskyists (Comités de la IVe Internationale) for Wehrmacht soldiers in 1943-44. It has been published as a supplement to the latest issue of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty paper Solidarity.

Click here to access the files. My introduction appears below.

By summer 1943 the Axis war machine was suffering heavy setbacks. Although Hitler had completed a full occupation of France in November 1942, and still held on to his conquests in the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and parts of western Russia, the Axis powers no longer looked able to win the war. The German defeat at Stalingrad, after months of exaggeration of Wehrmacht success in the Nazi media, and the subsequent loss of much of south-western Russia; the incompetence of the Italian army; the Allies’ conquest of North African and threatened landings in southern Italy; Japan’s defeats at the hands of the United States in the Pacific; Tito’s Yugoslav partisan movement which had taken control of much of Macedonia, southern Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and part of Slovenia; and the mounting French Resistance, led by Charles de Gaulle and the French Communist Party, were all bad omens for the Nazi leaders and their satraps.

Indeed, with increasing privations, bombings of cities and military disasters, there were significant stirrings of discontent in the Axis powers. Not only did high-up German officers initiate plots to remove Hitler in order to better manage the war effort (the closest-run, and final such attempt to do so was the well-known 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life by Claus von Stauffenberg), but in Rome the Fascist Grand Council actually voted 19-7 on 24 July 1943 to no-confidence Benito Mussolini, who was summoned to the King Victor Emmanuel III, arrested and taken to jail in an ambulance. This manoeuvre on the part of the King and the Marshal Pietro Badoglio was an attempted ‘revolution from above’ mounted to save the ruling class from the threat of working-class uprisings, after the huge strike waves in the industrial north starting in March 1943 including stoppages in major armaments plants in Milan and Turin to secure more evacuation allowances – the first big strikes since 1925. As the Partito Comunista Internazionalista commented in August:

“The bourgeoisie, the monarchy and the Church, who created and supported Fascism, who today are throwing Mussolini to the people to avoid going down with him, and who don democratic and populist clothes in order to continue the exploitation and oppression of the working class, have no right to say anything in today’s crisis. This right exclusively belongs to the working class, the peasants and the soldiers, the eternal victims of the imperialist octopus.”

The late World War II period is usually compared unfavourably to the wave of revolutionary struggles provoked by World War I (the February and October revolutions in the Russian empire; large anti-war demonstrations in Germany; and after the war the Bavarian soviet republic; the Hungarian soviet republic; and a series of revolutionary opportunities in Germany until 1923), contrary to Trotsky’s prediction that it would cause an even greater revolutionary crisis. However, during this period there were signs significant working-class struggles in several belligerent countries, including the efforts of the resurgent Italian workers’ movement; miners’ strikes in Britain and the United States; strikes tens of thousands strong against forced deportations in France and Belgium; the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; and small-scale mutinies in the German armed forces.

But for the most part working-class mobilisation was co-opted into the Allied war effort. Hundreds of thousands of workers who supported the Communist Parties of Europe, loyal as they were to Stalin’s Soviet Union, courageously devoted themselves to anti-occupation “resistance” armies led by bourgeois nationalists in the belief that it was the best way of fighting fascism. The hollowness of Stalin’s “anti-fascist” credentials was however made clear by his keenness for CPs to work alongside the same nationalists, generals and bankers who had helped the fascists crush the workers’ movements of Europe to start with. For example, he created in Moscow a “Committee for a Free Germany” mostly composed of ex-Nazi generals; along with the other Allies supposedly liberating Europe from fascism he left Franco in power in Spain and Salazar in Portugal; he betrayed his own supporters in Greece, who were then butchered by the monarchists’ allies, the British Army, at the end of that country’s Civil War; and he ordered the Italian CP to support the monarchy and lay down its weapons. Although this was in a sense nothing new – before the war the French CP leader Maurice Thorez had called on “patriotic” French fascists to join a “national front” against the Nazis – Stalin’s leading role in the stabilisation of European capitalism in the 1943-1945 period was a shock to some, with a 2,500-strong Stalinist formation Movimento Comunista d’Italia even breaking from the Italian CP under the impression that they were implementing Stalin’s “real” policies and that the local CP leader Palmiro Togliatti was being disloyal to Moscow!

The Communist Parties and Moscow, who still had enormous prestige among much of the world working class, were hostile to all strikes and any independent working-class action which might undermine the Allied war effort. The British Stalinist leader Harry Pollitt even proclaimed “today it is the class conscious worker who will cross the picket line”. Despite the USSR’s August 1939-June 1941 pact with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe, Stalin’s imperialist ambitions were now completely intertwined with the war aims of the Allies – indeed, the “Soviet” empire would be a leading, if not the leading, beneficiary of the Allied victory, extending its grip over almost all of Eastern and Central Europe and seizing tens of billions of pounds worth of war reparations. The nationalist and anti-German chauvinist hysteria promoted by Moscow, which portrayed the war to the Russian people as just another chapter in the Slavs’ struggle against the Germans, must be seen as largely responsible for the vengeance exacted on the German people at the end of the war with hundreds of thousands of rapes of women and girls, the murder and leaving to starve of millions of civilians as well as organising huge population transfers. In France the Communist Party raised the slogans “everyone, united against the Krauts” and “everyone kill a Kraut”, refusing to draw any distinction between Nazi-led German imperialism and the working-class German conscripts in the Wehrmacht.

This monumental error was only replicated in part by the Trotskyist Fourth International, which had no truck whatsoever with the idea that workers in the Allied countries should cross picket lines to aid the USSR’s war effort or that the war was a war between ‘democratic nations’ and ‘fascist nations’. However, the Fourth International press did foster illusions in the progressive character of the USSR’s war effort, claiming that as a “degenerated workers’ state” with a nationalised economy it deserved support against the Axis, and furthermore in some of its sections’ press hailed the progress of “Trotsky’s Red Army” in fighting back the Wehrmacht. American Trotskyist James Cannon said that Trotskyists would “fight in the front rank” of the Soviet army to defend the USSR. Of course, the Fourth International’s enthusiastic claims that the USSR’s successes in the war were the result of continuing “Leninist planning” or Trotsky’s role in establishing the Red Army were nonsensical; the Russian economy had experienced complete counter-revolution, with an atomised working-class unable to act independently with its own unions, soviets or party, never mind plan the economy for itself; the Communist Party had been completely gutted, with almost all the leading actors in the revolution executed by Stalin; the Red Army high command had itself been purged repeatedly, while rank, titles and saluting had been reintroduced as well as orders and military academies named after Tsarist war heroes like Aleksandr Suvorov; early setbacks in the war at the hands of Germany (whose own war economy was almost entirely state-run) ran counter to claims of the superiority of the Russian economy over the capitalist countries; and indeed throughout the war the Russians relied heavily on food supplies and military equipment from the United States, including thousands of Studebaker trucks.

However, despite this misunderstanding of the role of the USSR in the war, the Fourth International and its member organisations did mount a heroic struggle against national chauvinism and illusions in the democratic aspirations of Britain and the United States. French Trotskyists were sharply critical of the Gaullist “French Resistance”, characterising it as an instrument of Allied imperialism and a movement which aspired not simply to liberate France but also to let it hold onto its colonial empire. Rather than calling on the working class to act as a supporting cast for the Allied war effort, these internationalists called for fraternisation between soldiers, working-class struggle against the participating governments and a “revolutionary defeatist” attitude towards both sides, hoping to transform the imperialist war into international class war. As Jean Rous had explained in a motion to the centrist Parti Socialiste Ouvrier et Paysan’s congress in 1939:

“The party will not be put off the belief that the main enemy is in our own country by the possibility that mass revolutionary agitation in time of war may contribute to the military defeat of our country. Accepting this possibility does not mean encouraging or wanting victory for Hitler, but on the contrary will encourage the total defeat of Hitler and worldwide fascism. Indeed:

“1. Revolutionary agitation led by workers in our country will exercise a powerful contagious influence on workers in the fascist countries; will provoke the break up of the rival capitalist armies, fraternisation between soldiers of both sides and the collapse of the dictatorships; and will light the flame of world revolution, the only means of defeating war and fascism, across the globe.

“2. Besides, a revolutionary seizure of power by the working class in our country will turn the imperialist war into a civil war and create the conditions for meaningful national defence: only a proletariat in control of its own destiny and defending a socialist order will be able to mount an invincible resistance to foreign fascism…”

It was with this aim of winning over German troops to a common struggle against the belligerent imperialists that in summer 1943 the French Trotskyists turned to organising among the German troops occupying France. Given the strict discipline of the Wehrmacht and the murderous anti-communism of the Gestapo (and their French accomplices, the Milice) this was incredibly dangerous, but important both in terms of teaching the French workers to repudiate the chauvinist attitudes promoted by the Communist Party and in terms of encouraging dissent among the German ranks, as had been manifested earlier in 1943 by a submarine mutiny in Brest, north-western France. The French Comités de la IVe Internationale (Fourth International Committees) produced German-language leaflets for Wehrmacht troops as well as a monthly German-language newspaper, Arbeiter und Soldat (i.e. Worker and Soldier) and built links with German troops.

This was not the only such initiative. The paper of the group associated with Pierre Frank and Raymond Molinier, formerly known as la Commune but from September 1943 as le Soviet, had a German-language back page, and the group also had contacts in Germany. But more important for the Fourth International group were the efforts arising from the German troops themselves. German Trotskyist produced a paper Zeitung für Arbeiter und Soldat im Westen (i.e. News for the Worker[s] and Soldier[s] in the West) and furthermore a previously unorganised group of soldiers in Brittany produced Der Arbeiter (i.e. The Worker). The latter journal encouraged dissent amongst the ranks but also called on conscripted workers to “throw down your weapons and go home”, a slogan opposed by the Fourth International Committees, who wanted the workers to hang on to their weapons and carefully organise for an uprising to overthrow the Nazis before the Allied “liberators” plundered Germany. The Fourth International Committees therefore held discussions with revolutionary soldiers and tried to carry out joint agitation.

Yvan Craipeau’s book Contre vents et marées quotes the electrics worker Roland Filiâtre, one of the comrades responsible for this work (under the alias Dupont): “The French comrades started discussions with German soldiers and got them talking and giving hints of their past politics. Once they had shown themselves trustworthy, after screening they were put in touch with the German soldiers who produced Der Arbeiter and then taken care of by their organisation. The Paris region was organised as two branches. But the heart of the organisation was in Brittany, both around Nantes and in particular around Brest where the soldiers provided the party with Ausweis [identity cards] and weapons. In Brest the organisation had about fifty soldiers on average despite some people being posted elsewhere. Contacts were established in Toulon, Valence, La Rochelle and at Conches aerodrome. There was also an organisation in Belgium. Links were established with the German Trotskyist organisation, most importantly in the port of Hamburg, in Lübeck and in Rostock. Victor [a German Trotskyist, whose real name was Widelin] was responsible for these contacts. Arbeiter und Soldat was also distributed in garrisons in Italy.”

These brave efforts brought down harsh repression on the heads of the French Trotskyists, many of whom such as Yvan Craipeau had repeatedly raised the alarm in the group about certain comrades’ lack of care in evading detection. Realising these fears, young Fourth International activists imprudently but enthusiastically joined in a demonstration staged by Der Arbeiter activists through the streets of Kerhoun, singing the Internationale and thus attracted the attention of the fascist police. Not much later, in early October 1943 a meeting of Trotskyist activists and German soldiers held in Brest was found out by the Gestapo, who arrested all the participants. 17 German soldiers as well as Robert Cruau, who organised fraternisation in the region, were executed on 6 October. Once the Gestapo were on the trail, the Trotskyists were doomed. On 7 October 18 Fourth International Committees activists in Brittany were arrested, along with much of the Paris organisation. In total around fifty French activists were rounded up, and many of them were tortured, executed or sent to concentration camps. Similarly, as many as fifty Der Arbeiter soldier comrades were put to death, and their paper never reappeared. Arbeiter und Soldat was itself out of action until May 1944, such were the losses suffered by the Fourth International Committees.

For these courageous activists the class struggle never stopped: even having been arrested and taken to the Compiègne transit camp Marcel Beaufrère told his comrades that: “We are going to be deported to Buchenwald. Before leaving I want to say: we are going to meet up with German revolutionaries and make the revolution with them.” Indeed, the French Trotskyists set up a cell at the Buchenwald concentration camp and in April 1944 it managed to release a manifesto calling for: “revolutionary fraternisation with the workers in the armies of occupation. For a Germany of workers’ councils in a Europe of workers’ councils! For the world workers’ revolution!”. But the sad fact was that many of these activists would soon be murdered by the Nazis. In reality the task with which the Trotskyist movement was confronted, lifting the world working class from the abyss of imperialist war, fascism and Stalinism, was far beyond their extremely modest numbers and means. Not only the crushing of the German workers’ movement by fascism but also Stalinist misleadership and the ensuing co-option of working-class and democratic struggle by the Allied imperialists meant that working-class revolution as had been seen at the end of the war twenty-five years previously was nigh-on impossible. Despite all these difficulties the Trotskyists fought to promote the internationalist Marxist tradition, and here we reproduce the surviving propaganda distributed among German troops occupying France in 1943-44, both the collection of Arbeiter und Soldat and the sole extant fragment of Zeitung für Arbeiter und Soldat im Westen.

Solidarity on Israel-Palestine

In her reply to David Kirk’s criticism of the Solidarity 3/128 editorial on Israel/Palestine, Cathy Nugent comments on the idea that we should not put demands on bourgeois governments:

“… socialists have always made such “calls” and made demands on bourgeois governments, and in many dreadful circumstances — in order to organise movements of opposition, to cohere groups of people who share our basic politics, because these demands/calls have the potential to create mass movements, or because under pressure bourgeois governments do act.”

This is correct when it refers to the necessity of making demands for agitational purposes. If the workers’ movement raises slogans for Palestinian self-determination, it can become a rallying point for working class forces, who can hegemonise the democratic and national question and thus build a third camp independent of the Israeli state and the Palestinian leadership. Socialists must argue (i) for working-class unity and independence from other class forces and (ii) for the workers’ movement to take the lead in posing democratic demands against the Israeli and Palestinian ruling classes.

However, it is does not follow that a simple expression of the sentiment ‘The Israeli state really ought to allow the Palestinians to have their own state’ is necessarily ‘third camp’ in character. The ‘third camp’ is the organised working class taking the lead in struggle, not just the idea of a ‘two state solution’ in itself. After all, Fatah, Ehud Olmert, sections of Hamas and George Bush all want a ‘two state solution’, but their projects are not similar to our hope for a joint Arab-Jewish workers’ struggle for self-determination for all peoples in the region. The fact that we do not just shout “down with negotiations” or “down with diplomatic deals” when they happen does not mean that we do not have our own politics to push forward as well.

Yet the editorial in question made not a single reference to workers’ struggle, the working class or even trade unions, either in the abstract or in the concrete. It did not at any point mention the class struggle in the region nor how national oppression and democratic struggles relate to it. It read not like an article in a Trotskyist paper but like an Independent comment piece which patronisingly “exposes” the Israeli government’s “lack of proportion”. There was not one word in the editorial which would have been out of place in any liberal bourgeois daily.

This was the problem with the way the editorial posed demands on the Israeli government. Rather than stressing the importance of working-class struggle to force these demands to be fulfilled, it suggested that it would be the Kadima government which gifted Palestinian self-determination. As “one of the most democratic societies in existence”, Israel “should be correspondingly humane and enlightened” and use its power to grant justice to the Palestinians. No other agency of change was mentioned, with the article appealing to the Israeli élite to live up to their own democratic credentials!

That is not an agitational demand. In front of whom does the hypocrisy of Ehud Olmert and the IDF need to be “exposed”? I doubt that anyone who would buy our – revolutionary socialist - paper, nor for that matter the Palestinian workers and unemployed masses, would have been too impressed. We need to make the case for a ‘third camp’ in Israel-Palestine, not waste paper with liberal musings about “disproportionate” levels of violence.

Solidarity and "troops out now"

Among other issues the upcoming Alliance for Workers' Liberty conference will debate our position on Iraq and Iran. This piece is intended to contribute to that discussion and explain some of the views of minority comrades.

Within our organisation there is a substantial minority grouping critical of the leadership's attitude to the occupation of Iraq. We argue that the only principled line on the conflict, and only chance to build independent working-class forces, is to stand sharply opposed to US-UK intervention in the region as well as Islamism. In contrast, the majority argue that we should acquiesce to the occupation of Iraq, since if we demanded that the troops leave and they did, Islamist militias would win out and crush democratic space in Iraq.

All of our comrades say they are for solidarity with Iraqi workers, and the debate is normally posed in terms of what slogans we should add to this position - demands like "troops out now", "troops out" or just a general sentiment "against the occupation". But is apparent that there is more to the disagreement than superficial differences in wording. The real divide is between those who believe that US 'globocop' actions are progressive but that socialists shouldn't "give them any credit in advance", and those who think that this misses the point of how to build an independent "third camp" of working-class forces which can stand on its own two feet.

My own differences with Martin Thomas's conference document for the majority are only partly about analysis of what is going on in Iraq. While I have stressed the idea that the Mahdi Army - backed by the Iranian regime - and sectarian militias are increasingly integrated into the occupation government already, and deny that the imperialist troops protect Iraqi workers (the Iraqi government's Decree 8750 renders unions semi-illegal and gives it the right to confiscate all of their funds; the US Army have attacked trade union offices; while all of the British troops are safely ensconced near Basra airport, since Brown is too embarrassed to remove them even though Moqtada al-Sadr already controls the streets), Martin focuses on what would happen if the troops left. I do not deny his assertion that if all the troops magically "disappeared" and the Iraqi government collapsed, the consequence would just be the victory of the best-armed militias. I do not say “troops out now” because I want that to happen. But nor can I accept Martin's terms of argument.

In his only reference to the idea that we should call for "troops out now" he writes,

"...if "troops out now" were somehow to happen, the result would almost certainly be full-scale war between different sectarian clerical fascist militias and then the destruction of the labour movement; the chopping-up of the country; the probable liquidation of any chances of Iraqi (or Arab-Iraqi) national self determination; and the destruction of any elements of democracy (free press, etc.)
"Solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement against both the US/UK occupation and the sectarian militias remains the indicated policy for socialists internationally. We reject negative slogans like "troops out now" which the actual balance of forces would fill with a reactionary political content".

This kind of schematic logic is no good. Marxists understand that social forces and classes do not exist in the abstract, isolated from one another, but instead that they are in struggle, and the subjective factor of political struggle can change the "balance of forces", which is neither fixed nor controlled by some ethereal hand of history. Martin's reference to "if "troops out now" were somehow to happen" makes no sense - in reality slogans do not mysteriously "happen" out of the blue, but are demands raised and fought for by real people. What interests us here is the slogans of the international workers' movement, the forces to which we are aligned and hope to influence.

Our politics, our programme and the slogans which crystallise them are agitational, designed to organise the working-class as well as forces such as women's, LGBT and student movements for struggle. If the workers' movement raised the demand "troops out now", it would not be some magic wand to make the troops "disappear", but a basis for the working class to organise in sharp hostility to US-UK imperialism as well as confronting Islamists and Iranian regional imperialism intervening in Iraq. As Sean Matgamna has written,

"One makes all kinds of educational agitation and propaganda demands, despite knowing that they will not be implemented immediately or precisely. Agitation, the spotlight of the steady beam of propaganda, is seen as preparing the way. The implementation of the demand presupposes a whole series of changes, which the raising of the demand will help to bring about. As strength is built up it becomes possible to act, to plan.”

“Troops out now" is not merely a radical posture. Clearly, we do not raise the slogan because we are comfortable in the belief that we are so weak that the demand will never be realised and so it doesn't matter what we say. Yet we also know that if we ever did organise enough workers around our demands to force the troops out, then the balance of forces would have changed and so the consequences of withdrawal would be different to the troops just "disappearing" tomorrow.

The problem with "troops out", i.e. missing out the word "now", is that in the context of the world we live in it would be seen to deliberately avoid saying "now" and give free rein for the troops to stay indefinitely. This looks like a variant of the majority view that we should accept the presence of troops until the trade unions do not need their protection. But the whole point is that the workers' movement will never grow to be in that position if it takes sides with the occupiers. While we may approve of some democratic side effects of the occupation, "refusing to grant it political support" at the same time as you go round telling people that you also "refuse to demand that the troops leave" is tonally and operationally nothing other than fostering illusions in the democratic credentials of the occupiers.

In the case of the majority, this is worsened by clumsy formulations which, for all of the qualifications and equivocation which surround them, imply taking sides with US imperialism. Martin, whose conference motion presented to National Committee on 1 March avoided any reference to sanctions and the threat of "surgical" air strikes in Iran, had written in October that although plans for war against Iran were "crazy", it was possible to imagine that "if it were possible to imagine some "surgical" operation that would stop Iran's hideous regime acquiring nuclear weapons, and take out the foul Ahmedinejad, it would be good", which is precisely the wrong argument to be making at a time when US threats strengthen the hand of the Iranian regime against our comrades, since it is able to appeal to nationalism and portray itself as "anti-imperialist".

The same goes for the argument that we should not call ourselves "anti-imperialist" since clerical reactionaries have adopted the label too. Firstly, if everyone followed the AWL's majority line, the result would be to buttress sectarian Islamist militias by allowing them to present themselves as the consistent opponents of the US Army, and by saying nothing about the need for Iraqi-Arab self determination we would concede an enormous amount of political territory to Islamists who claim that self determination should mean a patchwork of statelets run by clerical fascist mafias. And secondly, just because the words have been dragged through the mud is not a reason to abandon our politics - why should we not also dispense with the word "socialism", which for most people means something between Harold Wilson and Joseph Stalin?

The question of working-class agency is of vital importance for the minority. Articles by comrades such as Daniel Randall and myself have stressed the need for a working-class anti-war movement demonstrating that only the workers' movement - and not Iranian regional imperialism and Moqtada al-Sadr - can fight for both democratic rights (including national self-determination) and social liberation. Rather than imagining that occupying troops will protect the working-class, we should be calling for the arming of the workers and supporting efforts at community self-defense.

Also important here is working-class action at home - while actions such as those of the Motherwell train crew and the Italian dockers who refused to transport weapons for use in Iraq are occasional and receive little coverage in the Guardian, we must vocally propagandise about them as a means to undermine the war effort, and argue that they are necessarily the same struggle as oil workers in Iraq who strike against the looting of the country's oil by Halliburton. While in the lead-up to conference the majority have co-opted some of that point into their position, it does not sit well - if you think the occupiers' democratic war effort is the only hope for the Iraqi trade unions, how can you also be in favour of attempts to sabotage the troops carrying out that mission?

To refuse to call for the withdrawal of troops is to refuse to pose yourself sharply against the occupation, and so weakens efforts to organise anti-war workers' action. The majority's position reflects an unwillingness to take on this important question and acquiesces to US imperialism as a guarantor of democracy for a supposedly eternally weak working class. In contrast, the minority argue that we must struggle for a strong and independent third camp, with the international left and workers' movement organising around the slogans "Solidarity with Iraqi workers against the occupation and Islamism. Troops out now".

Leon Trotsky's ideas today

A series of discussions from the North London branch of Workers’ Liberty, open to all.
All meetings held on Tuesdays from 7:30pm at the Red Rose Club, 129 Seven Sisters Road, N7. Nearest tube is Finsbury Park.

Week 3 (26th February): The Soviet Union after the Revolution: The New Course.

“The struggle against the bureaucratism of the state apparatus is an exceptionally important but prolonged task, one that runs more or less parallel to our other fundamental tasks: economic reconstruction and the elevation of the cultural level of the masses. The most important historical instrument for the accomplishment of all these tasks is the party. Naturally, not even the party can tear itself away from the social and cultural conditions of the country. But as the voluntary organization of the vanguard, of the best, the most active and the most conscious elements of the working class, it is able to preserve itself much better than can the state apparatus from the tendencies of bureaucratism. For that, it must see the danger clearly and combat it without let up.”
Reading: The New Course (1923) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/index.htm. Short Reading: Chapter 1: the question of party generations.

Week 4 (4th March): Trotsky on Art and Literature.

“Before the proletariat will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat. Let us also not forget that the upper layer of the bourgeoisie passed its cultural apprenticeship under the roof of feudal society; that while still within the womb of feudal society it surpassed the old ruling estates culturally and became the instigator of culture before it came into power. It is different with the proletariat in general and with the Russian proletariat in particular. The proletariat is forced to take power before it has appropriated the fundamental elements of bourgeois culture; it is forced to overthrow bourgeois society by revolutionary violence for the very reason that society does not allow it access to culture. The working-class strives to transform the state apparatus into a powerful pump for quenching the cultural thirst of the masses. This is a task of immeasurable historic importance. But, if one is not to use words lightly, it is not as yet a creation of a special proletarian culture.”
Reading: Literature and Revolution (1924) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/index.htm. Short reading: Chapter 6: Proletarian culture and proletarian art.

Week 5 (11th March): Stalinism and the defeat of the workers.

Trotsky argues that Stalinism was not the logical product of Bolshevism, but represented a bureaucratic counter-revolution against the Russian working class - separated from Bolshevism by "a river of blood"
Reading: The Revolution Betrayed (1936) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm. Short reading: chapter 11: Whither the Soviet Union?

Week 6 (18th March): The Struggle against Fascism

In the 1930s, as the Kremlin-backed German Communist Party ignored the Nazi threat, claiming that fascists were no worse than Social Democrats, Trotsky highlighted the danger fascism posed to all democratic and workers’ organisations and made the case for working-class forces to form a united front against the Nazis.
Reading: The Struggle against Fascism in Germany (or the Bookmarks collection: Racism, Stalinism and the United Front) (1930-1934). Alternatively all of Trotsky’s writings on Germany of this period are collected at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/index.htm
Short Reading: The United Front for Defense: A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker (1933)

Week 7 (25th March): The Fourth International and the Transitional Programme.

Leon Trotsky’s “transitional programme” was a method by which to relate immediate struggles in the here and now to the ultimate goal of revolution, by posing demands which implicitly raised questions about power in society and the rule of capitalism.
Reading: The Transitional Programme (the Pathfinder edition with associated articles and transcripts of discussions is particularly useful). http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm. Short reading: the programme itself, the first seven sections up to and including “‘Business secrets’ and workers’ control of industry”

All meetings will also include a section on organisation + political work. Ring David on 07828 844695 for further details or email davidthetrot@googlemail.com.

Working class internationalism and the Middle East

The left devotes much of its efforts to campaigning against imperialism, which is no surprise given the present foreign policy of the American and British governments. However, in order to effectively combat imperialism and war, it is necessary that we understand what ‘anti-imperialism’ means, who is anti-imperialist, and what relationship that has with working-class politics.

Unfortunately, the dominant conception of ‘anti-imperialism’ on the British left today, as schooled to thousands of young new activists by organisations such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, is wholly inadequate. As I shall explain, rather than taking imperialism on at a structural level, i.e. by understanding it as the logic of modern capitalism, the SWP along with orthodox Trotskyist and Stalinist groups take an anti-war stance entirely abstract from any analysis of class relations or democratic rights such as self determination. For this reason, they take the position that any opponent or competitor of the largest imperialist power – the United States – is therefore ‘anti-imperialist’ and therefore worthy of support.

In order to sustain this illusion, they exaggerate or falsify the progressive characteristics of the forces they support. For example, they claim that that Iran is the most democratic country in the Middle East, and wax lyrical about the welfare programmes and "women's participation" in Hamas. At Stop the War conference these ‘anti-imperialists’ entertained Somaye Zadeh, who lied outrageously to play down the human rights abuses of the Tehran regime. In the NUS left unity discussions the SWP were unwilling to raise slogans to support workers in Iran but happy to make vague gestures of support for "democratic forces". Claiming that the existence of pro-reform elements within the elite is itself evidence that Iran is democratic, they look to sections of the Iranian bourgeoisie to effect change rather than encouraging the working class to overthrow it.

They seem to want to see this decade as the 1960s in slow motion, with Hamas substituting for the Vietcong and the Iranian government for Cuba. Indeed, so progressive do they deem these ‘anti-imperialist’ friends in the Middle East that they see fit to deny the existence of a working-class movement opposed to both imperialism and political Islam. But this attitude is not just a betrayal of our comrades in the Middle East, who so badly need solidarity from the international labour movement – it is also a completely wrong-headed understanding of what forces are able to challenge imperialism.

Of course, helped by the sabre-rattling of George Bush and Western sanctions, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is plenty able to speechify with anti-imperialist rhetoric - and yet not only did the Iranian regime ban demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, but it supported the invasion, and furthermore supports the occupation of Afghanistan. Ahmedinejad has willingly introduced all sorts of IMF plans to liberalise the Iranian economy and at the same time has clamped down on trade unions, with long periods in jail for activists in the militant bus workers’ union. Similarly, parties in Iraq like Dawa, SCIRI and even the forces led by Moqtada al-Sadr, which all call for the immediate withdrawal of troops, are not even sufficiently ‘anti-imperialist’ as to refuse to participate in the occupation government. Hezbollah are Shia sectarians and radical Islamists, but their row with Prime Minister Siniora in fact has the aim of grabbing a few posts in a coalition government. On the other side of the conflict, the Americans have their own Islamist allies and militias in Iraq, and, indeed, as in the past with Saddam Hussein, are perfectly willing to deal with any local despot.

While all the organisations I have mentioned have at times been in direct conflict with US imperialism, and their relations with the US bourgeoisie are complex, they are far from consistently anti-imperialist. They are little but sections of the ruling class looking to grab a slice of the action, yet the Socialist Workers’ Party characterises them as relatively progressive since they are not the ‘main’ enemy. A logical extension of the same idea, as employed by Socialist Action and the CPGB (Marxist-Leninist), is that the Chinese government is (or “remains”) ‘anti-imperialist’ since it is in competition with the USA, or liberal support for the European Union as some sort of counterweight to George Bush.

What is missing from all of these ideas is any notion of class, with barely even the suggestion that imperialism is premised on a set of class relations. The Middle Eastern labour movement, which is mostly relatively weak, obviously disappoints these people. We can see the same mistake being made by such people as Nick Cohen, the Euston Manifesto group and ex-Marxists like Norman Geras who, thinking that the working-class is dead after the fall of the Soviet bureaucracy, support “humanitarian” interventions or imperialist missions to spread democracy, with the US Army staging a Bonaparte-like fight to spread the French Revolution by the sword. They deprive words like ‘democracy’ (and they even speak of ‘workers’ rights’) of any meaningful content, substituting liberation-from-above by imperialist powers for the idea that people should take control over their own lives. Operationally, these people are not left-wing in any real sense, since they have no understanding of agency other than that US troops can be an effective force for ‘change’.

For those who have stuck by Marxism, the recent conflicts in the Middle East have just offered further bloody proof of the absolute impossibility of imperialism serving the cause of democracy. We stick unfailingly by the idea that it is the working class which fights for social liberation, and even if it is weak in the here and now we must seek to build its organisations, not rely on some two-bit democrat in a smart suit or a general’s epaulettes.

The stance of the majority group in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, whose ideas are explicitly based on the “third camp” of the working class, is not the same as Cohen and his ilk. Engaging in real solidarity work with comrades in the Middle East, the AWL’s refusal to call for the occupying troops to leave Iraq is predicated on the understanding that their withdrawal would destroy the Iraqi labour movement, since if Islamists came to power they would not tolerate trade unions, or indeed women’s or LGBT organisations. If you believe the AWL majority, the call for “troops out now” is counterposed to defence of the Iraqi workers’ movement.

However, this understanding of events, along with the AWL’s positions on Iran and Palestine, belies some of the same problems as both the SWP and their allies and the Eustonites. The question of class independence is not always in the forefront of their minds. In practice, pessimistic about the prospects for the working class to stand up for itself, the AWL acquiesces to imperialist involvement in the region in the here and now the belief that it will be able to hold Islamism at bay and so create breathing space for the workers’ movement to grow. Of course, we are always living in the “here and now”, while the question of how and why the Iraqi left and trade unions are meant to grow in the “meantime” before the troops leave is barely considered.

Yet it is apparent that the occupation is not a bulwark against Islamism – as I have said, there are numerous Islamist parties and associated militias in the seat of power under the occupation, while most trade union activity is illegal. The imperialist occupiers would far rather make backroom deals to put the Islamists in charge than devote their time to defending workers’ organisations from the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces.

Furthermore, it is quite clear that if the workers’ movement fails to call for the immediate withdrawal of troops, it will help Islamist groups foster illusions in their own ‘anti-imperialist’ character and abstain from having anything to say about the question of Iraqi self-determination, which should hardly be left for Shia or Sunni supremacists to carve up. If the labour movement did reach the position where it could force the realisation of the slogan “troops out now”, then clearly the balance of forces would shift in favour of working-class internationalism and against clerical fascist reaction.

But not only does the AWL refuse to call for “troops out of Iraq now” in the understanding that the workers’ movement will be crushed if they are withdrawn, but it supports the US-EU-backed Fatah to stave off Hamas and has even taken a soft stance on US aggression against Iran. In Solidarity Mark Osborn has played down the idea that Palestinian workers could act independently of Fatah, “under Fatah there is some freedom for a third camp to develop; under Hamas there is none. David doesn’t like the choice, Fatah or Hamas. I don’t like it much myself. But during the fighting in Gaza that’s what it came down to”, while Martin Thomas made the hypothesis “if it were possible to imagine some ‘surgical’ operation that would stop Iran’s hideous regime acquiring nuclear weapons, and take out the foul Ahmadinejad, it would be good”, as if it were even vaguely plausible that such an eventuality could a) not kill thousands of people b) not strengthen the hand of the regime to crush internal dissent and c) replace the Ahmedinejad government with anything better. This is not a consistent third camp position, but one which veers towards support for non-working class forces who happen to use the right catchphrases about “democracy”, “two states” and so on.

I refute the suggestion that we must prioritise opposing the occupation of Iraq or war and sanctions against Iran over direct solidarity with workers, women and students in those countries, or indeed vice-versa. This idea concedes an awful lot of ground to the Stalinist worldview which sees all Middle Eastern workers with democratic or secular goals as ‘objective’ allies of imperialism, and claiming that any talk of democracy is siding with George Bush, seeks to set a dividing line between anti-war and workers’ solidarity efforts. Equally, I do not accept that we should "prioritise" either opposition to imperialism or opposition to Islamists over the other - we shouldn't be allying with either.

Far from being counterposed, these two fronts of struggle are inextricably linked. Workers' action to undermine our armed forces and strikes against the war are vital in showing the power of the working class to stand on its own two feet as a force which can intervene in the "war on terror" conflict. "Troops out now" is not a magic wand to make the troops disappear, but a slogan for the working class to organise around, to try and force the realisation of that demand itself. I support the slogan not because it is unrealisable, so it doesn't matter what the consequences would be if it played out, but precisely because if it is workers in the US and UK or workers in Iraq whose efforts force the troops out, then the balance of forces will turn in favour of the workers' movement.

Even if they do not receive prominent coverage in the international pages of the bourgeois media, actions like those of the train crew in Scotland or dockers in the United States who refused to move weapons are inextricably linked to the strikes of oil workers in Basra, and must be both encouraged and advertised. Rather than writing articles about geopolitical developments which we cannot influence with analyses cropped from the comment pages of the Guardian, our primary task is to talk about what the workers' movement can achieve through its own struggles

This idea of working-class internationalism does not just mean trade union conferences passing resolutions about the war, or bureaucrats in suits speechifying about the need to give a bit of money to the Stop the War Coalition, but practical solidarity action with our comrades abroad, critical engagement with the ideas of the Middle Eastern left (including encouraging exile communities to assimilate into the local left) and propaganda which sharply poses the question of how workers in countries like Britain can fight in common with their counterparts abroad.

The defining characteristic of most of the far left’s stance on imperialism is a profound retreat from class, looking to any number of reactionaries and local bourgeoisies to resist the influence of the US hyperpower. Of course, it is true that despite large strikes in the Iraqi oil fields and Egyptian textile factories, the Middle Eastern working class is far from being in a position to defeat imperialism and Islamism. But that does not mean that we can loosen our grip on the Marxist understanding of class independence – the growth of our forces, which currently appear weak, is the only hope we have for democracy and peace in the Middle East, and – worldwide - we must strive unerringly to develop workers’ understanding of their independent agency. The AWL does have a much stronger class focus than other left groups, yet has still failed to develop a real understanding of working-class internationalism and what exactly constitutes an anti-imperialist workers’ movement.

Solidarity with Iraqi workers!
Troops out now!

Communist Students conference

On Saturday 16th I attended the conference of Communist Students, the autonomous student organisation connected to the CPGB/Weekly Worker group. Around 25 people attended, of whom only around a quarter were actual CPGB members (as far as I could tell). Most of those attending were members of CS, but there were also a few of their contacts who I hadn't met before, as well as Bill Jefferies of Permanent Revolution.

The first significant discussion was on how we should fight against the British National Party, a debate which has recently had significant coverage in the Weekly Worker. While Ben Lewis, who led off the session, believes that we should be flexible in our tactics as regards the BNP, and although not necessarily seeking to organise meetings with the far right we should sometimes be prepared to debate them, others such as the Permanent Revolution group think that any debate legitimises the ideas of 'fascists' (there was a subordinate debate as to whether the BNP are actually fascists).

Ben talked about the way in which the SWP and the Unite Against Fascism campaign subscribe to liberal anti-fascism, seeking to defend 'normal' establishment political discourse against fascists, whose ideas are 'beyond the pale'. While the BNP has filled a political space vacated by Labour - claiming to have all the answers to some very real concerns of (white!) working class voters such as jobs and housing - and indeed won 800,000 votes in the European election, UAF just go round telling people not to 'vote Nazi', reminding them that Nazis are 'really, really bad'. In doing this they ignore the reasons why people vote BNP rather than Labour, Lib Dem or Tory - one SWPer he quoted even referred to BNP voters as 'the scum on the estates'.

Bill Jefferies' response was correct insofar as it stressed the need for working-class and minority community self-defence against fascists, and furthermore said that, unlike the SWP, he would not call on the bourgeois state to ban fascists, since any anti-free speech laws would just as easily be used against the far left. It is important that anti-fascism is a working-class cause, not an exercise in liberal moral condemnation of BNP voters. However, I think his argument that we should always refuse to debate fascists was wrong-headed, based as it was on the idea that since fascists are 'really, really bad', we should not give them legitimacy by sharing a platform with them. A couple of others, including James Turley, added that if you debate fascists and sweep the floor with their absurd ideas, they will still have won even if they pick up a couple of contacts by doing the meeting.

This was disingenous - the debate was not really about "should we write to the BNP and ask if they'd do a joint public meeting", but whether it was appropriate to boycott election hustings etc. in which they would also participate. Bill Jefferies said that a couple of years ago a Workers' Power comrade at a student union hustings debated a BNP candidate, but now he thinks she should just have "mobilised the audience against him". Ben Lewis made the obvious retort that a revolutionary standing in an election should seek to mobilise the audience against all of the other bourgeois candidates.

For my part, I said that if you made a principle out of refusing to share a platform with the BNP, then why not boycott the Tories too? Or the Liberal Democrats? Of course, in reality, tearing someone's ideas to shreds at a hustings is not 'legitimising' their politics. I furthermore pointed out that not only do the UAF refuse to debate the BNP, but they also refuse to engage with any of their ideas at all, telling people "don't vote Nazi, vote for anyone else" rather than saying "yes, housing, jobs and public services really are concerns, but black workers are not the problem". Lining up with the bourgeois parties and telling alienated Labour voters who vote BNP that they are just Nazi morons is no good - we should seek to win over their voters. Many of those who turn to the BNP would not do so if the left and workers' movement had more coherence and could ourselves promote a real alternative.

After a debate over whether CS should support the IWW union and an interesting discussion on student politics, and whether it is possible to build mass student campaigns on issues like fees - or indeed on international politics - the focus of the conference turned to imperialism and the Middle East. This was staged as a debate between the chair of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign, the CPGB's Tina Becker and myself (i.e. an AWL member with a "troops out now" position).

I found the politics of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign somewhat bizarre - while the speaker was strongly opposed to the Iranian regime and its various satellite organisations (he mentioned in particular the homophobia of the Mehdi Army), he did not have any particular focus on the working class as an anti-imperialist force, and lauded the home-grown Iraqi resistance groups. While Islamist forces are undoubtedly even more vicious, I was surprised that to this he counterposed secular Arab nationalism, and indeed the Ba'ath Party, claiming that Saddam Hussein remained the "legitimate" president of Iraq under "international law".

This was an unusual position, invoking laws created by the imperialist powers themselves in order to guarantee self-determination.

Indeed, he appeared to think that whatever happens in Iraq is fine, as long as there's no interference from the USA, UK or Iran. But while I opposed the war which provoked Saddam Hussein's downfall, I cannot stomach the idea that Saddam Hussein is "legitimate" - why has he any more right to rule than the dictator he overthrew, or the guy before him, and so on? Tina Becker took the Iraq Solidarity Campaign speaker to task on all of these points.

In my lead off I stressed the idea that no force in the Middle East other than the working class can introduce democracy, and no force other than the working class is, or even could be, anti-imperialist. Imperialism is the logic of modern capitalism, not something which exists in the abstract, and local bourgeoisies cannot be trusted to oppose it. Look at the Tehran theocracy - it spouts anti-imperialist rhetoric and yet supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, supports the occupation of Afghanistan and has willingly introduced all sorts of IMF plans to liberalise its economy. Similarly, parties in Iraq like Dawa, SCIRI and even the forces led by Moqtada al-Sadr are not even sufficiently anti-imperialist as to refuse to participate in the occupation government.

Yet the SWP instead exaggerate the "progressive" character of the forces which it sees as anti-imperialist - for example, claiming that Iran is the most democratic country in the Middle East, and endorsing the welfare programme and "women's participation" in Hamas. They would rather look to "reform" elements within the Iranian bourgeoisie to effect change than encourage the working class to overthrow it. They seem to want to see this decade as the 1960s in slow motion, with Hamas substituting for the Vietcong and the Iranian government for Cuba.

I did however address the complexities of the kind of solidarity we need with workers in the Middle East. I expressed my disagreement with the majority position of the AWL which, while explicitly focused on the "third camp" of the working class, can collapse into acquiescence to imperialism when the workers appear too weak to act on their own. The AWL's refusal to call for troops out now, and indeed its support for Fatah against Hamas, are both predicated on the idea that the workers will be crushed without their imperialist guardians - yet how is the "third camp" ever to grow as an independent force if in the "here and now" (i.e. all the time) it does not cut itself sharply against both imperialism and Islamist reaction?

Our support for the working class in the Middle East must be linked to our tactics at home. Workers' action to undermine our armed forces and strikes against the war are vital in showing the power of the working class to stand on its own two feet as a force which can intervene in the "war on terror" conflict. "Troops out now" is not a magic wand to make the troops disappear, but a slogan for the working class to organise around, to try and realise that demand itself. I support the slogan not because it is unrealisable so doesn't matter what the consequences would be if it played out, but precisely because if it is workers in the US and UK or workers in Iraq whose efforts force the troops out, then the balance of forces will turn in favour of the workers' movement.

Actions like those of the train crew in Scotland who refused to move weapons are inextricably linked to the strikes of oil workers in Basra, and must be both encouraged and advertised. Rather than writing articles about geopolitical developments which we cannot influence with analyses cropped from the comment pages of the Guardian, our primary task is to talk about what the workers' movement can do itself.

I then briefly turned to the question of engaging with left groups in the Middle East, and said that as well as teaching ourselves about workers', women's, LGBT and student struggles in the region (which the SWP deny the existence of), we should critically engage with the ideas of our comrades there. Giving money to organisations in the Middle Eastern left is useful - particularly given their pressing need for self-defence - but we must also learn from the comrades and argue with their positions.

In the discussion that followed I broadly agreed with much of what was said by CS comrades, although I feel that they are too willing to defend those who raise the slogan "troops out now" from an abstract perspective with no reference to class. My whole point was that we should take a strict class standpoint against imperialism and Islamism, and discussion about which of the two heads of reaction is worse than the other or whether "the main enemy is at home" does not give us much tactical direction.

Equally, I have no doubt that neither the "bring the troops home" line of Barack Obama nor the Stalinist-Islamist use of "troops out now" by Galloway and his ilk is better than the position of Sean Matgamna. Nevertheless, my criticisms here should be qualified by a positive attitude towards Communist Students' and the CPGB's Hands Off the People of Iran campaign, although I do think they should make more of an effort to foster these ideas in the labour movement rather than just in the anti-war and student milieux.

Campaign against Climate Change meeting

by Sacha Ismail

About 60 people of many different ages, backgrounds and politics attended a Campaign against Climate Change meeting in Bethnal Green in East London on 7 February. Although the main organisers appeared to be members of Respect Renewal (I recognised people including the ISG's Liam McUaid, SWP defector Kevin Ovenden and NUS presidential candidate Ruqayyah Collector), it was a good meeting with some lively and sharp debate.

The event had been called in the run up to the 9 February CCC Trade Union conference; the speakers were CCC organiser Phil Thornhill, CWU executive member Tony Kearns, Green councillor Romayne Phoenix, George Galloway – and AWL member Robin Sivapalan, speaking on behalf of the Climate Camp collective and the new Workers’ Climate Action network.

Robin spoke about the need for climate change activists to look to the labour movement and vice versa – but for environmental issues to be integrated with workers’ concerns on the basis of anti-capitalist class struggle, not tacked on to trade unionism as just one more in a list of worthy causes. He emphasised how, in addition to the obvious middle-class prejudices of some green activists (part of the reason why the Climate Camp has not been quicker in making links with eg workers at Heathrow, though this is now changing), the conservatism of the trade union movement is a vital factor in preventing the development of the kind of movement we need.

This is true not just in terms of unions like Unite supporting airport expansion, more nuclear power stations etc, but also the conservative syndicalism which prevents workers’ struggles attaining the political character necessary to hegemonise broader forces. The refusal of the RMT bureaucracy to allow Metronet workers to continue their recent dispute on the basis of demanding renationalisation – a demand with obvious environmental as well as safety benefits – is a case in point.

He stressed that workers are not a stage army to be wheeled on in support of scientists poised to change the world through their sheer knowledgableness, but self-liberating agents whose power at the heart of production gives them the ability to remake themselves in order to remake society. We are not "armed only with science", but with the power of class action and solidarity.

Such an approach, which is that taken by Workers’ Climate Action, implies ideas which are in essence environmental "transitional demands": things like cutting the working week without loss of pay, free public transport, public ownership of energy, and workers’ plans to reshape industry on a democratic and sustainable basis.

Tony Kearns did a decent turn, stressing the importance of environmental politics for effective trade unionism and indicting capitalism’s drive for profit as the basic cause of climate change, though he didn’t make any real proposals for moving forward. Phil Thornhill’s comments on the science of climate change were very interesting and most of his prescriptions unobjectionable, though the underlying politics were those of liberal lobbying. Romayne Phoenix described herself as a socialist, but some of her politics were far from what the AWL understands by the term: she called for "fair trade, not free trade", urged people to get themselves elected as councillors (a role she seems to see in primarily managerial terms) and put a lot of her emphasis on individual lifestyle changes - which as Tony Kearns pointed out, is exactly where government and big business want it to be.

George Galloway’s speech (which didn't seem to have involved much preparation) combined some cheap anti-capitalist demagogy with all kinds of weird nonsense, including what a wonderful world God has created for us and citing a Muslim magazine about the number of galaxies in the universe. He went on to reference war mobilisation, state planning and “people working together” during World War 2 as the kind of approach necessary to defeat the threat of environmental disaster. This was a theme picked up by many of the older speakers from the floor.

In his closing contribution, Robin took task with some of these ideas. Yes, we need to unite, but the question is what kind of unity, with whom and for what goals? To Galloway’s invocation of the spirit of the blitz, he counterposed workers’ unity in the class struggle, drawing in environmental campaigners, students, women’s rights activists etc, to build an alliance capable of halting climate change by defeating capitalism. He pointed out the divisive nature of religious identity as a political organiser, and added that opposition to school privatisation, which had been discussed during the meeting, had to include opposition to the control of schools by religious organisations. He defended the importance of sharp political debate in developing the ideas necessary to build an effective movement.

This last idea was not shared by everyone; in addition to a smug, smirking dismissal of Robin as a Trotskyist sectarian by Galloway, the general tone was exemplified by Phil Thornhill’s comment that we should worry less about discussing ideas, and get on with doing things. Of course the two are not counterposed; and in fact the most positive thing about this meeting was precisely that it featured such a healthy debate.

There are plans to create a local campaign in Tower Hamlets; hopefully, alongside united campaigning, the debate will continue.

Respect GLA election bid

On Thursday I went to the SWP-Respect's pre-election rally and candidate selection meeting with my comrade Martin Thomas. Although the purpose of the event was supposedly to choose Respect's candidates for the Greater London Assembly list, there was no hustings, the scope of the meeting confined to a long series of speeches from SWP-Respect leaders to fill time as people filled out their ballots.

Just 15 minutes was allowed for "debate", during which time only one contribution from the floor, by leading SWP teacher Sean Purnell, was permitted to speak. No discussion or dissent was allowed to rock the boat.

The SWP-Respect have obviously been shaken by the split with Galloway and his allies, and seemed barely able to bring themselves to refer to their rival "Respect Renewal" by name. Oli Rahman (a leading Respect councillor - not a member of the SWP) said that the party is "psychologically and physically stronger than the other side" and alleged that, far from losing support since the split, SWP-Respect was going from strength to strength. Yet mayoral candidate Lindsey German and SWP leader John Rees' call for the assembled activists to work harder, campaign more and sign up members carried a tone of desperation rather than optimism.

Only around 150 people had attended the meeting, almost exclusively members of the Socialist Workers' Party. Attempting to save face after Galloway's departure, the SWP leadership seem happy to maintain the illusion that Lindsey German might be elected to the GLA, even though this is patently impossible as Respect's, and indeed the SWP's, activist base has narrowed and its support in East End mosques has collapsed.

Rees, German et al are throwing money, resources and their members' efforts into a futile campaign, and at the same time are too prim and sectarian to make a turn to the rest of the left or the broader labour movement. The SWP moved to stop the RMT railworkers' union from standing a slate. Calling for the organisation to give up this ridiculous charade, Martin Thomas and I handed out the following leaflet;

On Thursday 27 September the London Transport Regional Council of the rail union RMT voted to call on the union to "draw up lists of candidates to stand in the London mayoral elections and GLA elections in 2008.

"These lists should be drawn from RMT members, socialists, anti-capitalists, local campaign groups, etc...[and] speak to the many different issues facing workers, working-class communities and oppressed groups in London, such as education, the health service, housing, a living wage and trade union rights - while of course making the demand for a 100% publicly owned, democratically controlled, integrated and cheap public transport system central".

In the event, the RMT union executive decided not to go ahead with the plan. It concluded that there wasn't enough momentum of support from the labour movement and left.

Part of the reason is that there had been a vocal minority in the Regional Council arguing against the RMT initiating a list. That minority was led by the SWP, saying that the electoral arena was already "full up" because of Respect's plans to stand.

In the wake of the Galloway split, Respect should reconsider this stance.

It should approach the RMT, say that it was wrong back in September, and ask the RMT executive to reconsider the issue on the basis that Respect and the SWP will participate in a joint list energetically and enthusiastically.

It should put out an appeal to other trade-union and left organisations to join in this call on the RMT to reconsider.

Respect should do this:

* Because it is the right thing. Trade-unionists striving to regain a political voice after the disenfranchisement which New Labour has forced on them should be supported and encouraged, not opposed.
* Because it would open the possibility of a genuine broad working-class and left-wing challenge (within which, of course, Marxists could make clear their own ideas). Realistically, a Respect-only effort will amount to the SWP and a few allies "pretending" to be a broad front, and thus have as its main result only a blurring of socialist political profile.
* Because it would win more support against Livingstone and New Labour.
* Because it would turn Respect in the direction of a proper left-wing and working-class alliance - a fresh direction after the debacle of the alliance with Galloway to develop a "party for Muslims" (as Respect described itself in 2004 election leaflets).
* Because a Mayor/GLA challenge will cost about £30,000. To do it just as a publicity stunt is not a good use of resources.

Lindsay German was right to restate the need for a left challenge to Ken Livingstone. Contrast George Galloway's defence of "Red Ken" (as he still calls him) and his appeal for a "Progressive List" (the title the Liberals formerly used in local government) on the vaguest basis to contest GLA seats but back Livingstone.

But let's do the job seriously, on a genuine working-class and socialist basis.

Support Palestinian workers!

I was disappointed by Rhodri Evans' response to Daniel Randall's Solidarity article about the Palestinian trade union movement. While Daniel's piece displayed his support for the “third camp” of independent working-class forces in Palestine, the tone of Rhodri's letter was to emphasise our criticisms of initiatives to organise Palestinian workers rather than focussing on their vital role in opposing both Israeli expansionism and clerical-fascist Islamist forces.

Rhodri is right to say that we should not have illusions in the politics of the Stalinist leaders of the Workers' Advice Centre initiative – he cites their failure to adopt a “two states” position on Israel-Palestine as his greatest concern here. But Rhodri sidesteps any reference to Fatah-controlled trade unions which, although of course standing in favour of a “two-state” solution, are in tow to a bourgeois-nationalist party riddled with corruption.

He tells us that the “working-class movements can effect fundamental political change only when they have the policies to do so” - well, yes, of course there is more to working-class politics than day-to-day trade union activism. But “two states” - a slogan which I myself support as the only guarantee of self-determination for both nations - is a poor litmus test. Some version of “two states” could be taken up by any number of different political forces, including both Ehud Olmert some sections of Hamas; we do not in any case propose that basic trade union activism plus good international politics equals a rounded workers' movement; and our support for independent working-class organisation is not conditional.

Indeed, neither Israel's racist Histradut union nor Iraqi trade unions who, horror of horrors, call for the withdrawal of US-UK troops, are subject to equivalent disapproval in Solidarity. In both cases we recognise their potential to organise the working class as a class as central and not conditional on any given democratic question.

Of course, Rhodri denies any suggestion that our support for the Palestinian labour movement is subject to any conditions. But the way we portray the situation in Israel-Palestine and the enthusiasm of our support for workers' organisations there says something about our orientation and is furthermore, in a sense, part of our “solidarity” effort, exposing the way in which the international labour movement ignores Palestinian workers. We should – absolutely - not be afraid to be open about our disagreements with their politics. But our primary attitude is not one of criticism, which may risk clouding the class lines.

To illustrate the contradiction here, I recommend that comrades take a look at recent Solidarity pieces on Palestine such as the editorial in Solidarity 3/114 and Mark Osborn's letter “Help Fatah fight Hamas”, which were both highly sympathetic to Fatah. While using vaguely sceptical formulations such as “David doesn’t like the choice, Fatah or Hamas. I don’t like it much myself”, no specific problems with Fatah’s programme were mentioned, which has the effect of blunting our criticisms and giving the impression that we do indeed tolerate their politics. In both pieces the fact that Fatah is a bourgeois party; its support for the “al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade”; and all of the reasons why Fatah has lost the confidence of the Palestinian masses, were ignored. Why is Fatah above criticism? Because it is for “two states”, and better than Hamas.

So despite the AWL's “third campism”, on the Palestinian question it seems that our solidarity with the workers' movement is essentially secondary to interest in the fortunes of Fatah. We have no positive alternative to Hamas-Fatah feuding.

Indeed, the recent Workers' Liberty supplement entitled “How do we best help the Palestinians?” rightly opposed any academic boycott of Israel and argued for “two states” but failed to pose the question of positive solidarity with Palestinian workers – thus repeating one of the main mistakes of the “boycotters”. While the arguments made on the national question were convincing, its pages did not in fact give us any clues as to “how we can best help the Palestinians”, or deal with the question of agency. How might the organised working class grow as a real force in the region, and how can we practically help them? This should have been addressed.

For as socialists we know what we are for as well as what we are against. We do not let our opponents write our programmes for us. Opposing Hamas should not mean that we support Fatah, any more than opposing a boycott of Israeli academia means we do not build solidarity with the Palestinians, à la Engage. If the AWL is in favour of independent working-class politics, than how can supporting independent working-class organisations, however weak they are now, be anything other than our number one focus?