The 21 June Socialist Worker, an issue geared for the SWP’s anti-BNP demo in London, was full of establishment anti-fascism, claiming that the BNP are not a “respectable” party and calling for an apolitical cross-class front against fascism. To this end, the paper included an article about the “hidden story” of West Indian people fighting for the Allies in World War II, as “revealed” by a new Imperial War Museum exhibition.
Simon Assaf tells us that “Over 10,000 West Indians volunteered to defend Britain against the Nazis”, neglecting to mention the imperialist character of the war on both sides. He makes no reference whatsoever to colonial exploitation in the British Empire, and in this vein uses the word "flowed" rather oddly in the sentence "Many people in the British empire took part in raising money to help the war effort – in addition to the extra taxes, raw materials and food that flowed from the colonies to support the war." Surely he means “were forcibly taken”.
Socialist Worker makes great play of the digging-deep the “war effort” required: but the fact that the West Indians were poor doesn't mean that when they got shipped off to Egypt to defend the British Empire from the Germans they were fighting the good fight. They had absolutely no control over the character, strategy and organisation of any aspect of the Allies’ "war effort". They were just cannon fodder for Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and de Gaulle. One could equally say that German soldiers were working-class and fought bravely: should we honour their "contribution"?
There is no mention of the 1934-39 strike wave in the British West Indies, the lack of free elections in such territories or indeed those peoples' demand for independence. West Indians are just portrayed as useful troops for Churchill, and the article is nothing but a long advertisement for an Imperial War Museum exhibition, i.e. an exhibition staged by a museum celebrating British imperialism. It is social-patriotism, pure and simple, and further evidence of the SWP’s complete lack of working-class political bearings.
Showing posts with label SWP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SWP. Show all posts
Monday, June 23, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
The struggle for self-management
This "open letter to IS comrades" was printed in the libertarian socialist paper Solidarity on 27th September 1968
Dear comrades,
It is remarkable how few socialists seem to recognize the connection between the structure of their own organization and the type of ‘socialist’ society it might help bring about.
If the revolutionary organization is seen as the means and socialist society as the end, one might expect people with an elementary understanding of dialectics to recognize the relation between the two. Means and ends are mutually dependent. They constantly influence each other. The means are, in fact, a partial implementation of the end, whereas the end becomes modified by the means adopted.
One could almost say ‘tell me your views concerning the structure and function of the revolutionary organization and I’ll tell you what the society you will help create will be like’. Or conversely ‘give me your definition of socialism and I’ll tell you what your views on the revolutionary organization are likely to be’.
We see socialism as a society based on self-management in every branch of social life. Its basis would be workers’ management of production exercised through Workers’ Councils. Accordingly we conceive of the revolutionary organisation as one which incorporates self-management in its structure and abolishes within its own ranks the separation between the functions of decision-making and execution. The revolutionary organisation should propagate these principles in every area of social life.
Others may have different conceptions of socialism. They may have different views on the aims and structure of the revolutionary organisation. They must state what these are clearly, openly and unambiguously. They owe it not only to the workers and students but to themselves.
An example of haziness in the definition of socialism (and of its repercussions concerning revolutionary organisation) is to be found in the material published by the central bodies of International Socialism (IS) in preparation for the bi-annual conference of September 1968.
In the duplicated ‘Statement of basic principles’ (IS constitution) we find that IS struggles for ‘workers’ control’. But we also find that “planning, under workers’ control, demands nationalisation”. These are the only references, in the document, to the structure of the socialist society towards whose creation all of IS’s activity is directed.
How, precisely, does IS conceive of working class ‘control’? What does ‘nationalisation’ mean? How does IS relate to ‘workers’ control’? Does the working class implement its ‘control’ through the mediation of a political party? Or of trade union officials? Or of a technocracy? Or through workers’ councils?
Are those who formulated the IS constitution aware that ‘nationalisation’ means precisely relegating authority of decision-making on industrial policy to a group of state officials? Don’t they realise that the struggle of the French students and workers for ‘autogestion’ (self-management) renders ‘nationalisation’ irrelevant? Apparently they do not. In the analysis of the French events (The Struggle Continues) written by T. Cliff and I. Birchall (and produced as an official IS publication) the relation between self-management and nationalisation is not discussed at all.
Why should a national federation of Workers’ Councils (composed of elected and revocable delegates of regional Councils) allow any other group in society to wield ultimate authority in relation to all aspects of production?
In political terms the question could be posed thus: does IS stand for the policy of ‘All Power to the Workers’ Councils’? Or does it stand for the policy of ‘All Power to the Revolutionary Party’? It is no use evading the issue by saying that in France no workers’ councils existed. When this is the case, it is the duty of revolutionaries to conduct propaganda for their creation.
In Russia, in 1917, Workers’ Councils (soviets) did exist. On July 4, 1917, Lenin raised the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’. He ended his article with the words ‘things are moving by fits and starts towards a point where power will be transferred to the soviets, which is what our Party called for long ago’. Yet two months later, on September 12, he wrote: “The Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies of both capitals can and must take state power into their own hands”.
However one analyses Lenin’s transition, in the context of Russia in 1917, from a policy of ‘All Power to the Soviets’ to a policy of ‘All Power to the Bolshevik Party’, one must recognise that his choice was a fundamental one, whose implications for Britain in 1968 cannot be evaded.
The leading (i.e. decision-making) bodies in IS are very careful not to state explicitly that, like Lenin, they believe that the Party must take power on behalf of the class. This principle however runs through the entire Cliff-Birchall analysis of the French events. Their analysis is, in fact, tailored to fit this principle.
We say to these comrades: if you believe that the working class itself cannot ‘seize power’ (but that the Revolutionary Party must do it on behalf of the class), please say so openly and defend your views.
Let us put to you our own views on the subject. Political ‘power’ is fundamentally little more than the right to take and impose decisions in matters of social production, administration, etc. This authority is not to be confused with expertise. The experts give advice, they do not make the decisions. Today, during the development of the self-management revolution, it is precisely the authority of decision-making in relation to the management of production (whether the means of production be formally in the hands of private bosses or of the state) that is being challenged. The challenge is being repeated in all branches of social life.
Those who think in terms of ‘seizing power’ unwittingly accept that a political bureaucracy, separate from the producers themselves, and concentrating in its hands the authority of decision-making on fundamental issues of social production must be a permanent social institution. They believe its form (the bourgeois ‘state apparatus’) has to be changed. But they refuse to question the need for such a social institution. They want to capture political power and use it for allegedly different purposes. They do not consider its abolition to be on the agenda.
As for us, we believe that once self-management in production has been achieved, ‘political power’ as a social institution will lose both its social function and justification. To speak of ‘workers’ control’ and of ‘seizing political power’ is to confuse a new structure of society (the rule of the Workers’ Councils) with one of the by-products of the previous form of class society, which was based on withholding from the workers the right to manage.
Comrades Cliff and Birchall fail to recognise the specific, new features of the May events in France. They fail to explain why the students succeeded in inspiring 10 million workers. ‘The student demonstrations created an environment in which people were free to coin their own slogans’ (The Struggle Continues p.17) What slogans? The two most important were ‘Contestation’ and ‘Autogestion’ (self-management). What was being contested? What does self-management mean? How are the two slogans related to each other? Not a word on all this. What we do find however is the important statement (p.18) that “when a worker went to the Sorbonne he was recognised as a hero. Within Renault he was only a thing. In the University he became a man”.
Comrades, you should seek to clarify this assessment (with which we agree). Please tell us what was the mysterious element in the ‘environment’ which transformed a man into a thing and vice-versa. Are we wrong in assuming that a man feels like a ‘thing’ when he has to live as an executant of social decisions which he cannot influence, whereas he feels like a ‘man’ when he lives under social circumstances which he has shaped by his own decisions (or in whose creation he was an equal partner)?
If this is really your opinion, why not say it in so many words?
But if this is really what you believe how could your Political Committee suggest an organisational regulation saying that:
“Branches must accept directives from the Centre, unless they fundamentally disagree with them, in which case they should try to accord with them while demanding an open debate on the matter.” (Perspectives for IS, September 12 1968)
Isn’t the Political Committee attempting to transform IS members from ‘men’ into ‘things’? Isn’t the attempt to limit the right of rank-and-file IS members to initiate political decisions – while democratically permitting them to debate (not overrule!) the directives of the Centre, after having carried them out – an indication of an ideological disease more serious than being out of touch with the spirit of the young workers and students? If IS is to play a significant role in the revolution this regulation must be defeated, not only organisationally but also ideologically.
In the last chapter of their analysis of the French events, comrades Cliff and Birchall quote Trotsky to the effect that “unity in action of all sections of the proletariat, and simultaneity of demonstration under a single common slogan [Are these really essential? Did they ever exist in history?] can only be achieved if there is a genuine concentration of leadership in the hands of responsible [to whom?] central and local bodies, stable in their composition [!] and in their attitude to their political line”. (The Struggle Continues p.77)
This is to confuse the technical and political aspects of a real problem. Coordination is essential and may require centralisation. But the function of an administrative centre should not include the imposition of political decisions.
Trotsky’s argument (and Cliff’s) sound almost Stalinist. A centre “stable in its composition” concentrates in its hands the authority of political decision-making. “The branches must accept directives from the Centre”. The Party ‘leads’ the working class and ‘seizes power’ on its behalf. Workers are ‘summoned’ (p.78) to an “open revolutionary assault on capitalism.” From this it is but a short leap to Trotsky’s statement that “the statutes should express the leadership’s organised distrust of the members, a distrust manifesting itself in vigilant control from above over the Party”.
This approach reveals a very definite view concerning the role of the Centre in relation to the Party and of the Party in relation to the class. But it is wrong to identify this view with Stalinism. It preceded Stalin, Lenin and Marx. As a matter of fact, it has been part of ruling class ideology for centuries.
Cliff and Birchall mobilise every possible argument to support the doctrine of ‘Centre leads the Party, Party leads class’. They write: “Facing the strictly centralised and disciplined power of the capitalists, there must be no less centralised and disciplined a combat organisation of the proletariat” (p.77). Yet two pages earlier they had admitted that “the 14th July 1789 revolution was a spontaneous act of the masses. The same was true of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the February 1917 Revolution (p.74). In other words they admit that two of the most centralised regimes in history were overthrown by masses that were not led by any party, let alone a centralised one. How do they reconcile these facts with their assertion that “only a centralised party can overthrow centralised power”?
The conscious factor in changing history, embodied in revolutionary organisations, can play a significant role in shaping the new social structure. However after the Russian experience it is clear that this ‘conscious factor’ must develop its own self-consciousness. It must recognise the connection between its own structure and practice – and the type of socialism it will help achieve.
Writing in 1904 Lenin took sides unequivocally for ‘bureaucracy’ (as against democracy) and for ‘centralism’ (as against autonomy). He wrote: “Bureaucracy versus democracy is the same thing as centralism versus autonomism. It is the organisational principle of revolutionary political democracy as opposed to the organisational principle of the opportunists of Social Democracy. The latter want to proceed from the bottom upwards and, consequently, wherever possible and to the extent that it is possible, it supports autonomism and “democracy” which may (by the over-zealous) be carried as far as anarchism. The former proceeds from the top, and advocates an extension of the rights and power of the Centre in respect of the parts”.
With all due allowance to the objective factors which contributed to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, these ideas (the conscious, subjective factor) must also be stressed, certainly in 1968.
We can only add here what Rosa Luxemburg, answering Lenin, said in 1904: “Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary working class movement are infinitely more fruitful and valuable than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee”.
Are these words less relevant in 1968 than they were in 1904?
Today in Britain the danger is not that future society will be shaped in the image of a bureaucratic revolutionary organisation based on “genuine concentration of leadership in the hands of responsible central and local bodies, stable in their composition”, organisation in which “branches must accept directives from the Centre”, etc. The danger is rather to such organisations themselves. They will cease to be relevant to the social self-management revolution now developing. Before long they will be identified as just other ‘centre-managed’ political bureaucracies, to be swept aside. This is the fate now threatening IS, should the Political Committee’s recommendations be accepted.
We wish all IS members a useful Conference and a serious discussion that will help them clarify their ideas about socialism, workers’ management and the structure and function of the revolutionary organisation.
Dear comrades,
It is remarkable how few socialists seem to recognize the connection between the structure of their own organization and the type of ‘socialist’ society it might help bring about.
If the revolutionary organization is seen as the means and socialist society as the end, one might expect people with an elementary understanding of dialectics to recognize the relation between the two. Means and ends are mutually dependent. They constantly influence each other. The means are, in fact, a partial implementation of the end, whereas the end becomes modified by the means adopted.
One could almost say ‘tell me your views concerning the structure and function of the revolutionary organization and I’ll tell you what the society you will help create will be like’. Or conversely ‘give me your definition of socialism and I’ll tell you what your views on the revolutionary organization are likely to be’.
We see socialism as a society based on self-management in every branch of social life. Its basis would be workers’ management of production exercised through Workers’ Councils. Accordingly we conceive of the revolutionary organisation as one which incorporates self-management in its structure and abolishes within its own ranks the separation between the functions of decision-making and execution. The revolutionary organisation should propagate these principles in every area of social life.
Others may have different conceptions of socialism. They may have different views on the aims and structure of the revolutionary organisation. They must state what these are clearly, openly and unambiguously. They owe it not only to the workers and students but to themselves.
An example of haziness in the definition of socialism (and of its repercussions concerning revolutionary organisation) is to be found in the material published by the central bodies of International Socialism (IS) in preparation for the bi-annual conference of September 1968.
In the duplicated ‘Statement of basic principles’ (IS constitution) we find that IS struggles for ‘workers’ control’. But we also find that “planning, under workers’ control, demands nationalisation”. These are the only references, in the document, to the structure of the socialist society towards whose creation all of IS’s activity is directed.
How, precisely, does IS conceive of working class ‘control’? What does ‘nationalisation’ mean? How does IS relate to ‘workers’ control’? Does the working class implement its ‘control’ through the mediation of a political party? Or of trade union officials? Or of a technocracy? Or through workers’ councils?
Are those who formulated the IS constitution aware that ‘nationalisation’ means precisely relegating authority of decision-making on industrial policy to a group of state officials? Don’t they realise that the struggle of the French students and workers for ‘autogestion’ (self-management) renders ‘nationalisation’ irrelevant? Apparently they do not. In the analysis of the French events (The Struggle Continues) written by T. Cliff and I. Birchall (and produced as an official IS publication) the relation between self-management and nationalisation is not discussed at all.
Why should a national federation of Workers’ Councils (composed of elected and revocable delegates of regional Councils) allow any other group in society to wield ultimate authority in relation to all aspects of production?
In political terms the question could be posed thus: does IS stand for the policy of ‘All Power to the Workers’ Councils’? Or does it stand for the policy of ‘All Power to the Revolutionary Party’? It is no use evading the issue by saying that in France no workers’ councils existed. When this is the case, it is the duty of revolutionaries to conduct propaganda for their creation.
In Russia, in 1917, Workers’ Councils (soviets) did exist. On July 4, 1917, Lenin raised the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’. He ended his article with the words ‘things are moving by fits and starts towards a point where power will be transferred to the soviets, which is what our Party called for long ago’. Yet two months later, on September 12, he wrote: “The Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies of both capitals can and must take state power into their own hands”.
However one analyses Lenin’s transition, in the context of Russia in 1917, from a policy of ‘All Power to the Soviets’ to a policy of ‘All Power to the Bolshevik Party’, one must recognise that his choice was a fundamental one, whose implications for Britain in 1968 cannot be evaded.
The leading (i.e. decision-making) bodies in IS are very careful not to state explicitly that, like Lenin, they believe that the Party must take power on behalf of the class. This principle however runs through the entire Cliff-Birchall analysis of the French events. Their analysis is, in fact, tailored to fit this principle.
We say to these comrades: if you believe that the working class itself cannot ‘seize power’ (but that the Revolutionary Party must do it on behalf of the class), please say so openly and defend your views.
Let us put to you our own views on the subject. Political ‘power’ is fundamentally little more than the right to take and impose decisions in matters of social production, administration, etc. This authority is not to be confused with expertise. The experts give advice, they do not make the decisions. Today, during the development of the self-management revolution, it is precisely the authority of decision-making in relation to the management of production (whether the means of production be formally in the hands of private bosses or of the state) that is being challenged. The challenge is being repeated in all branches of social life.
Those who think in terms of ‘seizing power’ unwittingly accept that a political bureaucracy, separate from the producers themselves, and concentrating in its hands the authority of decision-making on fundamental issues of social production must be a permanent social institution. They believe its form (the bourgeois ‘state apparatus’) has to be changed. But they refuse to question the need for such a social institution. They want to capture political power and use it for allegedly different purposes. They do not consider its abolition to be on the agenda.
As for us, we believe that once self-management in production has been achieved, ‘political power’ as a social institution will lose both its social function and justification. To speak of ‘workers’ control’ and of ‘seizing political power’ is to confuse a new structure of society (the rule of the Workers’ Councils) with one of the by-products of the previous form of class society, which was based on withholding from the workers the right to manage.
Comrades Cliff and Birchall fail to recognise the specific, new features of the May events in France. They fail to explain why the students succeeded in inspiring 10 million workers. ‘The student demonstrations created an environment in which people were free to coin their own slogans’ (The Struggle Continues p.17) What slogans? The two most important were ‘Contestation’ and ‘Autogestion’ (self-management). What was being contested? What does self-management mean? How are the two slogans related to each other? Not a word on all this. What we do find however is the important statement (p.18) that “when a worker went to the Sorbonne he was recognised as a hero. Within Renault he was only a thing. In the University he became a man”.
Comrades, you should seek to clarify this assessment (with which we agree). Please tell us what was the mysterious element in the ‘environment’ which transformed a man into a thing and vice-versa. Are we wrong in assuming that a man feels like a ‘thing’ when he has to live as an executant of social decisions which he cannot influence, whereas he feels like a ‘man’ when he lives under social circumstances which he has shaped by his own decisions (or in whose creation he was an equal partner)?
If this is really your opinion, why not say it in so many words?
But if this is really what you believe how could your Political Committee suggest an organisational regulation saying that:
“Branches must accept directives from the Centre, unless they fundamentally disagree with them, in which case they should try to accord with them while demanding an open debate on the matter.” (Perspectives for IS, September 12 1968)
Isn’t the Political Committee attempting to transform IS members from ‘men’ into ‘things’? Isn’t the attempt to limit the right of rank-and-file IS members to initiate political decisions – while democratically permitting them to debate (not overrule!) the directives of the Centre, after having carried them out – an indication of an ideological disease more serious than being out of touch with the spirit of the young workers and students? If IS is to play a significant role in the revolution this regulation must be defeated, not only organisationally but also ideologically.
In the last chapter of their analysis of the French events, comrades Cliff and Birchall quote Trotsky to the effect that “unity in action of all sections of the proletariat, and simultaneity of demonstration under a single common slogan [Are these really essential? Did they ever exist in history?] can only be achieved if there is a genuine concentration of leadership in the hands of responsible [to whom?] central and local bodies, stable in their composition [!] and in their attitude to their political line”. (The Struggle Continues p.77)
This is to confuse the technical and political aspects of a real problem. Coordination is essential and may require centralisation. But the function of an administrative centre should not include the imposition of political decisions.
Trotsky’s argument (and Cliff’s) sound almost Stalinist. A centre “stable in its composition” concentrates in its hands the authority of political decision-making. “The branches must accept directives from the Centre”. The Party ‘leads’ the working class and ‘seizes power’ on its behalf. Workers are ‘summoned’ (p.78) to an “open revolutionary assault on capitalism.” From this it is but a short leap to Trotsky’s statement that “the statutes should express the leadership’s organised distrust of the members, a distrust manifesting itself in vigilant control from above over the Party”.
This approach reveals a very definite view concerning the role of the Centre in relation to the Party and of the Party in relation to the class. But it is wrong to identify this view with Stalinism. It preceded Stalin, Lenin and Marx. As a matter of fact, it has been part of ruling class ideology for centuries.
Cliff and Birchall mobilise every possible argument to support the doctrine of ‘Centre leads the Party, Party leads class’. They write: “Facing the strictly centralised and disciplined power of the capitalists, there must be no less centralised and disciplined a combat organisation of the proletariat” (p.77). Yet two pages earlier they had admitted that “the 14th July 1789 revolution was a spontaneous act of the masses. The same was true of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the February 1917 Revolution (p.74). In other words they admit that two of the most centralised regimes in history were overthrown by masses that were not led by any party, let alone a centralised one. How do they reconcile these facts with their assertion that “only a centralised party can overthrow centralised power”?
The conscious factor in changing history, embodied in revolutionary organisations, can play a significant role in shaping the new social structure. However after the Russian experience it is clear that this ‘conscious factor’ must develop its own self-consciousness. It must recognise the connection between its own structure and practice – and the type of socialism it will help achieve.
Writing in 1904 Lenin took sides unequivocally for ‘bureaucracy’ (as against democracy) and for ‘centralism’ (as against autonomy). He wrote: “Bureaucracy versus democracy is the same thing as centralism versus autonomism. It is the organisational principle of revolutionary political democracy as opposed to the organisational principle of the opportunists of Social Democracy. The latter want to proceed from the bottom upwards and, consequently, wherever possible and to the extent that it is possible, it supports autonomism and “democracy” which may (by the over-zealous) be carried as far as anarchism. The former proceeds from the top, and advocates an extension of the rights and power of the Centre in respect of the parts”.
With all due allowance to the objective factors which contributed to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, these ideas (the conscious, subjective factor) must also be stressed, certainly in 1968.
We can only add here what Rosa Luxemburg, answering Lenin, said in 1904: “Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary working class movement are infinitely more fruitful and valuable than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee”.
Are these words less relevant in 1968 than they were in 1904?
Today in Britain the danger is not that future society will be shaped in the image of a bureaucratic revolutionary organisation based on “genuine concentration of leadership in the hands of responsible central and local bodies, stable in their composition”, organisation in which “branches must accept directives from the Centre”, etc. The danger is rather to such organisations themselves. They will cease to be relevant to the social self-management revolution now developing. Before long they will be identified as just other ‘centre-managed’ political bureaucracies, to be swept aside. This is the fate now threatening IS, should the Political Committee’s recommendations be accepted.
We wish all IS members a useful Conference and a serious discussion that will help them clarify their ideas about socialism, workers’ management and the structure and function of the revolutionary organisation.
Monday, March 3, 2008
World Against War rally
Hezbollah were among the organisations represented at the 'World Against War' rally in Friends' Meeting House, London on 25 February, with the Stop the War Coalition seeing fit to give a platform to the clerical fascist Lebanese militia. Reflecting the StWC's eclecticism, this utter reactionary was speaking alongside Tony Benn, who gave his usual upper-class liberal speech about why the United Nations should be stronger and why we should learn from the Bible's lessons of contrition.
Introduced by Communist Party of Britain commissar Andrew Murray to rapturous applause from the 250-strong audience, the Hezbollah speaker Ibrahim Mousawi shied away from the Shia-supremacist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-trade union rhetoric which his organisation peddles in the shanty towns of Beirut. Instead, he told us that Hezbollah are oh-so reasonable - "why do the Americans ignore the real terrorists at the expense of us, the bridge-builders?". Hezbollah are not led by a bunch of gangsters, but "engineers, lecturers and people from all walks of life".
Indeed, Hezbollah are fully willing to arrange a lash-up with the rest of the Lebanese ruling class, for example the pro-Western parties behind Prime Minister Siniora, to resolve the political crisis which has seen the country without a president for three months. Mousawi said that all Hezbollah want is to be able to veto anything the government tries to do - isn't that reasonable? Along with this, Hezbollah are strong proponents of Lebanon's sectarian political order, whereby seats in parliament are distributed according to religious group and politics is staged at the level of horse-trading between the leaders of competing faith and ethnic communities.
Crashing full frontal into Bond villain-esque self-parody with his long leather coat and black shirt, Mousawi - editor of a Hezbollah newspaper and former manager of a TV station which put out soap operas about the Jewish World Conspiracy - claimed that the problem in his country was the lack of a strong government, and argued that since the Lebanese government cannot be relied on to keep order and stand up to the Israelis, Hezbollah have every right to arm themselves and patrol the streets. At pains to deny that he hated the Jews (the western Trots don't really like that kind of thing, but it's fine for Lebanese TV), he appealed to "a man's right to protect his family" from Zionism.
The other speeches were rather less spicy. Lindsey German, the Socialist Workers' Party candidate for the London mayoral election, gave a dull talk about the hypocrisy of the British establishment and echoed much of Benn's liberal sentiment. For example, she talked at length about the "dodgy dossier" used by Tony Blair to make the case for war, and why he should be "taken to a war crimes trial in the Hague". But who does she think polices "international law"? Last time I checked, the United Nations was a cartel run by the imperialist powers victorious in World War II. Making no reference to socialism or workers in the Middle East, she did however attempt a 'radical' pitch - "Those who support the right of Hezbollah and Hamas to fight back are characterised as extremists. If opposing the government is extremist, then we're all extremists".
The only person on the platform whose views were worthy of respect was Hassan Jumaa, leader of the militant Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions which has waged several strikes against privatisation and looting of Iraq's major resource, demonstrating the potential of the working-class movement despite nightmarish circumstances. Although the union is non-sectarian and organises all oil workers, Juma'a is influenced by the soft-Islamist Shi'ite Fadila group, and so said little about the workers' movement's opposition to clerical reaction in Iraq.
Instead, he focused on the question of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the destruction the US and UK have unleashed. He commented that "the Iraqi workers will win victory for the oppressed Iraqi people" - given that the American mission's success is reliant on stable control of Iraqi resources, strikes represent a significant challenge for the occupiers. Indeed, Jumaa's attitude to the troops was stark, "you should not be taken in by those who say that the withdrawal of troops will bring death and destruction. The longer they, the source of death, stay, the worse it will get", and said that at the last two May Days the union had raised a call for the troops to leave Iraq. Without doubt, this was an optimistic characterisation of events, but Jumaa's understanding of the situation is certainly worthy of our attention.
Unfortunately, the audience was not allowed to ask any questions or make any comments, so we could not find out more about Jumaa's support for political Islam or how workers organise against the home-grown bourgeoisie. After all, in the eyes of the Stop the War Coalition and its SWP and Stalinist leadership, letting activists talk to the leading trade unionist in Iraq is not as exciting as giving a platform for a fascist to rant in defence of Hezbollah. It seems that for these "socialists", the workers' movement is just one part of the cross-class spectrum of "The Movement", and so giving a token ten minutes to someone like Hassan Jumaa is sufficient to cover their left flank.
Introduced by Communist Party of Britain commissar Andrew Murray to rapturous applause from the 250-strong audience, the Hezbollah speaker Ibrahim Mousawi shied away from the Shia-supremacist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-trade union rhetoric which his organisation peddles in the shanty towns of Beirut. Instead, he told us that Hezbollah are oh-so reasonable - "why do the Americans ignore the real terrorists at the expense of us, the bridge-builders?". Hezbollah are not led by a bunch of gangsters, but "engineers, lecturers and people from all walks of life".
Indeed, Hezbollah are fully willing to arrange a lash-up with the rest of the Lebanese ruling class, for example the pro-Western parties behind Prime Minister Siniora, to resolve the political crisis which has seen the country without a president for three months. Mousawi said that all Hezbollah want is to be able to veto anything the government tries to do - isn't that reasonable? Along with this, Hezbollah are strong proponents of Lebanon's sectarian political order, whereby seats in parliament are distributed according to religious group and politics is staged at the level of horse-trading between the leaders of competing faith and ethnic communities.
Crashing full frontal into Bond villain-esque self-parody with his long leather coat and black shirt, Mousawi - editor of a Hezbollah newspaper and former manager of a TV station which put out soap operas about the Jewish World Conspiracy - claimed that the problem in his country was the lack of a strong government, and argued that since the Lebanese government cannot be relied on to keep order and stand up to the Israelis, Hezbollah have every right to arm themselves and patrol the streets. At pains to deny that he hated the Jews (the western Trots don't really like that kind of thing, but it's fine for Lebanese TV), he appealed to "a man's right to protect his family" from Zionism.
The other speeches were rather less spicy. Lindsey German, the Socialist Workers' Party candidate for the London mayoral election, gave a dull talk about the hypocrisy of the British establishment and echoed much of Benn's liberal sentiment. For example, she talked at length about the "dodgy dossier" used by Tony Blair to make the case for war, and why he should be "taken to a war crimes trial in the Hague". But who does she think polices "international law"? Last time I checked, the United Nations was a cartel run by the imperialist powers victorious in World War II. Making no reference to socialism or workers in the Middle East, she did however attempt a 'radical' pitch - "Those who support the right of Hezbollah and Hamas to fight back are characterised as extremists. If opposing the government is extremist, then we're all extremists".
The only person on the platform whose views were worthy of respect was Hassan Jumaa, leader of the militant Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions which has waged several strikes against privatisation and looting of Iraq's major resource, demonstrating the potential of the working-class movement despite nightmarish circumstances. Although the union is non-sectarian and organises all oil workers, Juma'a is influenced by the soft-Islamist Shi'ite Fadila group, and so said little about the workers' movement's opposition to clerical reaction in Iraq.
Instead, he focused on the question of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the destruction the US and UK have unleashed. He commented that "the Iraqi workers will win victory for the oppressed Iraqi people" - given that the American mission's success is reliant on stable control of Iraqi resources, strikes represent a significant challenge for the occupiers. Indeed, Jumaa's attitude to the troops was stark, "you should not be taken in by those who say that the withdrawal of troops will bring death and destruction. The longer they, the source of death, stay, the worse it will get", and said that at the last two May Days the union had raised a call for the troops to leave Iraq. Without doubt, this was an optimistic characterisation of events, but Jumaa's understanding of the situation is certainly worthy of our attention.
Unfortunately, the audience was not allowed to ask any questions or make any comments, so we could not find out more about Jumaa's support for political Islam or how workers organise against the home-grown bourgeoisie. After all, in the eyes of the Stop the War Coalition and its SWP and Stalinist leadership, letting activists talk to the leading trade unionist in Iraq is not as exciting as giving a platform for a fascist to rant in defence of Hezbollah. It seems that for these "socialists", the workers' movement is just one part of the cross-class spectrum of "The Movement", and so giving a token ten minutes to someone like Hassan Jumaa is sufficient to cover their left flank.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Capitalism and War
Yesterday I attended a Socialist Worker Student Society meeting at King's College London, with Alex Callinicos speaking on 'Capitalism and War'.
Callincos's lead off, arguing that the logic of capitalism inevitably leads to wars, was extremely bland, and furthermore failed to explain why war is inherent to capitalism. Instead, he simply gave various examples of the argument that 'big capitalist powers have a record of launching wars, ergo capitalism means war'.
Unsurprisingly, the result of this argument-by-correlation was that many confused members of the audience asked questions along the lines of "surely it's not just capitalism that causes war, but also religion and national conflicts" while others said that war had always existed. Since Callinicos had neither said that war is the logical product of class societies, nor argued that other oppressive ideas such as nationalism and religious chauvinism are rooted in class exploitation, he was forced to backtrack by these in fact rather facile questions and start again from scratch. Bizarrely, he angrily tore into one student who had said that there had always been conflicts, telling him "you should think twice about coming to a meeting and saying that before you've studied it".
This was pathetic, as was his speech about how for the majority of human history people had lived in egalitarian "primitive communist" societies where there was no war and all lived happily, and then extrapolated from this that "class is in fact a marginal factor in human history". Of course, even though it is true that class societies have existed for only fifteen thousand years or so, the large majority of humans in history have lived in class society, and "primitive communism" is certainly not what we are fighting for. In any case, it was silly of Callinicos to get drawn into such sophistry rather than try and talk about how class impacts other factors as well as class's relationship with imperialism.
Indeed, I posed the question of how it was possible to fight against imperialism on the level of supporting the ruling class of Iran against the United States (and its own working class), given that it is far from anti-capitalist. Its relationship with imperialism is contradictory - much as Iran faces sanctions and threats, its regime is willing to implement IMF reforms and support the occupation of Iraq in the hope of grabbing its slice of the pie. Disingenuously I also asked if he could 'expand' on the issue workers', women's and student's struggles in Iran, which he had neglected to mention.
Callinicos in fact has no perspective whatsoever for working-class opposition to imperialism, as he demonstrated when he responded (at the second time of asking), telling me that while he supports "petitions for democracy" in Iran, the fact that the Iranian government is not consistently anti-imperialist is no reason for the USA to invade it (!) Interrupting, I repeated my question about whether Callinicos supports strikes in Iran and the imprisoned students, but he again ignored the question - clearly, for him "petitions for democracy" and supporting "reformists" within the elite is sufficient.
Therefore, we had a meeting on 'Capitalism and War' where the SWP speaker said that war was the result of capitalism - yet then told his audience that rather than opposing capitalism or supporting working class struggle, we should simply devote our efforts into Grand Old Duke of York demo-building in "solidarity" with the rulers of Iran.
Callincos's lead off, arguing that the logic of capitalism inevitably leads to wars, was extremely bland, and furthermore failed to explain why war is inherent to capitalism. Instead, he simply gave various examples of the argument that 'big capitalist powers have a record of launching wars, ergo capitalism means war'.
Unsurprisingly, the result of this argument-by-correlation was that many confused members of the audience asked questions along the lines of "surely it's not just capitalism that causes war, but also religion and national conflicts" while others said that war had always existed. Since Callinicos had neither said that war is the logical product of class societies, nor argued that other oppressive ideas such as nationalism and religious chauvinism are rooted in class exploitation, he was forced to backtrack by these in fact rather facile questions and start again from scratch. Bizarrely, he angrily tore into one student who had said that there had always been conflicts, telling him "you should think twice about coming to a meeting and saying that before you've studied it".
This was pathetic, as was his speech about how for the majority of human history people had lived in egalitarian "primitive communist" societies where there was no war and all lived happily, and then extrapolated from this that "class is in fact a marginal factor in human history". Of course, even though it is true that class societies have existed for only fifteen thousand years or so, the large majority of humans in history have lived in class society, and "primitive communism" is certainly not what we are fighting for. In any case, it was silly of Callinicos to get drawn into such sophistry rather than try and talk about how class impacts other factors as well as class's relationship with imperialism.
Indeed, I posed the question of how it was possible to fight against imperialism on the level of supporting the ruling class of Iran against the United States (and its own working class), given that it is far from anti-capitalist. Its relationship with imperialism is contradictory - much as Iran faces sanctions and threats, its regime is willing to implement IMF reforms and support the occupation of Iraq in the hope of grabbing its slice of the pie. Disingenuously I also asked if he could 'expand' on the issue workers', women's and student's struggles in Iran, which he had neglected to mention.
Callinicos in fact has no perspective whatsoever for working-class opposition to imperialism, as he demonstrated when he responded (at the second time of asking), telling me that while he supports "petitions for democracy" in Iran, the fact that the Iranian government is not consistently anti-imperialist is no reason for the USA to invade it (!) Interrupting, I repeated my question about whether Callinicos supports strikes in Iran and the imprisoned students, but he again ignored the question - clearly, for him "petitions for democracy" and supporting "reformists" within the elite is sufficient.
Therefore, we had a meeting on 'Capitalism and War' where the SWP speaker said that war was the result of capitalism - yet then told his audience that rather than opposing capitalism or supporting working class struggle, we should simply devote our efforts into Grand Old Duke of York demo-building in "solidarity" with the rulers of Iran.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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!
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!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The "General Strike" in Lebanon
An article for Solidarity
Seven people were killed last month as the Lebanese army clashed with rioters in southern Beirut in the wake of a Shia demonstration. The incident has drawn the army into Lebanon's political crisis, which has seen three months of impasse as parties close to PM Fouad Siniora squabble with Syrian-backed parties such as Amal and Hezbollah over the election of a new president.
The 27 January demonstration in Mar Makhaeil was called to protest about the chronic power cuts which take place in predominantly Shia districts of the Lebanese capital. The army attempted to break up the demonstration, shooting dead an Amal activist and provoking a riot which continued late into the night. As news of the shooting spread, more and more people joined in the protest, with some rioters torching cars and firing back at the troops. In nearby Ain Roummaneh, where civil war broke out in 1975, a hand grenade wounded seven people.
Troops had already taken to the streets that week in response to a general strike called by transport and agricultural unions, called in response to the rising cost of living and high fuel prices. Although the union leaderships claimed that the strike had little to do with the Amal-Hezbollah political opposition, it was clear that the pro-Western versus pro-Syrian divide had everything to do with the observance of the strike. Roads were closed and stacks of tyres were set ablaze in Shia areas where support for Hezbollah is strong, such as south Beirut, southern Lebanon and the northeastern parts of the Bekaa Valley, while there was little sign of the strike in cities such as Sidon and Tripoli where the government has stronger backing.
Communalist pro-Syrian parties such as the Islamist Hezbollah and Amal have nothing to do with a workers’ movement which organises the working class as a class to fight for democracy and liberation. Recognising the power of strike action to undermine the government, these parties seek to mislead workers, using them as a battering ram to achieve their own sectarian goals and give weight to their drive to take up posts in the government. Yet in the wake of the general strike Socialist Worker meaninglessly claimed that “among supporters of the opposition there is a frustration that the mass demonstrations that brought two million on to the streets before Christmas were not enough to topple the government, and that more radical action is necessary”, failing to pose the questions of precisely who the opposition is and what radical action might constitute.
However, it is clear that Hezbollah’s ability to mobilise workers behind their cause is related to the genuine economic and political grievances which much of the population experience, and even beside plainly bourgeois non-sectarian allies (such as the Free Patriotic Movement), we can see the Lebanese Communist Party lining up with Hezbollah. The Lebanese CP’s website (www.lcparty.org, in French) points out that the price index has risen by 37.4% in the eighteen months since the war with Israel, while one third of Lebanese families live on the minimum wage (frozen for the last ten years) of £100 a month. Many working class areas, in particular Shia districts, lie in darkness due to the constant power cuts.
The Lebanese Communist Party’s programme, however, is uncritical support for Hezbollah and participation in the opposition, despite the fact that this is almost entirely composed of plainly bourgeois parties, many of them Shia sectarians who opposed the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country. It has absolutely no independent working-class perspectives, and thus facilitates Hezbollah’s moves to mislead the unions and workers.
It is precisely this failure – the lack of a secular left which unites workers across sectarian divides – which has led to a political situation where US allies battle with Islamists to dominate Lebanon. Strike action, although at this point badly misled and harnessed for the aims of the far-right Hezbollah movement, has however given a glimpse of what kind of power a workers’ movement could have in Lebanese society. In order to build such a force, the central challenge is the fight for a democratic and secular labour movement and independent political organisation for the working class.
Seven people were killed last month as the Lebanese army clashed with rioters in southern Beirut in the wake of a Shia demonstration. The incident has drawn the army into Lebanon's political crisis, which has seen three months of impasse as parties close to PM Fouad Siniora squabble with Syrian-backed parties such as Amal and Hezbollah over the election of a new president.
The 27 January demonstration in Mar Makhaeil was called to protest about the chronic power cuts which take place in predominantly Shia districts of the Lebanese capital. The army attempted to break up the demonstration, shooting dead an Amal activist and provoking a riot which continued late into the night. As news of the shooting spread, more and more people joined in the protest, with some rioters torching cars and firing back at the troops. In nearby Ain Roummaneh, where civil war broke out in 1975, a hand grenade wounded seven people.
Troops had already taken to the streets that week in response to a general strike called by transport and agricultural unions, called in response to the rising cost of living and high fuel prices. Although the union leaderships claimed that the strike had little to do with the Amal-Hezbollah political opposition, it was clear that the pro-Western versus pro-Syrian divide had everything to do with the observance of the strike. Roads were closed and stacks of tyres were set ablaze in Shia areas where support for Hezbollah is strong, such as south Beirut, southern Lebanon and the northeastern parts of the Bekaa Valley, while there was little sign of the strike in cities such as Sidon and Tripoli where the government has stronger backing.
Communalist pro-Syrian parties such as the Islamist Hezbollah and Amal have nothing to do with a workers’ movement which organises the working class as a class to fight for democracy and liberation. Recognising the power of strike action to undermine the government, these parties seek to mislead workers, using them as a battering ram to achieve their own sectarian goals and give weight to their drive to take up posts in the government. Yet in the wake of the general strike Socialist Worker meaninglessly claimed that “among supporters of the opposition there is a frustration that the mass demonstrations that brought two million on to the streets before Christmas were not enough to topple the government, and that more radical action is necessary”, failing to pose the questions of precisely who the opposition is and what radical action might constitute.
However, it is clear that Hezbollah’s ability to mobilise workers behind their cause is related to the genuine economic and political grievances which much of the population experience, and even beside plainly bourgeois non-sectarian allies (such as the Free Patriotic Movement), we can see the Lebanese Communist Party lining up with Hezbollah. The Lebanese CP’s website (www.lcparty.org, in French) points out that the price index has risen by 37.4% in the eighteen months since the war with Israel, while one third of Lebanese families live on the minimum wage (frozen for the last ten years) of £100 a month. Many working class areas, in particular Shia districts, lie in darkness due to the constant power cuts.
The Lebanese Communist Party’s programme, however, is uncritical support for Hezbollah and participation in the opposition, despite the fact that this is almost entirely composed of plainly bourgeois parties, many of them Shia sectarians who opposed the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country. It has absolutely no independent working-class perspectives, and thus facilitates Hezbollah’s moves to mislead the unions and workers.
It is precisely this failure – the lack of a secular left which unites workers across sectarian divides – which has led to a political situation where US allies battle with Islamists to dominate Lebanon. Strike action, although at this point badly misled and harnessed for the aims of the far-right Hezbollah movement, has however given a glimpse of what kind of power a workers’ movement could have in Lebanese society. In order to build such a force, the central challenge is the fight for a democratic and secular labour movement and independent political organisation for the working class.
Monday, February 18, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The tragedy of the German proletariat
Today marks the 75th anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power in Germany. While in today's Socialist Worker Chris Bambery's article on the Nazi coup pathetically muses that fascism ought to be "taken seriously", without making a single reference to Stalin's disastrous "Third Period", Trotsky's March 1933 article The tragedy of the German proletariat exposed the double-dealings of the Soviet bureaucracy.
The most powerful proletariat of Europe, measured by its place in production, its social weight, and the strength of its organizations, has manifested no resistance since Hitler’s coming to power and his first violent attacks against the workers’ organizations. This is the fact from which to proceed in subsequent strategic calculations.
It would be patently stupid to believe that the future evolution of Germany will follow the Italian road; that Hitler will strengthen his domination step by step without serious resistance; that German fascism will enjoy long years of domination. No, the further fate of National Socialism will have to be deduced from an analysis of the German and international conditions, and not from purely historical analogies. But this much is already evident: if from September 1930 onwards we demanded of the Communist International a short-range policy in Germany, then it is necessary now to work out a long-range policy. Before decisive battles will become possible, the proletarian vanguard will have to reorient itself; that is to say, it will have to understand what has happened, assign the responsibility for the great historical defeat, trace out the new road, and thus regain confidence in itself
The criminal role of the Social Democracy requires no commentary: the Comintern was created fourteen years ago precisely in order to snatch the proletariat from the demoralizing influence of the Social Democracy. If it has not succeeded up to now, if the German proletariat found itself impotent disarmed, and paralyzed at the moment of its greatest historic test the direct and immediate blame falls upon the leadership of the post-Leninist Comintern. That is the first conclusion which ought to be drawn immediately.
Under the treacherous blows of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Left Opposition maintained its fidelity to the official party to the very end. The Bolshevik-Leninists now share the fate of all the other Communist organizations: the militants of our cadres are arrested, our publications forbidden, our literature confiscated. Hitler even hurried to suspend the Bulletin of the Opposition appearing in the Russian language. But if, together with the whole proletarian vanguard, the Bolshevik-Leninists bear the consequences of the first serious victory of fascism, they cannot and will not bear even a shadow of the responsibility for the official policy of the Comintern.
Since 1923, that is, since the beginning of the struggle against the Left Opposition, the Stalinist leadership, although indirectly, assisted the Social Democracy with all its strength to derail, to befuddle, to enfeeble the German proletariat: it restrained and hindered the workers when the conditions dictated a courageous revolutionary offensive; it proclaimed the approach of the revolutionary situation when it had already passed; it worked up agreements with petty-bourgeois phrasemongers and windbags; it limped impotently at the tail of the Social Democracy under cover of the policy of the united front; it proclaimed the “third period” and the struggle for the conquest of the streets under conditions of political ebb and the weakness of the Communist Party; it replaced the serious struggle by leaps, adventures or parades; it isolated the Communists from the mass trade unions; it identified the Social Democracy with fascism and rejected the united front with the mass workers’ organizations in face of the aggressive bands of the National Socialists; it sabotaged the slightest initiative for the united front for local defense, at the same time it systematically deceived the workers as to the real relationship of forces, distorted the facts, passed off friends as enemies and enemies as friends – and drew the noose tighter and tighter around the neck of the party, not permitting it to breathe freely any longer, nor to speak, nor to think.
Out of the vast literature devoted to the question of fascism it is enough to refer to the speech of Thälmann, official leader of the German Communist Party, who, at the plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in April 1931, denounced the “pessimists,” that is, those who knew how to foresee, in the following terms: “We have not allowed the moods of panic to rout us ... We have soberly and firmly established the fact that September 14 [1930] was in a certain sense Hitler’s best day, and that afterwards will come not better days but worse. This evaluation which we made of the development of this party is confirmed by the events ... Today, the fascists have no reasons for laughing.” Referring to the creation of defense groups by the Social Democracy, Thälmann demonstrated in the same speech that these groups differ in no respect from the shock troops of the National Socialists and that both of them are likewise preparing to annihilate Communism.
Today, Thälmann is under arrest. Faced with triumphant reaction, the Bolshevik-Leninists are in the same ranks as Thälmann. But the policy of Thälmann is the policy of Stalin, that is, the official policy of the Comintern. It is precisely this policy which is the cause of the complete demoralization of the party at the moment of danger, when the leaders lose their heads, when the party members, unaccustomed to thinking, fall prostrate, when the principal historic positions are surrendered without a fight. A false political theory bears within itself its own punishment. The strength and the obstinacy of the apparatus only augment the dimensions of the catastrophe.
Having surrendered to the enemy everything that could be surrendered in such a short space of time, the Stalinists are trying to rectify the past by means of convulsive acts, which only more brightly illuminate the whole chain of crimes committed by them. Now that the press of the Communist Party is stifled, now the apparatus is destroyed, now the bloody pennant of fascism waves with impunity over the Karl Liebknecht House [1], the Executive Committee of the Comintern is starting out on the road of the united front not only from below but also from above. The new zigzag, sharper than all that preceded it, has not, however, been effected on the impulse of the ECCI itself, the Stalinist bureaucracy has abandoned the initiative to the Second International. The latter has succeeded in taking hold of the weapon of the united front of which it has been in mortal dread until now. To the extent that it is possible to speak of political advantages under the conditions of a panicky retreat, they are to be found exclusively on the side of reformism. Forced to reply to a direct question, the Stalinist bureaucracy chose the worst way: it does not reject an entente of the two Internationals, but neither does it accept it; it plays hide and seek. It has come to such a lack of self-confidence, to such degradation, that it no longer dares to show itself to the world proletariat face to face with the leaders of the Second International, the branded agents of the bourgeoisie, the electors of Hindenburg who blazed the trail of fascism.
In a special appeal of the ECCI on March 5, To the Workers of All Countries, the Stalinists do not say a word about social fascism as the main enemy. They no longer speak about the great discovery of their leader: “The Social Democracy and fascism are not antipodes but twins.” They no longer insist on saying that the struggle against fascism demands as a preliminary the defeat of the Social Democracy. They do not breathe a word about the inadmissibility of the united front from above. On the contrary, they carefully enumerate those cases in the past where the Stalinist bureaucracy, unexpectedly for the workers and for itself, found itself forced to improvise proposals for the united front to the reformist summits. Thus do artificial, false, and charlatanesque theories founder in the fury of the historical tempest
“Taking into account the peculiarities of each country” and the impossibility, which allegedly flows from them, of organizing the united front on an international scale (the struggle against “exceptionalism,” that is, the theory of the right-wingers on national peculiarities, is suddenly forgotten), the Stalinist bureaucracy recommends to the national Communist parties that they address proposals for a united front to the “Central Committees of the Social Democratic parties.” Only yesterday this was proclaimed a capitulation to social fascism! Thus do all the great lessons of Stalinism for the last four years fly under the table into the wastebasket Thus is a whole political system reduced to dust.
Matters do not rest there: having just declared the impossibility of generating the conditions for a united front on the international arena, the ECCI immediately forgets it and no more than twenty lines further on formulates the conditions under which the united front is admissible and acceptable in all countries, in spite of the difference in national conditions. The retreat before fascism is followed by a panic-stricken retreat from the theoretical commandments of Stalinism. Chips and fragments of ideas and principles are thrown out along the road like so much ballast.
The conditions for the united front put forward by the Comintern for all the countries committees of action against fascism, demonstrations and strikes against wage reductions) present nothing new. On the contrary, they are the schematized and bureaucratized reproduction of the slogans that the Left Opposition formulated much more clearly and concretely two and a half years ago, for which it was registered in the camp of social fascism. The united front on such a basis could have yielded decisive results in Germany; but for that, it would have had to be carried out in time. Time is an important factor in politics.
What is therefore the practical value now of the proposals of the ECCI? For Germany, it is minimal. The policy of the united front assumes a ␄front,” that is, stabilized positions and a centralized leadership. The Left Opposition put forward the conditions for the united front back then as conditions for an active defense, with the perspective of passing over to the offensive. Now, the German proletariat has been reduced to a state of disorderly retreat, without even rearguard battles. In this situation, voluntary unions of Communist and Social Democratic workers can and will be realized for various episodic tasks, but the systematic construction of the united front is inevitably thrust back for the indefinite future. There must be no illusions on this score.
About eighteen months ago, we wrote that the key to the situation is in the hands of the German Communist Party. The Stalinist bureaucracy has now let this key fail from its hands. Great events outside of the will of the party will be necessary to give the workers the possibility of drawing up short, of fortifying themselves, of rebuilding their ranks and of passing over to an active defense. We have no way of knowing with precision when this will occur. Perhaps much quicker than the triumphant counterrevolution hopes. But in any case, it is not those who issued the manifesto of the ECCI who will direct the policy of the united front in Germany.
If the central position has been surrendered, one must fortify the approaches; one must prepare bases for a future assault from all sides. In Germany, this preparation implies the critical elucidation of the past, maintaining the spirits of the vanguard fighters, rallying them, and organizing rearguard combats wherever possible – in anticipation of the moment when the various fighting groups will draw together into a great army. This preparation implies at the same time defending the proletarian positions in the countries closely connected with Germany or located near it: in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, France, and Switzerland. Fascist Germany must be surrounded by a powerful circle of proletarian fortifications. Without ceasing for an instant the attempts to halt the disorderly retreat of the German workers, it is necessary to create fortified proletarian positions around the frontiers of Germany for the struggle against fascism.
In the first place comes Austria, which is immediately threatened by the fascist cataclysm. One can say with confidence that if the Austrian proletariat were to seize power now and transform its country into a revolutionary battleground, Austria would become for the revolution of the German proletariat what Piedmont [2] was for the revolution of the Italian bourgeoisie. It cannot be predicted how far the Austrian proletarian pushed forward by the events but paralyzed by the reformist bureaucracy, will advance along this road. The task of Communism is to help the events, overcoming Austro-Marxism. The policy of the united front is one of the means. The conditions which the manifesto of the ECCI takes over so tardily from the Left Opposition thus retain all their force.
However, the policy of the united front contains not only advantages but also dangers. It easily gives birth to combinations between leaders behind the back of the masses, to a passive adaptation to the ally, to opportunist vacillations. It is possible to ward off these dangers only if there exist two express guarantees: the maintenance of full freedom of criticism of the ally and the reestablishment of full freedom of criticism within the ranks of one’s own party. To refuse to criticize one’s allies leads directly and immediately to capitulation to reformism. The policy of the united front in the absence of party democracy, that is, without control of the apparatus by the party, leaves the leaders a free hand for opportunist experiments, the inevitable complements of adventurist experiments.
How has the ECCI acted in this case? Dozens of times the Left Opposition predicted that under the blows of events, the Stalinists would be forced to repudiate their ultraleftism and that, placing themselves on the road of the united front they would begin to commit all the opportunist treasons which they attributed to us only yesterday. This time, too, the prediction has been realized literally.
In making a dizzying swing towards the position of the united front the ECCI tramples on the fundamental guarantees which alone can assure a revolutionary content to the policy of the united front. The Stalinists take into consideration and accept the hypocritical-diplomatic demands of the reformists for so-called mutual non-aggression. Breaking with all the traditions of Marxism and of Bolshevism, they recommend to the Communist parties, in case a united front is realized, that they “abandon all attacks against the Social Democratic organizations during the joint action.” That’s just what it says. “To abandon all attacks [!] upon the Social Democracy” (what a shameful formula!) means to abandon the freedom of political criticism, that is, a basic function of the revolutionary party.
The capitulation is called for not by practical necessity but by a panicky state of mind. The reformists come and will come to an agreement to the extent that the pressure of events and the pressure of the masses force them to do so. The demand for “nonaggression” is blackmail, that is, the attempt of the reformist leaders to extort an auxiliary advantage. To submit to blackmail means to build the united front upon rotten foundations and to give the reformist businessmen the possibility of blowing it up under some arbitrary pretext or other.
Criticism in general, all the more so under the conditions of a united front should of course correspond to the real relations and observe the necessary proportions. The absurdities about “social fascism” must be refuted. That is a concession not to the Social Democracy, but to Marxism. It is not for the treachery of 1918 but for its evil work in 1933 that the ally must be criticized. But criticism, like political life itself, of which criticism is the voice, cannot be halted for an hour. If the Communists’ disclosures correspond to reality, they serve the purposes of the united front pushing forward the temporary ally and, what is more important giving a revolutionary education to the whole proletariat. To abandon this fundamental duty is the first stage in that shameful and criminal policy which Stalin foisted upon the Chinese Communists with regard to the Kuomintang.
Matters stand no better with regard to the second guarantee. Having renounced criticism of the Social Democracy, the Stalinist apparatus does not even think of giving the right of criticism to the members of its own party. The turn itself is accomplished, as usual, by way of a bureaucratic revelation. Not a single national congress, no international congress, nor even a plenum of the ECCI; no preparation in the press of the party, no analysis of the policy of the past. And there is nothing astounding in this. At the very first steps in the discussion in the party, each thinking worker would ask the functionaries: Why have the Bolshevik-Leninists been expelled from all the sections and why are they subjected in the Soviet Union to arrests, to deportation, and to firing squads? Is it only because they dig deeper and see further? The Stalinist bureaucracy cannot permit such a conclusion. It is capable of any flip-flops or somersaults, but to present itself honestly before the workers face to face with the Bolshevik-Leninists – that’s something it cannot and does not dare to do. Thus in the struggle for self-preservation, the Stalinist apparatus vitiates its new turn by making it suspect beforehand in the view not only of the Social Democratic workers but also of the Communists.
The publication of the manifesto of the ECCI is accompanied by yet another circumstance, extraneous to the question we are examining, but which throws an exceedingly glaring light on the present position of the Comintern and on the attitude of the leading Stalinist groups towards it. In Pravda of March 6, the manifesto is published not as a direct and open appeal of the ECCI situated in Moscow – as was always the case – but as the translation of a document from l’Humanité, transmitted from Paris by the telegraphic agency TASS.
What a stupid and humiliating ruse! After all the successes, after the realization of the first Five Year Plan, after the “disappearance of the classes,” after the “entry into socialism,” the Stalinist bureaucracy no longer dares to publish in its own name the manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. That is its real relationship to the Comintern and that is how confident it is on the international arena.
The manifesto is not the sole reply to the initiative of the Second International. Through the intermediary of paper organizations – the revolutionary trade union oppositions (RGOs) of Germany and Poland, the Anti-fascist Alliance, and the so- called Italian General Confederation of Labor – the Comintern is convening for the month of April a “Pan-European Workers’ Anti-fascist Congress.” The list of those invited, as is proper, is confused and vast: factories (they say “factories,” although by the efforts of Stalin-Lozovsky the Communists have been ousted from practically all the factories in the world), local labor organizations, revolutionary, reformist, Catholic, belonging to a party or not, sports, anti-fascist, and peasant organizations. And more: “We wish also to invite all those individuals who are really [!] fighting for the cause of the workers.” Having compromised for a long time the cause of the masses, the strategists appeal to the “individuals,” to those hermits who have found no place in the ranks of the masses but who, just the same, “are really fighting for the cause of the workers.” Barbusse and General Schönaich [3] will once more be mobilized to save Europe from Hitler.
Here we have a ready-made libretto for one of those charlatan presentations with which the Stalinists are in the habit of masking their impotence. What has the Amsterdam bloc of centrists and the pacifists accomplished in the struggle against the aggression of the Japanese bandits in China? Nothing. Out of respect for Stalinist “neutrality,” the pacifists have not even issued a manifesto of protest. Now a new edition of the Amsterdam Congress is being prepared, not against war but against fascism. What will the anti-fascist bloc of vacated “factories” and impotent “individuals” do? Nothing. It will issue a hollow manifesto, if, as a matter of fact things go as far this time as the holding of a congress.
The propensity for individuals has two faces: opportunistic and adventurist. The Russian Social Revolutionaries in the old days extended the right hand to the liberals and held a bomb in the left hand. The experience of the last ten years attests that after every great defeat provoked or at least aggravated by the policy of the Comintern, the Stalinist bureaucracy invariably sought to refurbish its reputation with the aid of some grandiose adventure or other (Estonia, Bulgaria, Canton). Doesn’t this danger exist now too? In any case, we deem it necessary to raise a voice of warning. Adventures that aim to replace the action of the paralyzed masses disorganize the masses still more and aggravate the catastrophe.
The conditions of the present world situation, as well as the conditions of each country in particular, are just as deadly for the Social Democracy as they are favorable for the revolutionary party. But the Stalinist bureaucracy has succeeded in converting the crisis of capitalism and of reformism into a crisis of Communism. That is the sum total of ten years of uncontrolled command by the epigones.
Hypocrites will be found to say: the Opposition is criticizing a party which has fallen into the hands of the executioner. Blackguards will add: the Opposition is helping the executioner. By combining a specious sentimentalism with venomous falsehood, the Stalinists will endeavor to hide the Central Committee behind the apparatus, the apparatus behind the party, to eliminate the question of responsibility for the catastrophe, for the false strategy, for the disastrous regime, for the criminal leadership: that means helping the executioners of today and tomorrow.
The policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy in China was no less disastrous than it is now in Germany. But there, the affair took place behind the back of the world proletariat, under conditions which were incomprehensible to it. The critical voice of the Opposition hardly reached beyond the Soviet Union to the workers of the other countries. The Stalinist apparatus went practically unpunished for the Chinese experience. In Germany, it is entirely different All the stages of the drama developed before the world proletariat At each stage, the Opposition raised its voice. The whole course of development was announced in advance. The Stalinist bureaucracy slandered the Opposition, imputed to it ideas and plans alien to it; expelled all those who dared to speak of the united front; helped the Social Democratic bureaucracy demolish the united local defense committees; cut the workers off from the slightest possibility of setting out on the road of the mass struggle; disorganized the vanguard; paralyzed the proletariat. Thus, by opposing a united front of defense with the Social Democracy, the Stalinists found themselves with the latter in a united front of panic and of capitulation.
And now, already standing just short of ruin, the leadership of the Comintern fears light and criticism more than anything else. Let the world revolution perish, but long live vain prestige! The bankrupts sow confusion, bury the evidence, and cover their tracks. The fact that the Communist Party of Germany lost “only” 1,200,000 votes at the first blow – with a general rise in the number of voters of three to four millions – is proclaimed by Pravda as an “enormous political victory.” In the same way, in 1924, Stalin proclaimed as an “enormous victory” the fact that the workers in Germany, who were retreating without battle, had still given the Communist Party 3,600,000 votes. If the proletariat deceived and disarmed by both apparatuses, has this time given the Communist Party almost five million votes, this signifies only that they would have given it twice or three times that number had they trusted its leadership. They would have raised it to power had it shown itself capable of taking and holding power. But it gave the proletariat nothing save confusion, zigzags, defeats, and calamities.
Yes, five million Communists still succeeded in reaching the ballot box, one by one. But in the factories and on the streets, there are none. They are disconcerted, dispersed, demoralized. They have been broken away from independence under the yoke of the apparatus. The bureaucratic terror of Stalinism paralyzed their willpower before the turn came for the terror of the fascist bands.
It must be said clearly, plainly, openly: Stalinism in Germany has had its August 4. Henceforth, the advanced workers will only speak of the period of the domination of the Stalinist bureaucracy with a burning sense of shame, with words of hatred and curses. The official German Communist Party is doomed. From now on it will only decompose, crumble, and melt into the void. German Communism can be reborn only on a new basis and with a new leadership.
The law of uneven development acts also upon the fate of Stalinism. In the various countries, it finds itself in different stages of decomposition. To what degree the tragic experience of Germany will serve as a stimulus to the rebirth of the other sections of the Comintern, the future will show. In Germany in any case the swan song of the Stalinist bureaucracy has been sung. The German proletariat will rise again, Stalinism – never. Under the terrible blows of the enemy, the advanced German workers will have to build up a new party. The Bolshevik-Leninists will give all their forces to this work.
The most powerful proletariat of Europe, measured by its place in production, its social weight, and the strength of its organizations, has manifested no resistance since Hitler’s coming to power and his first violent attacks against the workers’ organizations. This is the fact from which to proceed in subsequent strategic calculations.
It would be patently stupid to believe that the future evolution of Germany will follow the Italian road; that Hitler will strengthen his domination step by step without serious resistance; that German fascism will enjoy long years of domination. No, the further fate of National Socialism will have to be deduced from an analysis of the German and international conditions, and not from purely historical analogies. But this much is already evident: if from September 1930 onwards we demanded of the Communist International a short-range policy in Germany, then it is necessary now to work out a long-range policy. Before decisive battles will become possible, the proletarian vanguard will have to reorient itself; that is to say, it will have to understand what has happened, assign the responsibility for the great historical defeat, trace out the new road, and thus regain confidence in itself
The criminal role of the Social Democracy requires no commentary: the Comintern was created fourteen years ago precisely in order to snatch the proletariat from the demoralizing influence of the Social Democracy. If it has not succeeded up to now, if the German proletariat found itself impotent disarmed, and paralyzed at the moment of its greatest historic test the direct and immediate blame falls upon the leadership of the post-Leninist Comintern. That is the first conclusion which ought to be drawn immediately.
Under the treacherous blows of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Left Opposition maintained its fidelity to the official party to the very end. The Bolshevik-Leninists now share the fate of all the other Communist organizations: the militants of our cadres are arrested, our publications forbidden, our literature confiscated. Hitler even hurried to suspend the Bulletin of the Opposition appearing in the Russian language. But if, together with the whole proletarian vanguard, the Bolshevik-Leninists bear the consequences of the first serious victory of fascism, they cannot and will not bear even a shadow of the responsibility for the official policy of the Comintern.
Since 1923, that is, since the beginning of the struggle against the Left Opposition, the Stalinist leadership, although indirectly, assisted the Social Democracy with all its strength to derail, to befuddle, to enfeeble the German proletariat: it restrained and hindered the workers when the conditions dictated a courageous revolutionary offensive; it proclaimed the approach of the revolutionary situation when it had already passed; it worked up agreements with petty-bourgeois phrasemongers and windbags; it limped impotently at the tail of the Social Democracy under cover of the policy of the united front; it proclaimed the “third period” and the struggle for the conquest of the streets under conditions of political ebb and the weakness of the Communist Party; it replaced the serious struggle by leaps, adventures or parades; it isolated the Communists from the mass trade unions; it identified the Social Democracy with fascism and rejected the united front with the mass workers’ organizations in face of the aggressive bands of the National Socialists; it sabotaged the slightest initiative for the united front for local defense, at the same time it systematically deceived the workers as to the real relationship of forces, distorted the facts, passed off friends as enemies and enemies as friends – and drew the noose tighter and tighter around the neck of the party, not permitting it to breathe freely any longer, nor to speak, nor to think.
Out of the vast literature devoted to the question of fascism it is enough to refer to the speech of Thälmann, official leader of the German Communist Party, who, at the plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in April 1931, denounced the “pessimists,” that is, those who knew how to foresee, in the following terms: “We have not allowed the moods of panic to rout us ... We have soberly and firmly established the fact that September 14 [1930] was in a certain sense Hitler’s best day, and that afterwards will come not better days but worse. This evaluation which we made of the development of this party is confirmed by the events ... Today, the fascists have no reasons for laughing.” Referring to the creation of defense groups by the Social Democracy, Thälmann demonstrated in the same speech that these groups differ in no respect from the shock troops of the National Socialists and that both of them are likewise preparing to annihilate Communism.
Today, Thälmann is under arrest. Faced with triumphant reaction, the Bolshevik-Leninists are in the same ranks as Thälmann. But the policy of Thälmann is the policy of Stalin, that is, the official policy of the Comintern. It is precisely this policy which is the cause of the complete demoralization of the party at the moment of danger, when the leaders lose their heads, when the party members, unaccustomed to thinking, fall prostrate, when the principal historic positions are surrendered without a fight. A false political theory bears within itself its own punishment. The strength and the obstinacy of the apparatus only augment the dimensions of the catastrophe.
Having surrendered to the enemy everything that could be surrendered in such a short space of time, the Stalinists are trying to rectify the past by means of convulsive acts, which only more brightly illuminate the whole chain of crimes committed by them. Now that the press of the Communist Party is stifled, now the apparatus is destroyed, now the bloody pennant of fascism waves with impunity over the Karl Liebknecht House [1], the Executive Committee of the Comintern is starting out on the road of the united front not only from below but also from above. The new zigzag, sharper than all that preceded it, has not, however, been effected on the impulse of the ECCI itself, the Stalinist bureaucracy has abandoned the initiative to the Second International. The latter has succeeded in taking hold of the weapon of the united front of which it has been in mortal dread until now. To the extent that it is possible to speak of political advantages under the conditions of a panicky retreat, they are to be found exclusively on the side of reformism. Forced to reply to a direct question, the Stalinist bureaucracy chose the worst way: it does not reject an entente of the two Internationals, but neither does it accept it; it plays hide and seek. It has come to such a lack of self-confidence, to such degradation, that it no longer dares to show itself to the world proletariat face to face with the leaders of the Second International, the branded agents of the bourgeoisie, the electors of Hindenburg who blazed the trail of fascism.
In a special appeal of the ECCI on March 5, To the Workers of All Countries, the Stalinists do not say a word about social fascism as the main enemy. They no longer speak about the great discovery of their leader: “The Social Democracy and fascism are not antipodes but twins.” They no longer insist on saying that the struggle against fascism demands as a preliminary the defeat of the Social Democracy. They do not breathe a word about the inadmissibility of the united front from above. On the contrary, they carefully enumerate those cases in the past where the Stalinist bureaucracy, unexpectedly for the workers and for itself, found itself forced to improvise proposals for the united front to the reformist summits. Thus do artificial, false, and charlatanesque theories founder in the fury of the historical tempest
“Taking into account the peculiarities of each country” and the impossibility, which allegedly flows from them, of organizing the united front on an international scale (the struggle against “exceptionalism,” that is, the theory of the right-wingers on national peculiarities, is suddenly forgotten), the Stalinist bureaucracy recommends to the national Communist parties that they address proposals for a united front to the “Central Committees of the Social Democratic parties.” Only yesterday this was proclaimed a capitulation to social fascism! Thus do all the great lessons of Stalinism for the last four years fly under the table into the wastebasket Thus is a whole political system reduced to dust.
Matters do not rest there: having just declared the impossibility of generating the conditions for a united front on the international arena, the ECCI immediately forgets it and no more than twenty lines further on formulates the conditions under which the united front is admissible and acceptable in all countries, in spite of the difference in national conditions. The retreat before fascism is followed by a panic-stricken retreat from the theoretical commandments of Stalinism. Chips and fragments of ideas and principles are thrown out along the road like so much ballast.
The conditions for the united front put forward by the Comintern for all the countries committees of action against fascism, demonstrations and strikes against wage reductions) present nothing new. On the contrary, they are the schematized and bureaucratized reproduction of the slogans that the Left Opposition formulated much more clearly and concretely two and a half years ago, for which it was registered in the camp of social fascism. The united front on such a basis could have yielded decisive results in Germany; but for that, it would have had to be carried out in time. Time is an important factor in politics.
What is therefore the practical value now of the proposals of the ECCI? For Germany, it is minimal. The policy of the united front assumes a ␄front,” that is, stabilized positions and a centralized leadership. The Left Opposition put forward the conditions for the united front back then as conditions for an active defense, with the perspective of passing over to the offensive. Now, the German proletariat has been reduced to a state of disorderly retreat, without even rearguard battles. In this situation, voluntary unions of Communist and Social Democratic workers can and will be realized for various episodic tasks, but the systematic construction of the united front is inevitably thrust back for the indefinite future. There must be no illusions on this score.
About eighteen months ago, we wrote that the key to the situation is in the hands of the German Communist Party. The Stalinist bureaucracy has now let this key fail from its hands. Great events outside of the will of the party will be necessary to give the workers the possibility of drawing up short, of fortifying themselves, of rebuilding their ranks and of passing over to an active defense. We have no way of knowing with precision when this will occur. Perhaps much quicker than the triumphant counterrevolution hopes. But in any case, it is not those who issued the manifesto of the ECCI who will direct the policy of the united front in Germany.
If the central position has been surrendered, one must fortify the approaches; one must prepare bases for a future assault from all sides. In Germany, this preparation implies the critical elucidation of the past, maintaining the spirits of the vanguard fighters, rallying them, and organizing rearguard combats wherever possible – in anticipation of the moment when the various fighting groups will draw together into a great army. This preparation implies at the same time defending the proletarian positions in the countries closely connected with Germany or located near it: in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, France, and Switzerland. Fascist Germany must be surrounded by a powerful circle of proletarian fortifications. Without ceasing for an instant the attempts to halt the disorderly retreat of the German workers, it is necessary to create fortified proletarian positions around the frontiers of Germany for the struggle against fascism.
In the first place comes Austria, which is immediately threatened by the fascist cataclysm. One can say with confidence that if the Austrian proletariat were to seize power now and transform its country into a revolutionary battleground, Austria would become for the revolution of the German proletariat what Piedmont [2] was for the revolution of the Italian bourgeoisie. It cannot be predicted how far the Austrian proletarian pushed forward by the events but paralyzed by the reformist bureaucracy, will advance along this road. The task of Communism is to help the events, overcoming Austro-Marxism. The policy of the united front is one of the means. The conditions which the manifesto of the ECCI takes over so tardily from the Left Opposition thus retain all their force.
However, the policy of the united front contains not only advantages but also dangers. It easily gives birth to combinations between leaders behind the back of the masses, to a passive adaptation to the ally, to opportunist vacillations. It is possible to ward off these dangers only if there exist two express guarantees: the maintenance of full freedom of criticism of the ally and the reestablishment of full freedom of criticism within the ranks of one’s own party. To refuse to criticize one’s allies leads directly and immediately to capitulation to reformism. The policy of the united front in the absence of party democracy, that is, without control of the apparatus by the party, leaves the leaders a free hand for opportunist experiments, the inevitable complements of adventurist experiments.
How has the ECCI acted in this case? Dozens of times the Left Opposition predicted that under the blows of events, the Stalinists would be forced to repudiate their ultraleftism and that, placing themselves on the road of the united front they would begin to commit all the opportunist treasons which they attributed to us only yesterday. This time, too, the prediction has been realized literally.
In making a dizzying swing towards the position of the united front the ECCI tramples on the fundamental guarantees which alone can assure a revolutionary content to the policy of the united front. The Stalinists take into consideration and accept the hypocritical-diplomatic demands of the reformists for so-called mutual non-aggression. Breaking with all the traditions of Marxism and of Bolshevism, they recommend to the Communist parties, in case a united front is realized, that they “abandon all attacks against the Social Democratic organizations during the joint action.” That’s just what it says. “To abandon all attacks [!] upon the Social Democracy” (what a shameful formula!) means to abandon the freedom of political criticism, that is, a basic function of the revolutionary party.
The capitulation is called for not by practical necessity but by a panicky state of mind. The reformists come and will come to an agreement to the extent that the pressure of events and the pressure of the masses force them to do so. The demand for “nonaggression” is blackmail, that is, the attempt of the reformist leaders to extort an auxiliary advantage. To submit to blackmail means to build the united front upon rotten foundations and to give the reformist businessmen the possibility of blowing it up under some arbitrary pretext or other.
Criticism in general, all the more so under the conditions of a united front should of course correspond to the real relations and observe the necessary proportions. The absurdities about “social fascism” must be refuted. That is a concession not to the Social Democracy, but to Marxism. It is not for the treachery of 1918 but for its evil work in 1933 that the ally must be criticized. But criticism, like political life itself, of which criticism is the voice, cannot be halted for an hour. If the Communists’ disclosures correspond to reality, they serve the purposes of the united front pushing forward the temporary ally and, what is more important giving a revolutionary education to the whole proletariat. To abandon this fundamental duty is the first stage in that shameful and criminal policy which Stalin foisted upon the Chinese Communists with regard to the Kuomintang.
Matters stand no better with regard to the second guarantee. Having renounced criticism of the Social Democracy, the Stalinist apparatus does not even think of giving the right of criticism to the members of its own party. The turn itself is accomplished, as usual, by way of a bureaucratic revelation. Not a single national congress, no international congress, nor even a plenum of the ECCI; no preparation in the press of the party, no analysis of the policy of the past. And there is nothing astounding in this. At the very first steps in the discussion in the party, each thinking worker would ask the functionaries: Why have the Bolshevik-Leninists been expelled from all the sections and why are they subjected in the Soviet Union to arrests, to deportation, and to firing squads? Is it only because they dig deeper and see further? The Stalinist bureaucracy cannot permit such a conclusion. It is capable of any flip-flops or somersaults, but to present itself honestly before the workers face to face with the Bolshevik-Leninists – that’s something it cannot and does not dare to do. Thus in the struggle for self-preservation, the Stalinist apparatus vitiates its new turn by making it suspect beforehand in the view not only of the Social Democratic workers but also of the Communists.
The publication of the manifesto of the ECCI is accompanied by yet another circumstance, extraneous to the question we are examining, but which throws an exceedingly glaring light on the present position of the Comintern and on the attitude of the leading Stalinist groups towards it. In Pravda of March 6, the manifesto is published not as a direct and open appeal of the ECCI situated in Moscow – as was always the case – but as the translation of a document from l’Humanité, transmitted from Paris by the telegraphic agency TASS.
What a stupid and humiliating ruse! After all the successes, after the realization of the first Five Year Plan, after the “disappearance of the classes,” after the “entry into socialism,” the Stalinist bureaucracy no longer dares to publish in its own name the manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. That is its real relationship to the Comintern and that is how confident it is on the international arena.
The manifesto is not the sole reply to the initiative of the Second International. Through the intermediary of paper organizations – the revolutionary trade union oppositions (RGOs) of Germany and Poland, the Anti-fascist Alliance, and the so- called Italian General Confederation of Labor – the Comintern is convening for the month of April a “Pan-European Workers’ Anti-fascist Congress.” The list of those invited, as is proper, is confused and vast: factories (they say “factories,” although by the efforts of Stalin-Lozovsky the Communists have been ousted from practically all the factories in the world), local labor organizations, revolutionary, reformist, Catholic, belonging to a party or not, sports, anti-fascist, and peasant organizations. And more: “We wish also to invite all those individuals who are really [!] fighting for the cause of the workers.” Having compromised for a long time the cause of the masses, the strategists appeal to the “individuals,” to those hermits who have found no place in the ranks of the masses but who, just the same, “are really fighting for the cause of the workers.” Barbusse and General Schönaich [3] will once more be mobilized to save Europe from Hitler.
Here we have a ready-made libretto for one of those charlatan presentations with which the Stalinists are in the habit of masking their impotence. What has the Amsterdam bloc of centrists and the pacifists accomplished in the struggle against the aggression of the Japanese bandits in China? Nothing. Out of respect for Stalinist “neutrality,” the pacifists have not even issued a manifesto of protest. Now a new edition of the Amsterdam Congress is being prepared, not against war but against fascism. What will the anti-fascist bloc of vacated “factories” and impotent “individuals” do? Nothing. It will issue a hollow manifesto, if, as a matter of fact things go as far this time as the holding of a congress.
The propensity for individuals has two faces: opportunistic and adventurist. The Russian Social Revolutionaries in the old days extended the right hand to the liberals and held a bomb in the left hand. The experience of the last ten years attests that after every great defeat provoked or at least aggravated by the policy of the Comintern, the Stalinist bureaucracy invariably sought to refurbish its reputation with the aid of some grandiose adventure or other (Estonia, Bulgaria, Canton). Doesn’t this danger exist now too? In any case, we deem it necessary to raise a voice of warning. Adventures that aim to replace the action of the paralyzed masses disorganize the masses still more and aggravate the catastrophe.
The conditions of the present world situation, as well as the conditions of each country in particular, are just as deadly for the Social Democracy as they are favorable for the revolutionary party. But the Stalinist bureaucracy has succeeded in converting the crisis of capitalism and of reformism into a crisis of Communism. That is the sum total of ten years of uncontrolled command by the epigones.
Hypocrites will be found to say: the Opposition is criticizing a party which has fallen into the hands of the executioner. Blackguards will add: the Opposition is helping the executioner. By combining a specious sentimentalism with venomous falsehood, the Stalinists will endeavor to hide the Central Committee behind the apparatus, the apparatus behind the party, to eliminate the question of responsibility for the catastrophe, for the false strategy, for the disastrous regime, for the criminal leadership: that means helping the executioners of today and tomorrow.
The policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy in China was no less disastrous than it is now in Germany. But there, the affair took place behind the back of the world proletariat, under conditions which were incomprehensible to it. The critical voice of the Opposition hardly reached beyond the Soviet Union to the workers of the other countries. The Stalinist apparatus went practically unpunished for the Chinese experience. In Germany, it is entirely different All the stages of the drama developed before the world proletariat At each stage, the Opposition raised its voice. The whole course of development was announced in advance. The Stalinist bureaucracy slandered the Opposition, imputed to it ideas and plans alien to it; expelled all those who dared to speak of the united front; helped the Social Democratic bureaucracy demolish the united local defense committees; cut the workers off from the slightest possibility of setting out on the road of the mass struggle; disorganized the vanguard; paralyzed the proletariat. Thus, by opposing a united front of defense with the Social Democracy, the Stalinists found themselves with the latter in a united front of panic and of capitulation.
And now, already standing just short of ruin, the leadership of the Comintern fears light and criticism more than anything else. Let the world revolution perish, but long live vain prestige! The bankrupts sow confusion, bury the evidence, and cover their tracks. The fact that the Communist Party of Germany lost “only” 1,200,000 votes at the first blow – with a general rise in the number of voters of three to four millions – is proclaimed by Pravda as an “enormous political victory.” In the same way, in 1924, Stalin proclaimed as an “enormous victory” the fact that the workers in Germany, who were retreating without battle, had still given the Communist Party 3,600,000 votes. If the proletariat deceived and disarmed by both apparatuses, has this time given the Communist Party almost five million votes, this signifies only that they would have given it twice or three times that number had they trusted its leadership. They would have raised it to power had it shown itself capable of taking and holding power. But it gave the proletariat nothing save confusion, zigzags, defeats, and calamities.
Yes, five million Communists still succeeded in reaching the ballot box, one by one. But in the factories and on the streets, there are none. They are disconcerted, dispersed, demoralized. They have been broken away from independence under the yoke of the apparatus. The bureaucratic terror of Stalinism paralyzed their willpower before the turn came for the terror of the fascist bands.
It must be said clearly, plainly, openly: Stalinism in Germany has had its August 4. Henceforth, the advanced workers will only speak of the period of the domination of the Stalinist bureaucracy with a burning sense of shame, with words of hatred and curses. The official German Communist Party is doomed. From now on it will only decompose, crumble, and melt into the void. German Communism can be reborn only on a new basis and with a new leadership.
The law of uneven development acts also upon the fate of Stalinism. In the various countries, it finds itself in different stages of decomposition. To what degree the tragic experience of Germany will serve as a stimulus to the rebirth of the other sections of the Comintern, the future will show. In Germany in any case the swan song of the Stalinist bureaucracy has been sung. The German proletariat will rise again, Stalinism – never. Under the terrible blows of the enemy, the advanced German workers will have to build up a new party. The Bolshevik-Leninists will give all their forces to this work.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Is debating our ideas sectarian?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
The broad church of anarchism incorporates many different tendencies. There are anarchists who carve out “liberated space” living in eco-villages, anarchists who go to demos to join in the ‘Black Bloc’ for a ruck with the police, and of course those many anarchists who read old books and dream of utopia but have no personal involvement in the struggle.
But none of these individuals debate their politics with one another, and those who polemicise to even a limited extent (such as Murray Bookchin) are viewed with deep suspicion. They say that criticism is inherently an ‘authoritarian’ violation of the individual’s free will, and so each is allowed to go off and do their own thing, as long as they call themselves ‘anarchist’.
You think workers have power in society so you should go and build an anarcho-syndicalist union to fight the bosses; I prefer immediate action, so I’ll go and live on a camp with some mates and start an unhierarchical society outside of capitalism. While the sectarian Trots row with each other, the anarchists live out their free society by doing as they please.
But this is a perversion of the idea of ‘sectarianism’, a word whose real meaning is placing a specific group’s organisational interests above those of the working class as a whole. ‘Sectarianism’ is not the same thing as admitting that you disagree with other activists. It is not the same thing as challenging the ideas of those people who have carved out influence on the left.
Of course, the anarchists’ unwillingness to criticise one another or to engage in sharp debate is in part a response to very real problems with the way the Trotskyist left operates. Some recoil from the way polemicists resort to labels like ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘unMarxist’, ‘centrist’, and indeed, the slander ‘anarchist’, to attack their opponents. Others are bothered by the fashion in which they exaggerate differences and caricature positions ad absurdum to help ‘win’ the argument. The use of personal innuendo, bureaucratic manoeuvres to silence rivals and even physical fights (such as the SWP’s attacks on AWL and CPGB comrades at their ‘Marxism’ event) also serve as clear evidence that the culture of the far left is indeed unhealthy and sectarian.
But the problems outlined above, to the extent that they exist, are symptomatic of a lack of free and honest debate, not too much of it. It is not the criticism itself, or admitting that there are differences, which engenders uncomradely behaviour. Far from it – for example, look at Marx’s work on the Civil War in France. He raises numerous criticisms of the tactics of the Paris Communards of 1871, but this does not detract in the slightest from his glowing reverence for their brave struggle and the comradely tone of the work.
The real problem is the bureaucratic culture of many organisations which seeks to silence or cow critics by whatever means are at hand. Indeed, the anarchist claim that any criticism other people’s views is sectarian bears a striking parallel to the position of leaders of bureaucratic-centralist organisations such as the Socialist Workers’ Party. The SWP’s idea of unity is that its leaders set out their politics without any debate or consultation with the membership, and then activists can agree to follow them or not. Those who raise criticisms are told to go off and join some other group – “if you don’t agree with the leaders, why are you in the SWP?” So take it or leave it – agree with John Rees and Lindsey German or choose to be a “sectarian” and debate politics with other people elsewhere.
Quite why the people who raise criticisms are ‘sectarians’ and are the ones who ‘disagree’ while those who follow the leadership line are assumed to be correct is never explained. If I disagree, why is it incumbent on me to pretend that I have nothing to say for myself?
Neither the SWP’s modus operandi nor the anarchist schema of ‘do your own thing’ represent ‘unity’. There is no sentiment of collective responsibility, equal exchange of ideas or recognition that activists should be engaged in a common struggle, whatever their differences. The real ‘sectarianism’ is the idea that any disagreement is bound to prove irreconcilable, so people who disagree should work separately in different organisations and not engage with one another. It undermines our fighting strength, stymies creative thought and reflects a lack of belief in the idea that solidarity could work.
Thinking that the labour movement is unsalvageable and living out your anarchist utopia in a commune is sectarian. Thinking, like the Black Bloc cadre, that people with jobs, pensioners and housewives are useless to a struggle where the primary task is confronting the police is sectarian. Those both place the interests of an activist élite above that of the working class, which is not seen as an important agent of social change. What is not sectarian is seeking to bring together the maximum possible forces while maintaining a culture where no leader has a monopoly over ideas, no viewpoint is silenced and continuous free and full debate allows the development of political theory and a sharpening of our tactics.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
The broad church of anarchism incorporates many different tendencies. There are anarchists who carve out “liberated space” living in eco-villages, anarchists who go to demos to join in the ‘Black Bloc’ for a ruck with the police, and of course those many anarchists who read old books and dream of utopia but have no personal involvement in the struggle.
But none of these individuals debate their politics with one another, and those who polemicise to even a limited extent (such as Murray Bookchin) are viewed with deep suspicion. They say that criticism is inherently an ‘authoritarian’ violation of the individual’s free will, and so each is allowed to go off and do their own thing, as long as they call themselves ‘anarchist’.
You think workers have power in society so you should go and build an anarcho-syndicalist union to fight the bosses; I prefer immediate action, so I’ll go and live on a camp with some mates and start an unhierarchical society outside of capitalism. While the sectarian Trots row with each other, the anarchists live out their free society by doing as they please.
But this is a perversion of the idea of ‘sectarianism’, a word whose real meaning is placing a specific group’s organisational interests above those of the working class as a whole. ‘Sectarianism’ is not the same thing as admitting that you disagree with other activists. It is not the same thing as challenging the ideas of those people who have carved out influence on the left.
Of course, the anarchists’ unwillingness to criticise one another or to engage in sharp debate is in part a response to very real problems with the way the Trotskyist left operates. Some recoil from the way polemicists resort to labels like ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘unMarxist’, ‘centrist’, and indeed, the slander ‘anarchist’, to attack their opponents. Others are bothered by the fashion in which they exaggerate differences and caricature positions ad absurdum to help ‘win’ the argument. The use of personal innuendo, bureaucratic manoeuvres to silence rivals and even physical fights (such as the SWP’s attacks on AWL and CPGB comrades at their ‘Marxism’ event) also serve as clear evidence that the culture of the far left is indeed unhealthy and sectarian.
But the problems outlined above, to the extent that they exist, are symptomatic of a lack of free and honest debate, not too much of it. It is not the criticism itself, or admitting that there are differences, which engenders uncomradely behaviour. Far from it – for example, look at Marx’s work on the Civil War in France. He raises numerous criticisms of the tactics of the Paris Communards of 1871, but this does not detract in the slightest from his glowing reverence for their brave struggle and the comradely tone of the work.
The real problem is the bureaucratic culture of many organisations which seeks to silence or cow critics by whatever means are at hand. Indeed, the anarchist claim that any criticism other people’s views is sectarian bears a striking parallel to the position of leaders of bureaucratic-centralist organisations such as the Socialist Workers’ Party. The SWP’s idea of unity is that its leaders set out their politics without any debate or consultation with the membership, and then activists can agree to follow them or not. Those who raise criticisms are told to go off and join some other group – “if you don’t agree with the leaders, why are you in the SWP?” So take it or leave it – agree with John Rees and Lindsey German or choose to be a “sectarian” and debate politics with other people elsewhere.
Quite why the people who raise criticisms are ‘sectarians’ and are the ones who ‘disagree’ while those who follow the leadership line are assumed to be correct is never explained. If I disagree, why is it incumbent on me to pretend that I have nothing to say for myself?
Neither the SWP’s modus operandi nor the anarchist schema of ‘do your own thing’ represent ‘unity’. There is no sentiment of collective responsibility, equal exchange of ideas or recognition that activists should be engaged in a common struggle, whatever their differences. The real ‘sectarianism’ is the idea that any disagreement is bound to prove irreconcilable, so people who disagree should work separately in different organisations and not engage with one another. It undermines our fighting strength, stymies creative thought and reflects a lack of belief in the idea that solidarity could work.
Thinking that the labour movement is unsalvageable and living out your anarchist utopia in a commune is sectarian. Thinking, like the Black Bloc cadre, that people with jobs, pensioners and housewives are useless to a struggle where the primary task is confronting the police is sectarian. Those both place the interests of an activist élite above that of the working class, which is not seen as an important agent of social change. What is not sectarian is seeking to bring together the maximum possible forces while maintaining a culture where no leader has a monopoly over ideas, no viewpoint is silenced and continuous free and full debate allows the development of political theory and a sharpening of our tactics.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Not so gorgeous
Given his colossal ego, z-list celebrity status and continuing admiration of Stalinist politics, it is hard to imagine a better candidate for biography than George Galloway. However, those who deduce from David Morley’s chosen title, “Gorgeous George”, that the book is irreverent or cutting will be greatly disappointed.
Yes, it is funny to think of the Galloway we all know and love as the twinkle-eyed young man who dreamt of being Foreign Secretary and devoted his youth to organising Dundee Labour Party (having failed to get elected to the heady heights of local councillor). But the scores of pages about the personalities, intrigues and business ventures of Labour in Dundee during the ‘70s and ‘80s are of scant interest to anyone serious about politics.
Indeed, Morley clearly has minimal understanding of socialist ideas and groups- he describes Galloway as a “Marxist” and “working class hero” (as with Fidel Castro), whereas in his lexicon “Trotskyites” are not “Marxists”. This bold allegation is never explained, nor his flat denial that Galloway is a Stalinist. But the most risible case in point comes where Morley tells us that the Workers’ Revolutionary Party - who received over £1 million in payments from Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein in exchange for fingering communists in the Middle East – “are so extreme in their revolutionary views that even members of the left describe them as ‘left-wing loonies’.
Neither is the writer interested in Galloway’s own failure to join the Socialist Campaign Group while a Labour MP, or own claim to be “not as left wing as you might think”, both severe indictments of his socialist credentials. Morley ignores Galloway’s continuing dismay at the collapse of the monstrous USSR regime, “the saddest day of my life”.
Morley does however defend Galloway’s 1994 audience with Saddam Hussein, in which he told the Iraqi tyrant “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”. He swallows Galloway’s claim that this address was intended to the whole Iraqi nation – an analysis which jars somewhat with the fact that in the same meeting Galloway gave the dictator a sickly tribute about meeting Palestinians who had named their sons ‘Saddam’. Even if Galloway were “saluting” all Iraqis, the fact that he would say this to the man who monopolised the country’s political life and butchered his opponents might seem like rather a slap in the face for Iraqi socialists.
Much of the biography is a narrative on Gorgeous George’s alleged financial impropriety – reporting legal wranglings of little note but drawing no conclusions – and does not ask why a supposed “workers’ representative” would refuse to draw only a workers’ wage. Morley does devote some pages to the Respect popular front but ignores the many critics – leftist or otherwise - of this project. This despite his interview with SWP leader John Rees, who makes a clear-as-mud case for workers’ management:
“It might be that if you ask about renationalisation you get one answer, but if you ask about continued privatisation you get a very different one, and certainly it isn’t hard to imagine that two steps down the road people may say: ‘Well, if privatisation isn’t working then we have to discuss public provision in some form.’ Neither they nor we want to have the old nationalised industries return, but we do want democratic public provision of essential services, and I would say there is a very, very large constituency for that view.”
And while Galloway’s pretentious mannerisms - Cuban cigars; wearing a coat over his shoulders with his arms out of the sleeves, like a mafia don, ready for a lackey to remove it for him; his pompous sloganeering about Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah – are fine targets for comedy, Morley steers well clear of farce. He instead peppers the book with his own one liners;
“Singers of the stature of Tony Christie had played [at the Labour Club], though whether he knew that some of the gate money was going to the Labour Party, or cared if it might have been on its way to Amarillo, we’ll never know”.
Morley is very much telling Galloway’s side of the story. Even though he is a “maverick”, a “firebrand”, and is “controversial”, Galloway is presented as principled and essentially benign, not like the yes-men in Cabinet who he might have emulated if he were a careerist. Yet Galloway has never been other than a politician, and his politics are far from socialist. He is a carbuncle on the image of the left, and the SWP/Respect would do well to break with him politically.
Yes, it is funny to think of the Galloway we all know and love as the twinkle-eyed young man who dreamt of being Foreign Secretary and devoted his youth to organising Dundee Labour Party (having failed to get elected to the heady heights of local councillor). But the scores of pages about the personalities, intrigues and business ventures of Labour in Dundee during the ‘70s and ‘80s are of scant interest to anyone serious about politics.
Indeed, Morley clearly has minimal understanding of socialist ideas and groups- he describes Galloway as a “Marxist” and “working class hero” (as with Fidel Castro), whereas in his lexicon “Trotskyites” are not “Marxists”. This bold allegation is never explained, nor his flat denial that Galloway is a Stalinist. But the most risible case in point comes where Morley tells us that the Workers’ Revolutionary Party - who received over £1 million in payments from Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein in exchange for fingering communists in the Middle East – “are so extreme in their revolutionary views that even members of the left describe them as ‘left-wing loonies’.
Neither is the writer interested in Galloway’s own failure to join the Socialist Campaign Group while a Labour MP, or own claim to be “not as left wing as you might think”, both severe indictments of his socialist credentials. Morley ignores Galloway’s continuing dismay at the collapse of the monstrous USSR regime, “the saddest day of my life”.
Morley does however defend Galloway’s 1994 audience with Saddam Hussein, in which he told the Iraqi tyrant “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”. He swallows Galloway’s claim that this address was intended to the whole Iraqi nation – an analysis which jars somewhat with the fact that in the same meeting Galloway gave the dictator a sickly tribute about meeting Palestinians who had named their sons ‘Saddam’. Even if Galloway were “saluting” all Iraqis, the fact that he would say this to the man who monopolised the country’s political life and butchered his opponents might seem like rather a slap in the face for Iraqi socialists.
Much of the biography is a narrative on Gorgeous George’s alleged financial impropriety – reporting legal wranglings of little note but drawing no conclusions – and does not ask why a supposed “workers’ representative” would refuse to draw only a workers’ wage. Morley does devote some pages to the Respect popular front but ignores the many critics – leftist or otherwise - of this project. This despite his interview with SWP leader John Rees, who makes a clear-as-mud case for workers’ management:
“It might be that if you ask about renationalisation you get one answer, but if you ask about continued privatisation you get a very different one, and certainly it isn’t hard to imagine that two steps down the road people may say: ‘Well, if privatisation isn’t working then we have to discuss public provision in some form.’ Neither they nor we want to have the old nationalised industries return, but we do want democratic public provision of essential services, and I would say there is a very, very large constituency for that view.”
And while Galloway’s pretentious mannerisms - Cuban cigars; wearing a coat over his shoulders with his arms out of the sleeves, like a mafia don, ready for a lackey to remove it for him; his pompous sloganeering about Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah – are fine targets for comedy, Morley steers well clear of farce. He instead peppers the book with his own one liners;
“Singers of the stature of Tony Christie had played [at the Labour Club], though whether he knew that some of the gate money was going to the Labour Party, or cared if it might have been on its way to Amarillo, we’ll never know”.
Morley is very much telling Galloway’s side of the story. Even though he is a “maverick”, a “firebrand”, and is “controversial”, Galloway is presented as principled and essentially benign, not like the yes-men in Cabinet who he might have emulated if he were a careerist. Yet Galloway has never been other than a politician, and his politics are far from socialist. He is a carbuncle on the image of the left, and the SWP/Respect would do well to break with him politically.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
SWP expulsions + "Party Notes"
As anyone who reads the leading left blogs will know, the Socialist Workers' Party has expelled three of its leading members as part of their fight with George Galloway over the future of Respect. It seems that the comrades were disloyal to the SWP and were willing to take part in Galloway's coup against John Rees (see their official explanation below).
The fact that they were chucked out by the SWP does not make them martyrs. I say that first and foremost because I do not accept the Cliffite "logic" that you determine what you are for according to what you are against - I am not on the side of the homophobic Stalinist George Galloway just because he is against the SWP. That would be ludicrous - one of my main objections to the SWP is its willingness to ally with such figures.
Frankly, I think the SWP had every right to expel members who undermined their organisation's position, even if I disagree with the "coalition" to which this whole fiasco relates. It would be wrong to empathise with ill-disciplined pro-Respect popular frontists out of pleasure in the Socialist Workers' Party's difficulties (though nor do I condone the SWP's allegedly undemocratic behaviour in Tower Hamlets Respect).
There is of course some possibility that the Galloway-Rees clash will make some people realise how bankrupt the whole project is - the very mild criticism of religious communalism which has started to emanate from the SWP will surely lead some members to ask themselves why they lined up with Stalinists, Islamists and Brick Lane businessmen to start with. Most of those who grow disaffected with the SWP will no doubt give up on the left, blaming that organisation's culture on "Leninism" or working class politics. I have met dozens of anarchists who used to be in the SWP cult.
What the collapse of Respect shows is the futility, even on the most dishonest and "tactical" level, of abandoning socialist politics in favour of a shot at the big time. The ego clashes are irresolvable, never mind the contending class forces. We need to unite the socialist left around working class politics - like the RMT's proposed candidature in the London Assembly elections - a step which may help save at least some activists from becoming mere débris of the Respect faction fight.
From the SWP's Party Notes
Party discipline
Last weekend 3 SWP members - Rob Hoveman, Kevin Ovenden and Nick Wrack were expelled from the SWP.
Kevin and Rob
Kevin and Rob are SWP members working for George Galloway. However, recently this situation has become increasingly difficult. The party leadership has come to believe that it was impossible to have two comrades working for someone who has openly attacked the SWP in recent months. This was a position several leading members of the SWP articulated at the recent Party Council. Also over the last year there have been a number of meetings between the CC and Rob and Kevin.
At these meetings the CC raised major concerns with the way both these comrades worked in Respect. We believe that they were more concerned with promoting George Galloway’s line in Respect than the SWP’s position.
More seriously, they have denounced the SWP to individuals and organisations outside the Party.
Two members of the CC met with Kevin and Rob last week, they were asked to resign their posts in George Galloway’s office. Kevin and Rob have subsequently written to the CC refusing to stop working for George Galloway despite the party’s concerns.
Nick
The recent Respect NC voted to create a new position of National Officer. The SWP believed that the post was created to undermine Respect National Secretary John Rees. However, after some changes to the way the post was defined, the SWP agreed to setting up of the post. George Galloway then suggested that Nick did the job. Nick said he would seek various people’s opinions.
The SWP made it clear that we didn’t think Nick should accept the job because he had publicly disagreed with the line being put by the party about Respect. This would have created confusion in the Respect national office. Nick met with two members of the CC and agreed to accept party discipline and not take the post. Several days later his name was put forward by a member of International Socialist Group for the post. When asked, Nick refused to withdraw his name saying he had changed his mind and now wanted his name to go forward.
Despite a further meeting with two members of the CC and several phone calls, Nick refused to withdraw from standing for the post. There are occasions when the CC may ask a comrade not to take a post, perhaps a full time trade union position, or promotion to a job that puts someone in an untenable position. Nick was therefore expelled because he refused to work under the direction of the SWP leadership and reneged on the agreement he made with the CC.
It is important to make one thing clear, the three comrades have not been expelled because they disagreed with the Central Committee. It is because they failed to accept Party discipline and worked against the nationally agreed SWP line.
Expelling comrades is not something the CC does lightly, but in all three cases we felt we had no choice.
The fact that they were chucked out by the SWP does not make them martyrs. I say that first and foremost because I do not accept the Cliffite "logic" that you determine what you are for according to what you are against - I am not on the side of the homophobic Stalinist George Galloway just because he is against the SWP. That would be ludicrous - one of my main objections to the SWP is its willingness to ally with such figures.
Frankly, I think the SWP had every right to expel members who undermined their organisation's position, even if I disagree with the "coalition" to which this whole fiasco relates. It would be wrong to empathise with ill-disciplined pro-Respect popular frontists out of pleasure in the Socialist Workers' Party's difficulties (though nor do I condone the SWP's allegedly undemocratic behaviour in Tower Hamlets Respect).
There is of course some possibility that the Galloway-Rees clash will make some people realise how bankrupt the whole project is - the very mild criticism of religious communalism which has started to emanate from the SWP will surely lead some members to ask themselves why they lined up with Stalinists, Islamists and Brick Lane businessmen to start with. Most of those who grow disaffected with the SWP will no doubt give up on the left, blaming that organisation's culture on "Leninism" or working class politics. I have met dozens of anarchists who used to be in the SWP cult.
What the collapse of Respect shows is the futility, even on the most dishonest and "tactical" level, of abandoning socialist politics in favour of a shot at the big time. The ego clashes are irresolvable, never mind the contending class forces. We need to unite the socialist left around working class politics - like the RMT's proposed candidature in the London Assembly elections - a step which may help save at least some activists from becoming mere débris of the Respect faction fight.
From the SWP's Party Notes
Party discipline
Last weekend 3 SWP members - Rob Hoveman, Kevin Ovenden and Nick Wrack were expelled from the SWP.
Kevin and Rob
Kevin and Rob are SWP members working for George Galloway. However, recently this situation has become increasingly difficult. The party leadership has come to believe that it was impossible to have two comrades working for someone who has openly attacked the SWP in recent months. This was a position several leading members of the SWP articulated at the recent Party Council. Also over the last year there have been a number of meetings between the CC and Rob and Kevin.
At these meetings the CC raised major concerns with the way both these comrades worked in Respect. We believe that they were more concerned with promoting George Galloway’s line in Respect than the SWP’s position.
More seriously, they have denounced the SWP to individuals and organisations outside the Party.
Two members of the CC met with Kevin and Rob last week, they were asked to resign their posts in George Galloway’s office. Kevin and Rob have subsequently written to the CC refusing to stop working for George Galloway despite the party’s concerns.
Nick
The recent Respect NC voted to create a new position of National Officer. The SWP believed that the post was created to undermine Respect National Secretary John Rees. However, after some changes to the way the post was defined, the SWP agreed to setting up of the post. George Galloway then suggested that Nick did the job. Nick said he would seek various people’s opinions.
The SWP made it clear that we didn’t think Nick should accept the job because he had publicly disagreed with the line being put by the party about Respect. This would have created confusion in the Respect national office. Nick met with two members of the CC and agreed to accept party discipline and not take the post. Several days later his name was put forward by a member of International Socialist Group for the post. When asked, Nick refused to withdraw his name saying he had changed his mind and now wanted his name to go forward.
Despite a further meeting with two members of the CC and several phone calls, Nick refused to withdraw from standing for the post. There are occasions when the CC may ask a comrade not to take a post, perhaps a full time trade union position, or promotion to a job that puts someone in an untenable position. Nick was therefore expelled because he refused to work under the direction of the SWP leadership and reneged on the agreement he made with the CC.
It is important to make one thing clear, the three comrades have not been expelled because they disagreed with the Central Committee. It is because they failed to accept Party discipline and worked against the nationally agreed SWP line.
Expelling comrades is not something the CC does lightly, but in all three cases we felt we had no choice.
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