Letters

Here we republish two letters concerning Communist Students attitude towards the ‘Reclaim the Campus’ conference which re-launched the Education Not for Sale front of the Alliance for Workers Liberty. These letters appeared first in the Weekly Worker.

Absurd

I write in astonishment at the absurdity of Ben Klein’s article, ‘Rebranding exercise flops’ (May 22). As part of the “so-called anti-capitalist movement” and as one of the “few anarchist types in tow” of Education Not for Sale, I am astonished that comrade Klein thinks that anarchists can “be won” to accept the principles the CPGB was proposing at Reclaim the Campus.

The main thrust of the proposals was that ENS should exist “to promote the ideas of Marxism”, which it recognises is important “as a guide to practice”. What is meant by this? Namely, what Klein thinks Marxism teaches the working class in his article, ‘Left unity not on offer’ (May 15): “that the working class is the gravedigger of capitalism … when it is organised into a mass, revolutionary Communist Party”. What anarchist would be “won” to this? What anarchist would “accept” this, let alone proposals that advocate entering parliament, socialism as “the first stage of the worldwide transition to communism” and fighting for communism in general?

Anarchists and the many libertarians in further and higher education reject communist parties and vanguardism as alien, hierarchical and elitist. I advocated a simple, loose anti-capitalist network of student activists. I could have formally proposed that ENS take on anarchist organisational principles – ie, a total absence of hierarchy and structure, absolute autonomy of campus groups from a central body, and the consistent use of consensus decision-making. But I realise that many Marxists, including those in the CPGB, would refuse to get involved in such a network. ENS needs Marxists within it, so I did not advocate a structure or aims that would alienate them. This structure would not involve the unity of “all those committed to revolutionary change”, but neither would the CPGB’s version of Marxism.

The CPGB and its student group, Communist Students, should realise that what the student movement needs most at the moment is action, not another Marxist talk-shop. Both the AWL and Revo have realised this and they did not want to alienate those anarchists and libertarians in education who believe it too, those who regularly participate in direct action. This is, arguably, the best way that anti-capitalists can project their message. A bold, successful piece of direct action, even if it involves a handful of people, can be more powerful, far better at attracting students to the movement, than handing out a thousand copies of the Weekly Worker.

What the student movement needs is an activist network that will encourage students who believe this to coordinate their actions across the country. The CPGB does not want this; all they hope for is a few more people to hand out “propaganda for Marxism”. Such a hopelessly inadequate strategy will take the student movement nowhere and it will never attract numbers to the cause of anti-capitalism. The outstanding success rate of Communist Students shows this.

If the CPGB and CS continue on their present course, they will lose what little credibility they have left and be forced even further to the sidelines of the student left.

Robbie Folkard
Manchester

Anarcho-elitist

Robbie Folkard’s letter is a good illustration of why Marxists should not be scared of putting forward Marxism, as Communist Students did at the Reclaim the Campus conference (May 29).

Comrade Folkard decries communist parties as “elitist”, yet he fails to realise that the actions of the anarchists, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Revo were absolutely elitist. We see Marxism as something that can be universally understood and universally applied, not something to be kept for the anointed few. Comrade Folkard and the other anarchists came with no vision for the student movement, no proposals and, quite frankly, no politics. The project of building a movement for radical social change needs more than a loose anti-capitalist network. Lots of anarchists recognise that, and I doubt they spent hours using consensus decision-making to decide it.

Folkard asks: “What anarchist would be ‘won’ to this [Marxism]?” Well, many actually. The history of the anarchist movement is one of tailism, be it to the bourgeoisie or to sections of the workers’ movement. This, coupled with an inability to arm the working class with the necessary organisation and ideas to achieve workers’ power, has enabled Marxism to win workers from anarchism and other immature trends within the workers’ movement time and time again. Those of us in Communist Students are confident that we can do the same again.

As early as 1873 anarchist followers of Bakunin discredited themselves with their actions during the Spanish bourgeois revolution (1868-74).

Engels wrote: “As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the state, shared the same fate. Instead of abolishing the state they tried, on the contrary, to set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went against the dogma they had only just proclaimed – that the establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud, another betrayal of the working class – for they sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie” (‘The Bakuninists at work’, 1873). The anarchists in Education Not for Sale will play a similar role – exploited and used.

When in practice the anarchists set about revolutionary change, the inevitable failure of their enterprises usually leads to workers abandoning anarchism and moving towards something else. At times this has been towards a Communist Party. It is the task of communists to ensure that the working class acts independently to achieve the necessary hegemony for revolution. The early period of the Russian Revolution is a prime example of how Marxists in action can win the working class to a Marxist programme, to the necessity of taking power and to the need for a Communist Party.

So when we came to Reclaim the Campus proposing the formation of a radical students group led by Marxism, we came openly and honestly. We did not hide or water down our politics for sectarian gain. No other group did this; no other group came to build genuine left unity, because they already have their own sects.

Another thing that comrade Folkard highlights is the need for action. It is true we need action; we need a movement that can strike with an iron fist. However, there is something just as important as building a movement that can strike with an iron fist, and that it is making sure we are punching in the right direction – hence our insistence on Marxism as the guiding light of our movement.

Folkard also fails to understand what ‘direct action’ is. It is not sporadic stunts taken by a few activists; that is elitist. Direct action is “working class self-activity independent of the state, the employers and the labour bureaucracy” (CS political platform). An example of actual direct action is the recent refusal of dockworkers in South Africa to unload arms bound for Zimbabwe. After World War II it was the CPGB that led actions to seize empty houses for the homeless. Now that, comrade, is direct action. The role of the Weekly Worker, then, is to facilitate the creation of a movement that can actually take direct action. Surely, propaganda by the deed should have died a death in our movement a long time ago?

Communists should unashamedly fight for Marxism. Narrow opportunism for short-term gains has led the left into disaster after disaster. Surely, the implosion of the Respect project should be a most recent and obvious reminder that such a method cannot build the movement, or the Communist Party we need.

Chris Strafford
Manchester

One comment

  • Dear comrades will you post it in the letter’s section in weekly worker I can not do from Israel.
    Thank you

    Jack Conrad reply to Tony Greenstein is a long string of pro Zionist positions on the British left that is almost as bad as the propaganda of the AWL. Like the writers of the AWL he turns a political debate into personal attacks such as : “what comrade Greenstein writes is a complete muddle including”. Worse he actually uses in his polemics very tick hints that Tony Greenstein is motivated by Anti Semitism. It is a similar tactic that the white colonial settlers in South Africa and their supporters in the world use calling those who wanted to destroy the Apartheid regime by a socialist revolution Anti Whites racists.

    Instead of relating to the actual reality of Israeli society as an imperialist sate formed by settler colonialist and examine closely the question whether a working class of a colonialist settlers society can become a consciousness revolutionary class through the struggles to better the condition of selling its labor power , he called Tony Greenstein’s position , a Third wordist economism that lost his faith in the working class in the advanced capitalist countries.
    If Jack Conrad had taken his time to think instead of writing this string he would have answered the question: did the white working class in South Africa, Algeria, former Rhodesia fought for the socialist revolution or supported until the end the the racist regimes and states.
    What is the evidence that comrade Conrad can master to prove that most Israeli Jewish workers will struggle to over throw the Israeli imperialist state apparatus?
    Any one who knows history is familiar with the fact that the Histadruth was born as a colonialist enterprise to expel Arab workers, That the Zionist labor movement stood with the British and crushed the anti imperialist struggle of 1936-9. That the Jewish workers supported the mass expulsion of the Arab workers in 1947-8. That the economic struggles of the Israeli Jewish employees are carried under the banner that their struggle is for the good of the Israeli state and that following the last defeats of Israel in Lebanon and Gaza the chauvinism among the Israeli workers his higher than ever.
    This does not mean that a minority of Israeli workers can not join the revolutionary struggle of the working class in the region and most importantly the Arabs and in particular the Palestinians. This however can happen only when these workers will understand that Zionism and the Zionist state is their class enemy.
    To argue that those who do not think that the majority of the Jewish workers in Israel can gain revolutionary consciousness because they want to protect their position as labor aristocracy is to lose faith in the working class in the imperialist states is to miss use the term third wordists and economism.It is as good as claiming that those who did not see the revolutionary potential of the majority of white workers in South Africa, Algeria or Rhodesia “Third world economists”.
    The real question in this debate is whether Marxists can support the right of self determination of all nations. Oppressed nations as well of imperialist states, or only of the oppressed nations where the non proletarian masses can be allies the working class in these states and part of the world working class revolution.
    Jack Conrad mentioned Marx. Thus it is only proper to ask what was Marx method on the national question. Did he and Engles supported the right of self dermination for all nations?

    To understand the Marxist’s method on the right of self termination – a democratic right that is not absolute but like any democratic right subordinate to the working class struggle against imperialism the arch enemy of the world socialist revolution, we should begin with the question did Marx support the right of self determination for all nations, or only the struggle of those nations that was directed against the reactionary powers in his time?
    The most known case was the case of the American South-The confederation that demand this right of separation on the ground of having this democratic right of self determination.
    Marx as I hope every one knows supported the north crashing the slave master and their state- the confederation army.
    . Less known but illuminating is Marx and Engles position on the Southern Slavs.
    The Southern Slavs, who for a thousand years have been taken in tow by the Germans and the Magyars, only rose up in 1848 to achieve their national independence in order thereby at the same time to suppress the German-Magyar revolution. They represent the counter-revolution. They were joined by two nations, which had likewise long ago degenerated and were devoid of all historical power of action: the Saxons and the Rumanians of Transylvania.
    Engels in Neue Rheinische Zeitung January 1849 The Magyar Struggle [221]
    ________________________________________
    Source: MECW Volume 8, p. 227;
    Written: by Engels about January 8, 1849;
    First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 194, January 13, 1849.

    Did Lenin support the right of self determination of imperialist nations as some social chauvinists reflecting the pressure of the ruling class want us to believe or only of oppressed nations?

    With the outbreak of the war in August 1914 the first question which arose was this: Should the socialists of imperialist countries assume the “defense of the fatherland”? The issue was not whether or not individual socialists should fulfill the obligations of soldiers – there was no other alternative; desertion is not a revolutionary policy. The issue was: Should socialist parties support the war politically? vote for the war budget? renounce the struggle against the government and agitate for the “defense of the fatherland”? Lenins answer was: No! the party must not do so, it has no right to do so, not because war is involved but because this is a reactionary war, because this is a dogfight between the slave owners for the redivision of the world”.
    Leon Trotsky Lenin on Imperialism February 1939))

    Thus it is not enough that a nation exists and demand the right of self termination for Marxists to support this right. It is necessary that this struggle will be progressive and our days anti imperialist
    The position of recognizing this democratic right to Imperialist state is leading to the same position of the Second International in August 1914- defense of the imperialist motherland. Of the reformists during second world war in support of one camp of imperialism against another..

    Rance was occupied during WWII by German imperialism. Could Marxists support the struggle for independent imperialist France?
    It leads in France to support French imperialism independence from German imperialism? Those who answered in the affirmative stood in reality with the oppression of the Vietnamese and the Algerians Those who stood with British imperialism stood with the oppression of the Indians and the Arabs.
    All the imperialist states during these wars fought for the same thing the super exploitation of the working class in the colonies

    But what about the right of self determination for the Israelis after the Arab working class revolution? Those who call for such a position in the real world stand for organizing a base for imperialist attack on the workers states of the Middle East.
    The only solution is a Palestinian workers state from the river to the sea as part of the socialist federation of the Middle East

    Yossi Schwartz
    ISL( Occupied Palesitne

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