No Platform Continued...

(From Letters in Weekly Worker 707 - http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/707/WW707.pdf)

Platform
Wladek Flakin get things completely wrong (Letters, Weekly Worker January 31). He accuses myself and the CPGB of embracing, or at least toying with, third period Stalinism. Why? Because I supposedly cite approvingly the tactics employed by the Communist Party of Germany in the early 1930s. Comrade Flakin then treats us in his letter to a standard Trotskyite lecture about the crimes and misdemeanours of the Stalinist KDP. All very well and good, comrade.
A little problem, however. You write about the early 1930s. I was writing about the early 1920s - a time when the KDP could hardly be said to be Stalinist. If you have to have an argument, it really is worth accurately reading what your opponent has to say … otherwise we end up wasting time and energy.
Bill Jeffries of the Permanent Revolution group has also recently taken me to task over my articles on the British National Party and the no platform tactic (www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1902). Unfortunately, it too is full of misrepresentation … and, in his case, almost hysteric posturing. Nonetheless, it is just about worth responding to, even though it does little more than rehash old ideas - tried, tested and failed.
Comrade Bill’s underlying problem is his stubborn unwillingness, or perhaps his inability, to appreciate that debating with the BNP is not in any way counterposed to working class self-defence or to organising an armed militia. Both of which form an integral part of our immediate programme.
Using violence against the BNP or any other anti-working class group or party, must, however, been seen as a tactical question. Turning this into some sort of shibboleth has nothing to do with Marxism.
Bill insists it is I who is confusing tactics and principles by my “advocacy of debate over no platform.” Yet, as my articles have made clear, it is not a case of advocating one tactic over the other (as he does) but approaching this and indeed every question on the basis of a balanced and sober judgement of various pros and cons - in my opinion the great strength of Marxist politics - as opposed to the fixated narrowness of social democracy or anarchism.
Bill insists that the BNP is “an instrument of civil war against the working class” and as such it is a movement that can be stopped by force and force alone. The first statement is nowadays worth questioning, the second is simply absurd.
In my first article I argued that even against bona fide “fascists”, if it was “correct and advantageous to our cause” then it would be perfectly proper for any Marxist organisation worth its salt to “go on the attack” and physically engage with them on the streets with fists, boots …. or AK47s. By the same measure it could be perfectly proper to engage in “debate”. It all depends on circumstances.
This is also true of non-fascist organisations such as Ukip, the Tories or even the Labour Party - tactically nothing should be ruled out from the start.
Those who somehow go along with Bill’s idea that I underwent some sort of epiphany in the week between writing my two articles on the BNP by not defining it as fascist should take a look at a piece I wrote a year ago in Communist Student. Here I argued that terms like ‘Nazi’ and ‘fascist’ should not be thrown around willy-nilly and that the BNP today “represents something qualitatively different” from the BNP of yesterday (www.communiststudents.org.uk/paper/002/fascism.html).
I have used the early 1920s KPD as an example. Not because I necessarily agree with its tactic of debating with the nationalist right in Germany, the fledgling National Socialist Workers Party included. But this episode at least shows that there is, and should in principle be, more than one string to our bow. After all, the KPD also had fighting formations and stood in elections at the time.
To dismiss any of these tactics as a matter of principle, that is foolhardy. But at least comrade Bill has stopped banging on about our position being akin to Stalinist third periodism. Thank goodness for small mercies.
Nonetheless, the comrade clings to his definition of the BNP as “an instrument of civil war against the working class”. He claims it is demonstrably false that the BNP does not organise street fighting. Oldham and the attacks of 2001 are cited!
Yet, if he were to remove his dogmatic glasses for one second, it would become palpably clear to him that the strategy of the far right in Britain has changed dramatically, now focusing predominantly upon the ballot box. To refuse to see that is to disarm oneself and the working class movement.
Tactical flexibility precisely recognises that in politics things can change rapidly. It is quite feasible that the BNP could drop its populist agenda and revert back to the tactics of fighting for the streets, harassing the left, breaking up meetings, etc. This would of course necessitate another shift in our approach. But today we have to deal with things as they are, and adopt the appropriate tactics.
Does Bill think that the Tories or the Labour Party are consistent democrats? I don’t. Should we always seek to deny them a platform as a result of their fake democratic posturing? To ask the question is to answer it. Anybody who, out of whatever conviction, calls to always do this or always do that is in effect renouncing Marxism.
Apparently by asserting that it might not be the best idea to shout down or “kick the shit out of” some hapless old war veteran standing for election, but that better tactics might be to defeat his ideas and potentially win over thousands of voters, I have become a “liberal” and “pacifist” opponent of what Bill terms “militant anti-fascism”. This is pathetic and merely underlines the paucity of the comrade’s political perspective.
Permanent Revolution comrades, as they made clear at last year’s Communist University North, are convinced that even the possibility of talking alongside a BNP supporter in a radio debate, or in local elections hustings, is unacceptable. “Pull the plug!” is their political elixir. So comrade Bill has to dub a proponent of the workers’ militia a “pacifist” and a “liberal”.
More to the point, it is simply wrong to say that the “physical suppression of ideas” is working - look at the votes for the BNP! They are winning the political battle in certain communities, and this is not because there are not enough UAF stalls or people doing anti-BNP leafleting.
Comrade Bill reaches the conclusion that my take on all this amounts to “doing nothing against the Nazis.” He could not be more wrong. My position is that the left must organise on a different basis - one that takes democracy seriously both in wider society and within its own organisations. Without that, real thinking is impossible.
Nobody should know this better than comrade Bill himself. He was, after all, a victim of the “democratic centralism” of Workers Power – ‘democratic sectism’ in other words. We need to fight for the most open and frank exchange of views because only under these combative conditions can the truth be established. Simply repeating the majority line again and again is more than useless.