PCS affiliates to HOPI! And the smear campaign is stepped up

What excellent news for the anti-war movement in Britain! Thanks to some hard work from comrades in the Public and Commercial Services union, Hopi has now got its first national trade union affiliate - hopefully the first of many, as our campaign begins to impact on the workers’ movement.

Organised labour must be central to any anti-war movement worth its salt. The working class - the most consistently democratic class - must be hegemonic in the fight to undermine the rotten imperialist plans of the British pseudo-democratic state and look to organise with their comrades in struggle across the globe. Given the current weakness of the organised working class movement, independent class action against war beyond the usual routine march has been severely lacking.

Yet there are shining examples that catch the eye - most obviously in the recent case in the US of 25,000 workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union taking action to demand the immediate withdrawal of occupying troops from Iraq. This action had resonance within Iraq itself - the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions and the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions came out with a call for the immediate end to the occupation of Iraq and for workers’ organisation independent of the numerous sectarian gangs.

When it comes to Iran, Hopi provides a general framework to coordinate working class political action against war - both in the heartlands of imperialism and within Iran itself. What matters in all this is politics and the ideas that we attempt to win the anti-war movement to uphold and fight for both at home and abroad. Principles matter.

It is a sad state of affairs when the misleaders of the Stop the War Coalition around the Communist Party of Britain’s Andrew Murray and the Socialist Workers Party’s Lindsey German desperately pass off proletarian internationalism and working class independent organisation as somehow divisive, sectarian or providing a left cover for imperialist war. Comrades will remember how October 2007 saw the STWC, at the urging of comrade Murray, deny Hopi affiliation to the purportedly ‘broad’ and ‘inclusive’ coalition run by the ‘socialist’ SWP in alliance with the ‘communist’ CPB.

Comrades will recall that they invited along the Iranian state-funded Press TV to film proceedings and the SWP heartily applauded those who spoke of how wonderfully progressive sex change operations are for terrorised homosexuals in Iran. While a campaign that opposes both imperialist war and the Tehran theocracy is excluded - a campaign with significant contacts and support in Iran - those who engage in apologetics for the regime even as it bans, imprisons and tortures working class militants, are just the ticket.

At the STWC conference, Abbas Edalat of the Campaign Against Sanctions And Military Intervention In Iran (Casmii), assured us that there are “no forces in Iran who are fighting both against the threat of an imperialist intervention and the regime”. Press TV recorded his speech, as ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ delegates applauded and cheered. Yet the next month thousands of students came onto the streets of Tehran with slogans like “No to war, death to the dictator” and “Hands Off the People of Iran”. They were dealt with harshly - over 80 comrades were arrested, and a small number of them are still languishing in prison today. Others are in hiding. Not that stooge Edalat would have much to say about that, of course. Criminally, the student protests were not even covered in Socialist Worker until February 12 2008, and even then the article did not care to mention that the arrested comrades had been organising anti-war protests.

SWP lies
Given the success that Hopi has enjoyed thus far, it is to be expected that the campaign of hate and lies will only increase. Readers of the Morning Star will have seen that PCS national standing orders committee member and SWPer John Gamble has initiated a new round of attacks against us (see his letter, below).

He parrots the usual nonsense that Hopi is not “primarily concerned with opposing US maniacal military adventures”, but with “splitting the Stop the War movement in Britain.” Yet it was Hopi that applied for affiliation and the STWC leadership that excluded it! And no-one who even glances at the Hopi website could honestly claim that it is “not primarily concerned” with opposing imperialism - pride of place goes to its unequivocal opposition to war and sanctions and the campaign demands the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US-UK troops from the Gulf.

While Hopi is clear that the main enemy is imperialism, it also recognises the theocratic regime, with its anti-working class, neoliberal agenda, as an enemy. We oppose any imperialist intervention, while at the same time supporting democratic, secular and socialist movements fighting to overthrow the theocracy and create a genuinely anti-imperialist Iran. This is not a “sectarian” cover for imperialism. It is called proletarian internationalism.

Comrade Gamble also appeals to the ‘official communist’ sensibilities of the CPB - disappointed that they did not join with their (increasingly Stalinoid) comrades in the SWP to condemn the front group of the “misnamed [!] CPGB micro-sect”. It is worthwhile remembering that the “micro-sect” he mentions is actually an official affiliate of the STWC. Yet Hopi, condemned as a CPGB front, is barred. Pathetic.

It is extremely insulting to the PCS delegates to suggest that they were somehow “duped” into voting overwhelmingly to affiliate to Hopi. Conference just did not understand SWP objections and some even dubbed them “apologists for the Iranian regime”. I wonder why. The problem for the SWP leadership is that the working class consists of people who are perfectly capable of weighing up the arguments and coming to the right conclusion - irrespective of what the SWP line happens to be.

That applies to Iran too. Yet comrades will remember how the SWP heartily cheered Edalat at the STWC AGM. He told us: “Put yourself into the shoes of an ordinary member of the public. If you tell him, ‘Don’t attack Iran, but it is a vicious, repressive regime’, he gets confused. And he’s already confused by the massive demonisation of Iran.”

This reactionary and elitist view of the working class is almost common sense on today’s far left. “Ordinary” people cannot understand high political questions like we can, so best to keep things simple and not confuse them. How ironic it is then, that PCS delegates looked at Hopi’s implacable opposition to imperialist war, sanctions and occupation, together with its principled emphasis on internationalism, and overwhelmingly voted in favour of affiliation.

One aspect of Gamble’s letter which may have some grounding in reality is the claim that the Socialist Party-led Left Unity preferred to take the Hopi motion to one calling for PCS to affiliate to the Labour Representation Committee. This would make some sense - while the SP has expressed sympathy to Hopi’s aims (although it has not yet affiliated), it might well have found the LRC question embarrassing - on the one hand, it writes off Labour Party work as a waste of time; on the other hand, it does not want to be seen opposing support for Labour lefts like John McDonnell. However, given the SWP’s own lack of any serious strategy in relation to Labour, it is hardly the task of comrade Gamble to lecture the SP on “political priorities”.

He talks of a “lie going around the world before the truth has tied its boot laces”. Yet it is he and his organisation that are the liars - not just in terms of what they say about Hopi, but in terms of their disgraceful apologetics for the Iranian regime. Shame on them.

Given the theoretical meltdown of the left and the erosion of fundamental working class political principle, it is hardly surprising that Hopi’s approach has had such a positive impact across the country. Hopi has been unique in underlining the necessity of politics and principle in approaching the complex issues of war and the Middle East - an anathema to the SWP leadership, given its conscious and repeated subordination of political principle to short-term sect gains and manoeuvres.

The SWP leadership should at least have the decency to debate the vital question of Iran solidarity work in front of the anti-war movement and the whole working class, not smear Hopi with Stalinoid slander and outright lies.


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Watch out for dodgy splitters
Letter to Morning Star, May 27

It is frustrating to sit and watch a train crash go on in front of you and be unable to act.

Recently, the PCS conference voted to affiliate to an organisation purporting to defend the people of Iran from attack by the US and its allies - the so-called Hands Off the People of Iran (Hopi) campaign. What most delegates didn’t know is that this organisation is not primarily concerned with opposing US maniacal military adventures, but rather splitting the Stop the War movement in Britain. In reality it is a front for the misnamed CPGB micro-sect.

The Stop the War Coalition has successfully united millions of people to oppose the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. By raising the issue of the nature of the islamic regime in Iran, Hopi seeks to split this movement on sectarian lines.

This would only delight Bush and Brown and the whole warmongering lobby. Hopi provides a left cover for liberal apologists for war, the likes of Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens, in the liberal defence of murder.

It was unfortunate that the main left force in PCS, Left Unity, were duped into supporting this affiliation, apparently to avoid having a debate around affiliation to John McDonnell’s Labour Representation Committee - surely a bizarre sense of priorities. Sadly, Morning Star supporters went unheard in the debate, which left the SWP isolated and slandered as apologists for the Iranian regime in opposing this affiliation.

As Mark Twain once said, a lie can go around the world before the truth has tied its boot laces. PCS branches need to question their conference delegates about this con trick as a matter of urgency.

Jon Gamble
PSC national standing orders committee (personal capacity)

Rebranding Exercise Flops

As expected, the Reclaim the Campus conference on May 17 did not cohere the student left around a worthwhile set of principled politics. Instead it was a rebranding exercise for Education Not for Sale, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s student front. Ben Klein reports

The Reclaim the Campus conference was meant to refocus and broaden Education Not for Sale. Around 60 attended, a large chunk from the Alliance for Worker’ Liberty, the dominant force in ENS. Then there was a sprinkling from revolutionary youth groups: Revolution (Workers Power’s outfit), Communist Students and two leading members of the Socialist Workers Party/Student Respect - namely Rob Owen and Claire Solomon. The rest were a rather formless bunch from the so-called anti-capitalist movement, which the AWL has been so keen to tail.

The SWP comrades were there as observers. Revo was there because ENS has a few anarchist types in tow. We were there to challenge the AWL. CS sent a small delegation.

As we have made clear, there can be no fraternal relations between CS and ENS while the latter covers for imperialism and refuses to adopt a principled position on US-UK occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. A political litmus test.

Although things started at 11am, it was not until 3pm, after mind-blowingly dull ‘plenaries’ on such controversial topics as marketisation of education and the NUS governance review, that we actually got to discuss why we were actually there in the first place - ie, student left unity.

Dan Randall put forward the AWL’s proposals for ENS. He said that “students are in a situation where the potential exists to create a broad network of anti-capitalists around a number of key political bottom lines” in order to form “some sort of democratic society based on collective ownership and so on”.

Underlining how nothing new was to come from this event, he argued that ENS has always sought to be that anti-capitalist alliance between Marxist socialists (like himself), eco-socialist and anarchists, and we should not adopt a programme or platform that precludes the involvement or unity with those types.

Apparently, the “CS alternative does precisely preclude unity with these forces and would alienate them”. According to comrade Randall, “even adopting a proper Marxist programme, as opposed to the incredibly inadequate one that CS have put forward, would be wrong”. He did not explain at all why our programme is inadequate or what he actually disagrees with, however.

In formally proposing the CS platform I put forward the view that Marxists must look to what should unite us as Marxists - namely revolutionary democracy, consistent internationalism and a commitment to working class rule. I pointed out that the conference had not only been called, organised and built by purported Marxists, but also that most of the speakers, the chair and nearly all of the programmatic and constitutional proposals came from purported Marxists too.

What was needed, I argued, was a broad outline of the principles around which we as revolutionaries could unite - this is what our platform embodied and why it should be adopted.

There is no reason why those who say they are anarchists could not be won to accept those principles. It is true that this project will, initially at least, not win over a majority of students. Indeed, arguing for Marxism on the student left was hard enough amongst the so-called Marxist left in today’s conditions. Whereas the sects talk about the Bolsheviks and revolution at their own meetings, when they set up so-called broad fronts they do not put forward their own politics, but merely seek to reflect existing consciousness.

Tina Becker added that the CS platform is not about excluding those who are not Marxists, but it does unapologetically propose Marxist politics. Marxism does not provide the basis for a “confessional sect”, but for the unity of all those committed to revolutionary change.

Sacha Ismail (AWL student organiser) argued that there are situations where you do not put forward your “whole programme”. He called ENS a “hybrid” and counterposed the need to act unitedly on given issues to agreement on everything. Of course, we are for acceptance of Marxist principles as a guide to action.

Troops out now?
AWL student comrades did not uphold the social-imperialist position of their organisation on Iraq (the AWL majority opposes the call for ‘troops out now’). Instead they preferred to go for a rotten fudge. Comrade Randall suggested opposition to “imperialists and predators big and small”, alongside “No to war on Iran, against the occupation of Iraq” (nothing about Afghanistan though). AWL students are obviously acutely aware how unpopular their ‘troops in’ position is. Even amongst their own, albeit thin, periphery. They certainly did not want to be humiliatingly defeated at their own conference on this crucial issue.

Vicky Thompson of Hands Off the People of Iran proposed a straight forward amendment: “Opposition to imperialism. The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.” Opposing this, AWL majority member Sofie Buckland insisted that the call lends support to the reactionary islamist militias. She was adamant that ENS should not take a position on this question - despite its fundamental importance for the British workers’ movement. So much for being “against the occupation of Iraq”.

ENS has long been tainted by the AWL’s social-imperialism. The fact that comrade Thompson’s amendment was passed despite AWL opposition should be welcomed. However, knowing the AWL, I would not hold out much hope that it will be acted upon. Although eight of the members of the 10-strong leadership body are broadly committed to ‘troops out now’, the two convenor positions are safely in the hands of the AWL and it is almost certain that the whole issue will be swept under the carpet.

AWL front
CS comrades consistently pointed out that this was nothing but a rebranding of the AWL’s ENS front. We argued that genuine unity must be based upon programmatic clarity - principles cannot be thrown overboard in the name of the lowest common denominator.

This may have helped focus the minds of Revo comrades. Exactly what sort of organisation was it signing up to? So at the last minute they put forward an amendment to the proposed constitution, demanding the deletion of references to ENS as a membership organisation - a proposal which struck a chord with the anarchists present. After a half-hearted attempt to oppose this by comrades Buckland and Robin Sivapalan, the AWL gave in. Presumably the comrades did not want to come across as being too dominant.

The result is that there is now another student organisation with almost exactly the same politics as the SWP’s Student Respect and the Labour left-sponsored Socialist Youth Network, but without any formal membership structure.

Student Respect had cancelled its own student ‘left unity’ conference, which had been billed for the next day. Perhaps the SWP had been unable to mobilise enough outside its own ranks to make it worthwhile. But Rob Owen was definitely in a good mood. Laughing off accusations that the AWL and SWP have essentially the same approach to politics, he talked about plans for a “bigger, broader conference in a couple of months time”. Predominantly, he said, aimed at defeating the NUS governance review.

Hands Off Hopi!
When it came to motions, Vicky Thompson was given two minutes to argue why ENS should affiliate to Hopi.

The two speeches against came from diametrically opposed positions. Firstly, comrade Randall claimed Hopi is not a serious campaign. Allegedly it was absent from the demonstration to release Iranian trade union leader Mansour Ossanlou outside Tehran’s London embassy. In fact four Hopi steering committee members were there. But no AWLers. Nevertheless, the message from comrade Randall was clear: Hopi is Iran-defencist.

Then Luke Cooper from Workers Power’s Revo described Hopi as a “propaganda bloc” which equated the Iranian regime with the forces of US imperialism. A good polemic against the AWL, perhaps. But hardly against Hopi, whose starting point is that US imperialism is the main enemy.

The vote was so close there had to be a recount (an AWLer sympathetic to Hopi had his hand pulled down). Eventually it was clear that the unholy alliance of imperialist apologists and resistance glorifiers had won the day. On the one hand, Hopi is called “third campist” by those who think our Iranian comrades should join the Revolutionary Guard if conflict with the US breaks out. On the other hand, Hopi is labelled “defencist” by those who think that imperialism can provide some sort of space to protect workers in the Middle East from “clerical fascism”.

Later on, Kave, an Iranian student and supporter of Hopi, gave the most inspiring speech of the day - but perhaps it was aimed at the wrong audience. He outlined recent developments within the Iranian student movement, noting its self-definition as communist, and argued that if it is to progress then there must be a mass revolutionary party free of the Stalinism of Tudeh and capable of leading the struggle of the Iranian workers to take power.

Surely the same applies to Britain. The left must break with petty sect projects and the frontism of Respect, ENS, etc.

Left Unity not on offer

What sort of ‘unity’ does the student movement need? Dave Isaacson and Ben Klein reject economism and put forward the case for Marxism

This weekend will, farcically, see two separate gatherings to discuss ‘left unity’ in the student movement. Firstly, the ‘Reclaim the Campus’ event on Saturday May 17, called by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty-run Education Not for Sale campaign, along with Sussex University and London School of Economics student unions. Next day there is a “meeting to discuss the building of a conference of the student left” initiated by the Socialist Workers Party’s Student Respect.

This second meeting, entitled ‘For a democratic, campaigning student movement’, was called in the full knowledge that the ENS event was taking place the day before - indeed Student Respect had been publicly invited at the beginning of April, at the Save NUS Democracy rally during the National Union of Students conference. Clearly the SWP has no wish to tail behind the AWL in student politics - certainly now it has two SR members on the NUS executive, while ENS has none.

Because of our highly critical approach, Communist Students has been accused of failing to take the quest for left unity seriously and of putting our own “sect interests” first. The truth, however, is quite the opposite. Left unity is simply not on the agenda this weekend.

Mind you, none of our critics are clear on what left unity is for - beyond ‘reclaiming our national union’ and building bigger and better campaigns. Neither ENS nor SR has any strategic vision. So most of those involved (leaving aside SWP/AWL sectarianism towards each other) gravitate spontaneously towards a lowest-common-denominator fudge.

SWP, AWL and Workers Power’s Revo youth group - which is intervening in Reclaim the Campus - are all self-professed Marxists, yet none of them fight for unity on the basis of Marxism. Have they such little faith in their ideas that they think left-leaning students cannot be won to them? Or do they see their own sect as ‘the Marxists’ - the revolutionary party in embryo form - and the rest of the left as simply a pool to fish new recruits from?
Marxism

Communist Students says Marxist ideas are powerful because they are true. They best explain where exploitation and oppression come from and why capitalism operates in the way it does. And they show how to kill the system off and usher in the era of human freedom - an aim that can win millions to its banner. Marxism teaches that the working class is the gravedigger of capitalism, the agency that can storm the citadels of power and win genuine democracy, when it is organised into a mass, revolutionary Communist Party.

Marxist ideas are currently held by very few students. But this situation does not have to continue. The biggest obstacles to winning leftwing students to Marxism are the existing ostensibly revolutionary groups who erect bizarre shibboleths to preserve their sect integrity, fighting over the recruitment of ones and twos, while refusing to advocate Marxism in the wider movement. Overcoming this perspective will need a protracted fight.

To this end Communist Students is putting forward its own political platform at Reclaim the Campus. This is a means of raising the level of debate, so that fundamental issues are addressed.

ENS seems terribly confused about what its purpose is. Sometimes it is an “education campaign” or a “united front”. At other times, a vehicle for left unity. The original ENS draft founding statement claimed: “We aim to become an activist network and policy development organisation which helps to rebuild the student movement along these lines from the bottom up.” It also called for “Left unity. The activists and organisations of the student left should unite - maximum unity in action, free and open debate about our differences and disagreements” (www.free-education.org.uk/?page_id=43).

Yet, in the newly updated version coming from AWL comrade Daniel Randall (he was their candidate for NUS president at the spring conference), the ENS seeks “to organise students alongside the workers’ movement to replace capitalism with a society based on collective ownership, social provision for need, ecological sustainability and consistent democracy” (www.free-education.org.uk/?p=517). A bit more than an “education campaign” then!

The rest of comrade Randall’s platform is a veritable shopping list of student economism expressed in the most vague and abstract way, with a sprinkling of Guardian-style concern for ‘human rights’ substituting for its lack of proletarian internationalism.

Revo

What of the Revo group? Luke Cooper, a leading Workers Power and Revo student, recently wrote that his “message to AWL members is - start a fundamental reassessment of your tradition and method” (Workers Power April). But the comrades do nothing to challenge the method of the AWL. Another leading Revo comrade, Jo Casserly, has stated, correctly, that, “Randall’s draft uses such vague formulations like ‘turn outwards towards the anti-war movement’. It is not enough to simply turn towards the anti-war movement - we must call for the immediate end to the war! In fact, the anti-war movement would be in their rights to tell us where to get off, if this is not adopted as a concrete policy at this Saturday’s conference. As a result of sidestepping these vital questions, the draft statement becomes entirely focused on economic demands for students (for grants, against fees, etc)” (worldrevolution.org.uk/index.php?id=24,868,0,0,1,0).

Revo has proposed to change the campaign’s name from ENS to Reclaim the Campus, to reflect a “broader, radical agenda”. We agree that ENS is narrow and is tainted by association with the AWL’s social-imperialism and its economism. But ‘Reclaim the Campus’ is no better. It says nothing about the politics of the group and what kind of future we are struggling for. And when on earth were the campuses ours if we are going to ‘reclaim’ them? There is no future in the past - no ‘golden age’ of free education for all.
Economism

When we charge the AWL and the left in general with economism, we are, of course, met at best with confusion and not infrequently with incredulity. What do Marxists mean by the term? The narrow or common definition of economism is the reduction of Marxism to the level of trade union politics. That is widely known. But there is a broader definition: ie, the denial of the centrality of democracy. Hence imperialist economism, totalitarian economism, atheist economism, student economism, etc.

The AWL just does not get it. Ed Maltby tries to address the issue head on: “I think that the CPGB’s attack against our ‘student economism’ is simply daft. Yes, in 2003 the anti-war movement was massive, despite not being related to a day-to-day student issue. But look at every other mass student movement in Europe recently! Can we find one which the CPGB would not accuse of rank ‘student economism’?”

And Sacha Ismail, the AWL’s student organiser, tells us: “What the CPGB calls economism is a focus on basic class-struggle issues - ie, the ideas that trade unions should organise and fight over wages, working hours, conditions; and that these struggles in the workplace are the cell of the future communist reorganisation of society.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, comrades! Economism is not a charge we would attach to a mass movement of any kind. It concerns those who profess to be Marxists. So, Ed Maltby will search in vain for an example of where we have characterised a movement (as opposed to the actions of a left group) as economistic. Search away, and tell us how you get on.

Sacha characterises “class-struggle issues” as wages, hours and conditions. This is certainly economism in its narrow trade union form. This crude rejection of the centrality of the Marxist programme for democracy is loyally repeated by Daniel Randall. He writes that, “as long as the abstract ‘call’ for immediate withdrawal of troops is made, everything else - like, I dunno, class politics - is irrelevant.” What idiocy is it that leads self-professed socialists to believe that calling for the defeat of ‘our own’ imperialist state’s occupation of another country is not “class politics”?

Comrade Randall then accuses us of a “lack of any orientation whatsoever to any real class struggle”. We find his organisation’s response to the recent strike by 25,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the US against the Iraq war interesting. Communist Students sent a message of solidarity and publicised our action on our blog.

Did the AWL send them a message? If so, did you have the courage of your convictions to tell them that it is their ‘kitsch’ outlook and low-level consciousness that brings them to struggle for the immediate withdrawal of imperialist troops? We also note that it took the AWL until May 7 to put online the May 1 statement from Iraqi trade unionists calling, amongst other things, for the immediate withdrawal of imperialist troops; and even then it prefaced the statement by saying how misguided it thought that demand was. And yet the AWL claims it is the CPGB that has a “ridiculously dogmatic position on Iraq”.
Marx and Engels

An important amendment to the Reclaim the Campus statement from Vicky Thompson of Hands Off the People Of Iran calls for the “immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan”. This is crucial. There can be no compromise on this basic issue. That it is missing from Daniel’s initial draft speaks volumes.

It appears that the AWL student fraction is not going to move from the scabby position of the AWL majority on Iraq. Sacha Ismail claims that this is not because they “don’t think ENS should take positions on big political questions”, but because “at a given stage in the development of an alliance or campaign, you have to weigh up what is gained by taking a majority position and what is lost”.

Apparently “relatively little” would be gained from this “slogan”. “General opposition to US imperialism and the occupation of Iraq” (despite the AWL majority’s refusal to call for the end of the occupation) is apparently sufficient. It is, though, unsurprising that the comrades are ashamed about the AWL majority view that imperialist troops can provide a “space” (albeit a “very limited” one) for Iraqi workers to organise in, and that to call for their withdrawal would therefore be wrong. But maybe there is a more practical consideration though - only a minority of AWL students still cling to this social-imperialist garbage.

Comrade Ismail admits that the AWL will almost definitely lose this vote, but says it will “continue to build ENS” if it does. This is typical of the historic malpractice of the trend the AWL comes from - allowing certain political positions to exist formally, but through control of leadership committees doing little or nothing to effectively fight for those politics.

Desperately attempting to theoretically justify the opportunistic limitation of his politics, he claims his practice is broadly analogous to that of Marx and Engels in the International Working Men’s Association, deemed by sage Ismail to be a “broad alliance between all sorts of anti-capitalist and at first not even anti-capitalist working-class currents”. “Only gradually” did it move to “a more explicitly revolutionary socialist direction, and right to the end it was broad enough to accommodate all kinds of different tendencies other than Marxists”.

What ahistorical twaddle. Firstly, Marx and Engels (ie, the revolutionary socialist Marxists) did not set up that organisation. They were not in the driving seat when it was formed. They entered it and fought for communist politics.

According to August Nimtz, “Marx had turned down apparently similar invitations” in the preceding years. What made this one different, and made it worth entering despite the awful politics of many who were involved, was that it contained real working class forces. As Marx wrote to Engels, “I knew on this occasion ‘people who really count’ were appearing, both from London and from Paris” (A Nimtz Marx and Engels: their contribution to the democratic breakthrough New York 2000, p179).

Where, by the way, are the “people who really count” flooding into ENS? The AWL is setting up this organisation - it supplies the bulk of the organised activists and has political control of ENS. Instead of looking to establishing something guided and informed by the politics of Marxism, the AWL comrades are, in the name of unity with largely imaginary forces, consciously limiting their politics. Wanting to be the revolutionary minority in a larger organisation it can recruit from, the AWL is using the same method as John Rees and Lindsey German - with a few more pretensions.

Throw enough shit and some might stick - standard sect 'polemic'

After the recent HOPI Launch Meeting in Leeds I had an exchange with AWLer Dave Kirk on the AWL, economism and troops out now. We also chatted about Iraq, Iran etc It was actually quite a civil one – not that you can tell by Dave’s article. He asked me questions about what the CPGB meant by economism, party and programme. I think he is quite new to politics and his questions were genuine. No doubt being cajoled into it by the AWL chiefs, he has now written an article that is so dire that one wonders how stuff like this can be produced by intelligent human beings who have read stuff by people like Engels and Sartre. 'Dialectician Dave’s' blunt and crude assertions, although not of much length, speak volumes the state of education within the AWL and its increasingly forlorn political outlook.

Comrade Kirk, even though he disagrees with the scabby AWL line on imperialism, would rather defend the sect integrity of his Zionist leadership than actually think about politics and engage with others in a serious way. Why? Because we’re the CPGB. Beyond the pale. Untouchable. That is why the Zionists on the AWL leadership are much closer to people like Dave on Iraq than the shit-stirring, gossip-mongering CPGB...

Despite his pompous posturing about declining our “generous offers” to talk about imperialism and Iraq, it is actually one of the things we did discuss during our little talk was Iraq. He even told me how odd it was that Sacha Ismail was denying that the AWL majority had ever talked of the occupation creating a “space” within which the working class could operate, when he and other comrades in the minority know all too well that he has written this! But no, don’t write about this publicly Dave, holding such misleaders to account might damage the unity of your sect. Instead put together some excuse for a polemic against the CPGB to show how wonderfully united and politically coherent the glowing project of the AWL is.

No, it is not the “main purpose” of the articles to win comrades from the AWL and ENS to join the politics of the CPGB. It is an attempt, just like in all of our articles against other left groups, to win these comrades to the politics of Marxism as a step towards overcoming petty sect division. Only in this way can the left go anywhere.


“They [the CPGB] denounce the politics of Mansour Osanloo and the Iranian workers movement for not being anti-war enough”.


What absolute bollocks. Find me the place where we say that please Dave. What we do denounce is the agenda of the leadership of trade unions with a scabby past, and who are only interested in the plight of Iranian workers when the US is looking to enact regime change on that country – rallying all sorts of people to its cause. Our Iranian comrades in HOPI have been trying to get unions like the ITF to do stuff on Iran for ages. They weren't interested. Rather odd they are now though, eh?

We went along to this action (the AWL didn’t), and repeated our calls for the unconditional release of all incarcerated Iranian trade unionists, whilst politically distancing ourselves from the agenda of the scabby ITF/ITUC and looking to break the rank-and-file from these forces. Is this “denouncing the politics of Osanloo and the Iranian workers movement for not being anti-war enough?” If you could have the decency to recant such a ridiculous accusation then that would be helpful.

On the role of socialists in trade unions, Kirk admits that the AWL “agree in general” (!) that communists should be “communists” in trade unions. Why there is the need to qualify this obvious statement with “in general” is simply beyond me.
He then goes on to say that such an outlook upheld by the CPGB is “cynical” and “utopian” because in practice this means using “the unions to build their party.”

Well, Dave, leaving aside the fact that there is no communist party on the left today (a question you constantly downplay or ignore) it is quite correct to argue that we win trade unionists to communism and the party that stands for that. Then they cease to be train unionists in the narrow sense and become communists. Is this cynical? Well it is if your aim is to build another party like the “stinking corpse” that is the Labour Party. “Utopian”? Well… if it is “idealism” to argue that the best and most class conscious elements into a party of communists who should seek to win all workers, pensioners, school students, househusbands/wives, the unemployed etc to this project then maybe you’re right. Maybe I do misunderstand dialectics and am nothing more than a pre-Marxian idealist....

“Marxists should be at the forefront of economic struggles.” Yes. Its party should lead them. It should make demands that challenge the logic of capital, not add a few quid onto the bureaucracy’s pithy calls. Dave, in a pathetic attempt to show that he does not suffer from economism, proudly boasts about how Marxists should also raise “the political question”. But Dave, there is no one “political question”. There are lots of them. Democratic questions. One big one, which you think might rattle you a bit more than some ‘insignificant sect’ like the CPGB, is the approach the workers’ movement takes to the state and its military operations. Just one of many.

This is why programme is key, and what passes as your 'programme' is economistic because it has very little to say about how we are ruled. No demands for the replacement of the standing army with a popular militia, no demands for a federal republic with instant recallability of officials, election of judges etc etc – all this, central to the best programmes of our past, are passed off by Kirk as “dogma and abstract reasoning”. Right.


“Workers self organisation will start with confused or inadequate politics but through struggle political consciousness will be raised. This is why we offer practical solidarity to all workers in struggle against capitalism. We understand that the political organisation we want to see will be forged during economic and social struggle not through meaningless draft programmes and denounciations.”

So programmes and drafts for programmes are “meangingless” then? “Denunciations” (by which you mean hard polemic against other trends in the workers movement most of which you agree with unless they are aimed at your scabby project) are irrelevant? I know, by virtue of your quote, that you are esteemed in the dialectical method of Engels (and then proceed to quote Sartre who rejected dialectics) but have you actually read Marx Lenin or Luxemburg? How do you think Lenin amassed such a sizeable Collected Works? By telling Russian workers how the Tsar wasn’t their best friend and how, just like Gordon Brown, he robbed from the poor and gave to the rich? No. He did so through fighting for a party with a minimum-maximum programme that could enable the working class to become a hegemonic political force – necessarily coming into conflict with all trends and shades of opinion within the workers’ movement. That is the project of Bolshevism. Of course political consciousness “will be raised” in confrontations between the workers and the bosses, but this does spontaneously lead to the programme that can set out a strategy for state power. That is why there is no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory.

Programme is not just about workers in one locality or one union but politically uniting the class as a class and enabling it to politically empower itself so it can rule – i.e. it is a fully practical project for society as a whole. Dismissing the struggle for a programme and a party able to do that at the level of the European Union is simply moronic. And it is very sad that young people who purport to stand in the tradition of Marx, Engels and Lenin do so.

So Dave, please try and do better next time. And please apologise for your shite about us denouncing Ossanlou as not being anti-war enough. That really is quite an embarrassing attempt to engage with other ideas in the movement. Which probably makes you a star pupil in the AWL....