Ted Crawford on Iran

With his kind permission, I print here Ted Crawford's report of his recent holiday to Iran. You will find Ted on the Revolutionary History stall selling his journal enthusiastically and cracking jokes about this or that stupid thing Trot groups have been up to of late. He is a very funny guy, as can be seen by the report...


Report and impressions on a visit to Iran 3-17 October 2008, contrasted with Syria and Turkey, countries with Islamic traditions, but claiming to be secular.

I will try to make clear in this report what I was told and what I saw or heard myself. Unless otherwise stated what we were told was information given by our guides. We flew south to Shiraz and stayed there, travelling by coach to Yazd, Ispahan and back to Tehran, staying in all these places, seeing marvellous architectural sights there and places in between. I will say nothing about these.

The Turks are a bit better off than the Iranians and both a lot better off on average than the Syrians, the CIA website says the Syrians have a GDP [at PPPs] of $4,700 (2007 est.) per capita and the Turks $12,000 (2007 est.) but I would guess the Gini coefficient at 42 is much more unequal than for the Syrians, for which the CIA makes no estimate. From the same source the Iranians have a GDP per capita of $10,600 (2007 est.), a very similar Gini coefficient to the Turks of 43, [1] a net fertility rate of 1.71 and a life expectancy at birth for males of 69, and for females of 72. The net fertility rate in Iran was confirmed by the observation that all the families we saw in the street or parks were one or two children, not five or six. On that we were told that during and just after the Iran-Iraq war there was a massive increase in the birth rate encouraged by the state (net fertility of 5 or 6) but then when they saw how the population was exploding they got cold feet and, in probably the most successful piece of population control in the world outside a far more brutal China, managed to cut the NFR by half in five years from which it has since declined further a good deal. Every small village apparently has a health/birth control clinic. We were told that, though the Ayatollahs do not particularly like abortion, it is not illegal and is practised with limitations on dates etc though I do not know any statistics about it, or indeed even if they are collected.[2] Since one of the most important aspects, if not the most important, of a woman’s liberation is the control of her fertility this is a considerable plus for human rights in Iran. From the same CIA statistics the women in Saudi (friend of the “West”) seem to be baby making machines. But in Iran as a result of the massive birth rate in the 1980s and early 1990s there is a great bulge of 15-25 year olds with consequent social problems such as unemployment.


Next religion. What was noticeable for a tourist group like ourselves was how much less intrusive the muezzin was in Iran than in Syria, Turkey or Libya where one was frequently woken up by the call to prayers. It is true that the Shias only have 3 calls and the Sunnis 5 but even so this surprised me a good deal. It seemed far less loud even though we were in a hotel just next to a mosque in Ispahan. Secondly there were far fewer new mosques being built though one of our guides complained bitterly that there were too many, the money for which could have been spent on hospitals or schools. (A lot of money was being spent on the restoration of the beautiful old mosques but I hope that an Iranian socialist or communist government would do no less.) Of course all the new mosques in Syria, Turkey, Britain or anywhere else are probably financed by the Saudis, Sunni Wahabis, the “Wee Frees” of the Islamic world. (The only problem is that they are not just sitting on the Isle of Skye throwing stones at those who dare to go fishing on Sunday but are sitting on most of the world’s oil supply and able to indulge their little hobbies internationally.) We were told that people as a whole were rather less religious than in the time of the Shah. There is a joke that Turkey is a religious country ruled by atheists while Iran is an atheist country ruled by the religious. Atheists is a bit strong, in both cases it is rather more nominal religious affiliation in the best non-practising Anglican tradition and in Iran anyway this is probably truer of the upper and upper middle classes.


Related to this was the position of women. Everyone, by law had to be “covered” but the niquab that conceals all but the eyes was hardly ever seen and, in every case where we saw it, the women turned out to be Saudi or Gulf states’ tourists. I know because they spoke and were spoken to by some of the women in our group and the first enquiry was where each came from. You see it more commonly in Ealing or near Hyde Park than you do in Iran. A member of our party who had been in Mashad, a very “holy” town in 2000 said the niqab was far more common there but many of those may have been Shia pilgrims from the Gulf too. Of course this “covering” of the head law intensely annoyed many of the strong women in our group – including Mary. The majority of Iranian women were also covered by the chador, the shapeless black garment which conceals both class differences in dress and age related differences in figure though a few girls in Tehran seemed to be wearing VERY tight jeans designed to distract the average male. But with a change in the law there would be a swift change so that I would guess fewer girls would then “cover” themselves than in Turkey. As we know from English history, the “rule of the saints” is never popular, above all when they ban the simple pleasures of bull-baiting and maypole dancing, so when prohibitions are removed there is an immediate and considerable reaction. But we were told that in the privacy of their homes people wore what they liked and the better off people in North Teheran did so while drinking prohibited alcohol, all available when ordered by phone from their friendly bootlegger. The prices, we were told, were much the same as in England but most of the money, instead of going to the government, went to the smuggler.[3] (We wretched tourists were absolutely “dry”.) Everybody was most friendly, the women were frequently approached and spoken to by Iranian women including schoolgirls. Most western tourists were Germans, followed by French with the British a minority and very few Americans. The sanctions were a bit of a joke. We could not use western credit cards normally but for big items, such as when we bought a small carpet, our cards were accepted and our details were phoned through to their office in the UAE so we apparently bought our carpet there.[4]


What about free speech and censorship? Foreign newspapers were emphatically not available and we were told local ones are frequently closed down if they overstep the line though our guides were far, far more outspoken than in Syria, let alone Libya where Mary had gone in 2007. Our Turkish guide was outspoken but not as “agin the government” as were the Iranians since he and his government were of course both secularist on the political issue of the day - and he put away the raki like anything. Apparently you can say what you like in Iran among your friends, the problem is publishing it. Indeed an Iranian girl I met on the plane to London had a special phrase for it – “verbal therapy” - people were allowed to moan and it was a useful safety valve as the phrase recognises. (Come to think of it this has similarities, even if the censorship is not so brutal, with what happens in Britain and the USA.) Our guide told us that a journalist in Shiraz asked him what improvements he would like to see in the tourist industry. He asked her to turn off the recording machine and then said that if he told her and her paper published it they would be closed down and he might lose his tourist licence. So she did not pursue that line of inquiry. The system, if you like, worked. As far as the mass media was concerned we had access in the hotels to a great many TV stations, BBC World News, CNN, Aljazeera and a surprisingly good Iranian government news station in English – see http://www.presstv.ir/programs/. We were told private homes were not supposed to have dishes but many did. There was also the official government English language daily newspaper, The Teheran Times. Far more readable than the Syrian government equivalent, or the Indonesian one said my Australian banker friend, it had, of course, a good many excruciatingly boring statements by government ministers and announcement of obscure delegations and treaties about trade or cultural links with a number of small countries. Yet there were also reprints from quality western papers, the Herald Tribune, the Sunday Times and so on - in all of which our little company was very interested as world markets reeled, they became rather poorer and worried about the prospects of any of their children now managing a hedge fund. Israel was never mentioned, only the “Zionists” but Al-Qa’ida was always coupled with the word “terrorist”, as in “American forces have killed a well known Al-Qa’ida terrorist leader”. This appellation was also applied to the group at Tripoli in the Lebanon – horrible Salafists I think. A number of statements by the Iranian government, whether made in good faith or not, denounced terrorism of all kinds but, as far as I could see, particularly the Sunni variety. I suspect that is their genuine position. (They would not regard Hezbollah as terrorist but as a popular-based Resistance movement, which indeed is what it seems to me.) On the web the Marxist Internet Archive www.marxists.org (which has a Farsi section) is blocked but not ETOL http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/index.htm which is entirely in English.


A small item I saw may have had significance which was that the Assyrian exile movement (of Christians) which had been based in the USA shifted its HQ to Iran in October 2008. Perhaps they know something we do not. We were told that the names of all those executed were reported in the press, presumably the publicity was thought to be a deterrent, the common criminals being hanged while the politicals were shot. Our guides said that no political ones had taken place for some years but that in the past, just after the war, pages and pages of the politicals’ names were listed in the daily papers which our guides obviously found disgusting even if they were somewhat lacking in sympathy for the criminals. They said the sort of people hanged recently at 4 in the morning in a stadium on a crane were generally gangs, guilty of something like raping 200 women and killing 20 of them though I suspect that was a bit of an exaggeration. There were beggars in the streets, quite often including women, which never happened in Syria let alone Libya, while they were there in the evening and sometimes quite young. Were they drug addicts?[5] But that must mean that they felt physically secure enough to beg at night which is a big point in the Iranians favour. Or was this prostitution? [6] I failed to ask the guides.


Politically our guides were certainly not lefties but seemed to be supporters of Mossadeq rather than the Shah, that is, nationalist, though not extreme, keen on the westernisation and modernisation of their country but through parliamentary democratic means and wary of the western powers. The latter very understandably so. They seemed to think Ahmo did not really have power but that rested almost wholly with the Ayatollahs and they seemed to think things had always been just as bad for the last 20 years, sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. There was no sense of the feeling that “the levels of state chaos and arbitrary repression have recently risen dramatically, as the ruling caste and government fragment and the ultras take uncontrolled actions on their own, while there is now a lot of fear among reformist intellectuals”, all of which an American connected to the neo-cons has suggested to me is happening. It may be so but I got no sense of it. If they were trying to present some Potemkin village of dancing happy workers and peasants for our delectation (which I do not believe for a moment) they were doing a very bad job of it.


On politics we were told that only about 25% of the population voted, faced as they were by a choice between a very conservative religious party, a v. v conservative religious party and a v. v. v. conservative religious party. Rather like us in the USA and Britain when faced with the choice between a pro-business party and a very pro-business party. The greater the evils in the choice, the less the differences, the fewer people are interested in participating. The candidates are all vetted by the clerically appointed Council of Experts and the clergy know where all the bodies are buried. Candidates are not removed for the political opinions but because it is announced that they are discovered to have taken bribes, behaved in sexually inappropriate ways etc, etc. All true but this is equally true of those who are allowed through of course, but the numbers of the more moderate, reformist members are severely whittled down. And, naturally, the reforming clerical faction(s) has some difficult in finding people who are clean as clean.


Travelling about the country by coach the roads were often very new and good and the sign posts, as in Syria, had both the names and distances in Latin characters as well as Arabic ones and frequently driving directions in English such as “Drive slowly”. Crossing the road in the towns was a most terrifying experience and highly dangerous for a foreigner. The cars themselves were often quite old – more so than the UK anyway, which is what you would expect, while one of our number who had been to Iran in 2000 on another tour said that there were far more cars on the road than at that time. I noticed a number of times pup tents or sleeping bags on the side of the road and enquired of our guide who laughed and said that though you could not go to your hotel with your girl friend you could go and camp with her. I asked if the police had not stopped that kind of thing to which he replied that the morality police had been abolished 10 years ago and that “‘They’ had given up on the young”. Now although I am sure that this happens (youth will always find a way) I do not know to what extent while, to own a tent for recreation and fornication, would mean that you were well above the economic Plimsoll line in Iran I would have thought. Was this confined to a small minority of those in north Teheran? I assume the girl would have to deceive her father in any case. But that seems inconceivable in Syria and, if happening in Turkey, not nearly so blatant. Last year I wrote about Turkey that “whether lay or religious it is, and certainly was, a socially very conservative place though we were told that a bit of a sexual revolution had taken place from the late 1980s and 1990s even if I do not expect this was of the same depth and intensity as that in the UK from about 1964 when it suddenly seemed that all one’s Christmases had come at once. In Turkey it was probably both geographically confined to the western areas and rather more of the occasional mutual furtive grope with one’s contemporaries of the same social class that had never been on offer before. We saw secondary school kids occasionally holding hands while Mary, with the eagle eye of the retired deputy head, easily spotted in Antalya the tarty one who had hoisted up her school uniform skirts to show maximum leg and was always surrounded by about five boys. It was, she said, all very familiar. Syria was a much, much more socially conservative place..” I think in Iran I once saw in a park a couple having a snog, though she had her hijab on.


Our guides did mention the Shiite practice of muta’a or temporary marriage in which couples are allowed to have sex and share responsibilities for a stated period of time. The basis for this has always been recognition of sexual need and does not imply payment of dowries or sharing of common property. (Sunnis ban Muta’a.) They said that some Ayatollahs had recommended this to deal with the problems of prostitution and our guides clearly thought of it as an amazing bit of mediaeval backwardness and bit of a joke. However it seems that the kids in their pup tents were just the youth having a shag, no religious nonsense at all. I was not indiscreet enough to ask what their attitude was to their own daughters! My daughter in Jordan says there is a boom there among medical practitioners repairing hymens for a healthy fee, the same appears to be true in the Lebanon and I would not imagine it is much different in Iran.


Both our guides were charming, immensely educated, lovely people, clearly very privileged and competent upper class professionals. I would guess that they came from families who had been unhappy with the Shah but had done nothing about it save grumble as they had a lot to lose. But our male lecturer was also a patriotic Iranian. When I enquired it turned out that in the Iraq-Iran war, when he had finished his degree (MSc I think) in London, he had gone straight back to Iran knowing that he would be called up for two years. There they shoved him into the heavy artillery, (175mm) which even if not as dangerous as the infantry was not without its perils. But there you are, patriotic and volunteering for the front, just like Bush and Cheney (dream on). He also said that in that war they had more volunteers than rifles with, I think, a hint of pride. On nuclear weapons I suspect our guides were not totally frank. When asked they said they genuinely did not know but I reckon the same could be said for some other statements they had made but of which they merely had a very good idea. If pressed I am sure they would have said that Iran lived in a very dangerous neighbourhood with nuclear-armed Pakistan to their east, an unstable largely Sunni state which had been handing out nuclear technology to other countries like a child molester hands sweets to kiddies, while on the west Israel threatened first use against a non-nuclear states like theirs – not to speak of US imperialism. What is more the USA had been far kinder to North Korea, which had these ghastly weapons than to Iran which had not. But the two sentences above are only my personal opinion but I believe they were patriotic Iranians without being jingoistic about it. We did see something of a nuclear installation surrounded by AA batteries – the latter looked a bit old fashioned to me - some way north of Ispahan off the main road going north to Teheran. There were piles of rock and earth which I took to be the spoil from digging out underground caverns. But for all I know it may all have been an elaborate hoax.


And our guide mentioned Israel when he told us to take no notice but that their real enemy was the Wahabi Saudi state which regarded them as idolaters, heretics and renegades and he implied that all Iranians knew this. (Our guide in Syria in 2005 never allowed the word Israel to pass his lips, only “Zionists.”) We saw minorities, went to a Zoroastrian fire temple, saw Armenian churches and passed synagogues though the Jewish and Christian minorities are declining because of emigration. There is certainly a real sense of Iranian nationhood, which does not exist in Pakistan, Iraq or Syria, founded on their poetry and we saw a moving scene at the tomb of Hafiz where young boys and girls had come to recite his poems. When I quoted in English the lines:-

“How many vows of repentance are undone

By the smile of wine and the tresses of a girl

Like the vows of Hafiz.”


Our guide immediately quoted them back in Farsi. And there are hundreds of poems and an immense corpus of his work. And because apparently Hafiz said he had seen God in a fire temple and mentioned Jesus both claim him as really one of theirs though in fact he was a Sufi mystic believing that “There are many ways up the mountain”. (I am told that even Iranian rappers sometimes do a bit of Hafiz – and I was told in the UK there is a flourishing Heavy Metal scene, not that the last makes me very interested.) And on the tomb of Cyrus someone had left a bunch of gladioli, not an Islamic sentiment but certainly a national one. There were other charming cultural cum social-political things. Just next to the finest bridge in Ispahan is the tomb, completed it is true a year or two before the revolution, which contains the bodies of two Jewish Americans, a great scholar and his wife, who were most learned about a whole number of Iran’s traditions and history which was put there with the permission of the mayor. The tomb is in pristine condition and thus I deduce there is this welcoming attitude to those from other cultures who have contributed to Iranian knowledge of their culture(s). They have the great self-confidence of the Chinese I think.


There were clearly considerable variations in wealth and income but even the CIA says that this is much the same as Turkey. I cannot say that we saw much of poor areas but our guides complained of universal corruption and the attitudes that existed. When I asked the lecturer what did the Ayatollahs’ children do, did they follow their fathers, he replied that they were shopping till they were dropping in the malls of Vancouver from which I deduced that their fathers were not capable of passing on their values and beliefs in face of all the shallowest and most superficial aspects of western society. One can almost feel sorry for the clerics if that is the case. Our mentors had an entertaining story from a few years back, all the details of which they said had been in the press, of a extremely pious high official who at the same time was having it off with his secretary. Four men in his office, also deeply pious and who had beards - the latter point very important - thought this was absolutely shocking and decided to expose the bounder. According to Sharia law before adultery can be proved it must be seen in the act itself by four men with beards. So they broke in to find him and the lady making the Beast with Two Backs. Alas, they were immediately sacked for violating his privacy and never employed again by the government while he continued on his way, having a certain “influence” in high quarters. So much for Sharia. This sort of thing leads to enormous cynicism and so it must be asked what are the prospects for the regime.


I would argue that given the idiotic American pressure which consolidates the position of the Ayatollahs and given an enormous unemployment rate of 20% or so together with a vast patronage machine of religious charities controlled by the clergy plus the Pasdaran militia, all regular volunteers, all of which helps the poorest, the whole lot fuelled and paid for by oil revenues, (85% of exports) the regime could continue for quite some time. With such a huge unemployment rate the working class, the only political force which could shake things a bit, is pretty passive except for isolated incidents. (I never got the chance of asking about the busmen’s strikes in Teheran last Christmas and their brutal suppression.) Among the population as a whole there must surely be not merely cynicism but a feeling that they have had it with politics. The slaughter, both in the war, the horrible purge of oppositionists in the 80s and early nineties plus their massive emigration must have knocked the stuffing out of them for a bit. What would change things is greater economic growth and rising employment while the quickest way for the West to achieve this would be to lift all sanctions and give cast-iron guarantees that there would be no attack on Iran as long as they did not get nuclear weapons. But do either the Americans or the Ayatollahs want a deal? Will either, even assuming a liberal future American President, want an active Iranian working class? But can sanctions be maintained in a bad recession?


For the details of modern Iranian history I have been using the relevant chapters of The Persians (2007) by Gene R. Garthwaite, a Prof at Dartmouth College in the States. Seems quite good but you have to read between the lines a bit to grasp the class nature of the situation in the great crises of 1953 and 1979-83 while for those of us who believe that consciousness arises from being rather than the other way round he seems to over emphasise the ideological springs of behaviour.


Since coming back to the UK I have heard that this Iranian cultural link to Germany, many archaeologists and linguists were there in the 19th and early 20th century, as well as the relatively larger number of tourists today, was continued in the latter half of the last century as the Russians sub-contracted the Stalinist movement in Iran for the East Germans to manage so that there is a lot of material about the Tudeh in the Stasi archives.

Ted Crawford

(4,859 words)


The following points in these notes were suggested by a left winger (Y.M.) in exile in the UK.

[1] Iran’s Gini coefficient was 44 according to UN in Jan 2008 , and is probably higher now.

[2] Abortion. This is not available to working class women, shanty town dwellers, women in rural areas, mainly because it is only available in private clinics, or unofficial ‘surgeries’

[3] ‘Alcohol prices were much the same as in England but most of the money, instead of going to the government, went to the smuggler.’ The smugglers are associated with the government committees … otherwise it would be impossible to bring alcohol into the country.

[4] Sanctions - it is true that for tourist credit cards and rich Iranians transferring money abroad, Dubai is used to avoid sanctions. However for most Iranians sanctions are not a joke. Major firms from car manufacturers to petrochemical companies are making workers redundant because they can’t buy equipment necessary for production. There is a shortage of some medicines and surgical equipment. Almost all Iranian banks are in the new list of sanctions, at a time of economic uncertainty many people are concerned that their wages will be paid into bank accounts blacklisted by new sanctions

[5] The beggars might not be drug addicts but Iran has a major problem with drug addiction ‘ – A report by the United Nations has found that Iran has the highest drug addiction rate in the world, the Washington Post reported on the 24th Sept 2008’

[6] Prostitution- Illegal however very common. In 2003 when the government briefly considered legal brothels, it estimated that about 300,000 prostitutes worked on the streets of the capital, that figure is much higher now. To this one should add the number of Iranian prostitutes ‘exported’ to the Gulf states. [Ted adds, this would be 1 out of 30-40 women in Iran in the relevant age group and 1 out of 10 women in Teheran were prostitutes which seems very high.]

Is another SWP front possible?

My reports from last Friday’s demonstration in London, called by 'Another Education is Possible' to oppose cuts in grants.

“You’re lucky you're late, there was hardly anyone here at the time we were meant to start”. This is how one member of the Socialist Worker's Party greeted me on arrival at the 'emergency' demonstration called by new SWP student front Another Education is Possible. There was not much of a hello from the others present either. At that point – half an hour after the demo was due to start – there were 40 people there at most. Rather despondent, everybody stood around wondering what to do next. SWP student organiser Rob Owen started shouting into a megaphone, but it was not having much of an effect on the mood of the masses. Some confused public school kids in bright purple blazers came up, wondering what was happening. They weren’t the only ones asking that question...

I need to explain who 'everybody' is in this context, as it was unfortunately not a throng of angry, potentially revolutionary youth keen to snap up revolutionary propaganda and get involved. It consisted instead of the 'usual suspects'. The majority were SWP members; the AWL, Revo and I completed the student left spectrum. I was accompanied by a comrade who wanted to leaflet for Hands Off the People of Iran, but he soon left to carry on with uni work once he realised he would be leafleting the ‘factions’ as opposed to the ‘masses’. I was tempted to go with him. At one point it looked as if we were all going to be sent packing anyway; the relatively large posse of coppers, spurred on by the fact that nobody had actually turned up, were giving the organisers much grief. In all fairness though they held their ground, and with our ranks swelled by a small group of anarchists and latecomers we went forth onto the streets of London, much to the bemusement of onlookers. The great thing about a small demo though (by this point about 50-60 people) is that you can be quite nimble on your feet. So it came to pass that the crafty leaders of the march sold the cops a dummy, and in a militant gesture to the world working class actually walked on the road around a roundabout! This was serious stuff.

Slogans chanted at the demo were very much of the cut and paste variety – “you say cutback we say fightback”, “we want them all to see, education must be free” and did not inspire much anger or enthusiasm amongst those present. Something of interest though was the relative openness of the SWP members in talking and discussing politics at the end – something I have not experienced for a while. Maybe it was because there was actually no basis to the usual argument of ‘let’s stop talking about stupid things like the popular frontist nature of Respect and its relationship to Marxism, as I have to go and speak to all the angry people out there’ etc. Maybe it was just because they were bored and wanted a bit of a bun fight. Whatever the reason, I had good discussions with some SWPers and exchanged views in a comradely manner.

Having said that, one did say that the CPGB had issued death threats to SWP members in the Socialist Alliance. A quite bizarre allegation which says a lot about the political culture of the SWP; slander used to isolate members from debate and maintain ideological purity. I find striking the disdain with which ordinary members are treated in the hope of creating so-called ‘activists’, i.e. leaflet fodder for the current scheme of the SWP leadership. When asked whether they had an internal discussion list to talk politics, or whether it was possible to organise into permanent factions and hold the leadership to account, the members I spoke with seemed genuinely convinced that such channels did exist. They do not, of course – something which I pointed out. Such was the openness of conversation that one member then argued the SWP “needed people like me” who would stand up and argue for change. I politely pointed out that my chances of being allowed in are roughly the same as anti-imperialist David Broder had in getting elected to the Executive Committee of the AWL not so long ago.

It does not seem too cynical to suggest that the real 'emergency' this demo was addressing was the urgent need to find something -anything- for SWP students to do after the collapse of Student Respect. Yes, the demo was on a Friday evening, called at very short notice and opposed the cutting of a grant that most students will drink away before even knowing it exists. But comrades, was it really worth it? It could have been an afternoon spent drawing together 50 leading comrades together in order to discuss some politics, learn from each other how to overcome the ridiculous state of the student left and talk about future work. I often wonder how small and politically moribund the left has to get before it realises that it is time to unite our amateur and feuding forces around the political strategy of Marxism. Of course, it would be great if Santa really would come this year, but such things are not granted. They are fought for. To quote Rosa Luxemburg in reference to her frustrating and at times fruitless struggles with Bernstein in the early 20th century, every historical period has to be durchgefressen – eaten through.

Devil and deep blue sea

Some 250 people packed into Conway Hall for the November 15 annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee. Here is my take on it and the key questions facing the Labour left

Despite, for the most part, not getting much younger, those attending the LRC conference were certainly optimistic about the coming period. Talk was very upbeat about the prospects for ‘socialism’ and the success of the LRC, which now boasts 150 affiliated organisations, including six unions, and 1,000 members.

This sense of confidence and urgency was underlined by the hectic agenda: 20 motions, committee elections, trade union caucuses at lunchtime, and a whole number of platform speakers - Tony Benn, MPs Katy Clarke, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, trade union general secretaries Matt Wrack and Jeremy Dear, plus guests from Norway and Denmark.

‘My favourite’
The indefatigable LRC founding member, Tony Benn, kicked off proceedings. He is still around, as he put it, to “blow on the flames of anger and hope” and is brimming with “confidence” that we can make an impact in these stormy times. I do not know how many times he has spoken of “turning points” in his life, but he assured us that the financial crisis was the most historic occasion “since the fall of the Berlin wall”.

He lavished praise on the recent Convention of the Left event for bringing us together on the question of “what needed to be done” and for taking us “into the movements” - as opposed to the arid attempt to achieve what he calls “ideological unity”. Didn’t we know that you can’t have “a pure socialist party”? He once more described the Weekly Worker as his favourite paper, declaring, to much applause, that we “write about left unity on page 1, but then proceed to attack everyone on pages 2, 3, 4 and 5”.

Jeremy Dear of the National Union of Journalists made a good speech indicting the hypocrisy of those in power - a theme also picked up by Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack. Millions of people are angry and we need to organise to bring about political, economic and social change. Both of these union lefts spoke of how socialism is no longer discredited and urged us to prepare for a battle between free-market ideas and our own. They also referred to joint action over pay in order to forge unity across the unions from below, but, of course, there was no concrete proposal as to how this would arise and who would coordinate it.

Comrade Wrack made a good point about the need for a political fightback which no single union would be able to wage, but he did not mention the political alternative that will be necessary to counter the stifling effects of the labour bureaucracy and make “TUC paper policies something real”.

John McDonnell reminded us of the struggles that followed the recession of the early 1980s. Our tasks are great and we cannot let one or two minor points come between us, as in the past - the left has acted as though it almost enjoys being divided: “Those who try and split us are objectively working against us” - especially in these times: “People are looking to the left” and the LRC, as the biggest group uniting the left inside and outside the Labour Party, is best placed to answer their questions.

Comrade McDonnell said we need a “broad united front” working alongside the unions to defend the class. The time has now gone for selling each other papers and recruiting ones and twos - that is in the past, whereas now we are “on the march again”. As the rest of the conference was to show though, we are hardly about to see such unity take organisational form, least of all on the basis of a principled working class programme.

As is usual on such occasions, although the platform speakers made some points upon which we can all agree about the anarchy of the market and so on, the disproportionate amount of time they were allotted meant that the time for genuine debate was reduced accordingly. Motions were proposed and discussed in batches under different themes rather than individually. Speakers from the floor were allowed two minutes, whilst those moving motions got a generous three.

Motions
The LRC committee statement, ‘Rising to the challenge’, continued along the lines of the platform speeches. It declared that “we can only succeed if we can unite the wide-ranging but often fragmented resources of the left and progressive movements within our society” and contained a left reformist shopping list - “supporting public ownership and opposing privatisation, redistributing wealth and power, democratising control of our economy, investing in public services and public housing, tackling climate change, reasserting trade union rights, equal rights and civil liberties, and opposing war and securing peace”. In other words, a combination of platitudes and vague measures to be implemented by an old Labour-type government.

A motion from the Campaign for Socialism called for “an alternative strategy which takes us in a socialist direction, away from individualised solutions to the crisis”. It was far from clear what was to be understood by “a socialist direction”, however. For example, one speaker said, “If Obama can tax the rich, then so can we”, while a lunchtime caucus was devoted to so-called ‘Scandinavian socialism’. The Socialist Appeal motion, on the other hand, called for full-scale nationalisation of the banks, utilities, transport, food distribution and the remnants of industry - the SA speaker explained that “workers’ control” of these nationalised industries would be implemented “through the TUC and the government”.

I am not sure how compatible this is with the motion from the Commune, which committed the LRC to “set as its goal a system of genuine social ownership, organised on the basis of workers’ self-management, a system of participatory democracy based on the sovereignty of those who produce the goods and services in society”. In any case, both were passed.

Also successful was the motion from Lambeth and Southwark calling for an LRC campaign “equivalent to Stop the War” for “democratic public ownership” and a “major programme of public works”.

Hopi affiliation
The international section of the conference supported two principled motions on the politics of the Middle East, correctly recognising that internationalism is a central tenet of a working class fightback.

I moved the motion calling for affiliation to Hands Off the People of Iran on behalf of the Socialist Youth Network, the LRC youth wing which had already affiliated to Hopi earlier in the year. Pointing out the increased likelihood of inter-imperialist rivalry and the fact that one of the best ways for capitalism to resolve crisis historically has been through war, I underlined how urgently Hopi’s political outlook is needed in the struggle for a working class policy independent of both imperialism and the Iranian theocracy.

The motion was overwhelmingly passed, with only an unholy alliance of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, New Communist Party and Communist Party of Britain voting against. None of these groups chose to speak on the motion though. Interestingly the Morning Star report of the conference quoted my speech approvingly, but ‘forgot’ to mention the affiliation to Hopi or the fact that Star staff member Ivan Beavis and his comrades actually opposed it (November 17).

AWL number two Martin Thomas chose to speak against the LRC anti-war commission motion on Iraq “not so much for what it says as what it doesn’t say”. However, he went on to say that the call for “the immediate withdrawal of troops” contained in the motion might imply “handing over Iraq to sectarian militias”, so perhaps what it said did trouble him after all. It was overwhelmingly carried, of course.

Labour adjunct?
Many of the policies passed are certainly supportable, but how are they to be implemented in the absence of a political organisation capable of actually carrying them out, linking up the different campaigns and uniting our class in the fight for socialism? There are a quite a few different opinions within the LRC on this question.

Chair Simeon Andrews, for example, has come in for quite a bit of flak from the more traditionalist Labour wing of the LRC for inviting leading Socialist Party member and Campaign for a New Workers’ Party chair Janice Godrich to speak at the LRC fringe meeting at this year’s TUC. In his speech he defended this decision by referring to the “tidal wave of disgust” at the New Labour project, and underlined the need to “think outside the box” by speaking to those who “share a class analysis”. Quite right.

Yet not everyone was of this opinion, and it was only in the debate resulting from the AWL’s motion on “working class representation” - a more or less carbon copy of the one moved the year before - that these differences came out into the open. The AWL bemoaned the fact that “no union leadership has challenged the Bournemouth decision to ban political motions to Labour conference” and called for the LRC to support not only official candidates who are “loyal to the labour movement”, but also “non-Labour socialist candidates adopted with the support of local workers’ representation committees or other substantial bodies of the local labour movement”. This was the only motion which attracted much debate, and the only one to be voted down.

LRC treasurer Graham Bash spoke of a “class-based party”, by which, of course, he meant Labour. Our task is to reclaim this party, not try to set up something which could only be a sect that would stand in elections and get a derisory vote. He argued that the history of our movement was “littered with the corpses of those who tried and failed” to establish an alternative. This was echoed by Communication Workers Union executive member Gary Heather, who said our task was to “refound Labour as a party of radical change”.

The AWL speaker, John Maloney, neatly summed up the AWL’s (and indeed most of the left’s) ‘third period Bernsteinism’ - the Labour Party is now a bosses’ party and the answer to this is … Labourism!

Old Labour for New
He argued that “probably it was true that 40 years ago the Labour Party was synonymous with working class politics”, whereas today, as his comrade, Duncan Morrison, put it, it is “no longer a vehicle for working class representation in any form”. The LRC must therefore be ready to support candidates against Labour.

Both sides of this debate essentially agree on the need for a Labour Party, but the AWL insists that the LRC should effectively arrange to be kicked out of the existing one - others pointed out that this would amount to committing suicide. Morrison claimed such people had a “shaky grasp of history”. He reminded us that at the start of the 20th century the majority of unions looked to the Liberal Party. Back then lots of people argued against ‘breaking the link’, and it was a brave minority who campaigned for what was to become the Labour Party.

Yet we must be clear what the Labour is and always has been - the project to reduce working class politics to economic issues within the framework of her majesty’s imperial government - ‘socialism’ and clause four were merely sound bites aimed at keeping control over a British working class which had been inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

It is hardly the duty of Marxists to argue for such a party, let alone call on the trade union bureaucracy to do it, as the AWL insists on doing (see ‘Why won’t union leaders fight for a workers’ party?’: www.workersliberty.org/node/10669). The Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Labour Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and the experience of Respect underline how trying to break the working class from Labourism by offering them a smaller version of the same thing simply will not cut the mustard.

Marxism
Although the LRC is rightly pleased to have organised such a well attended conference, the key political questions posed by the lack of working class representation remain unanswered. Is it the task of the left to ‘reclaim’ the Labour Party or build ‘something new’? If so, what? Should it be another party or just a loose network? All into the Convention of the Left?

In a situation where the Labour left is now so marginalised that comrade McDonnell was unable even to get onto the ballot for the 2006 leadership contest and where the far left is in programmatic and organisational meltdown, the LRC seems to be stuck between the New Labour devil and the deep blue sectarian sea.

Tony Benn is correct, in a very limited sense, to say it is not the “ideological unity” that creates sects that we should be striving for. What is required is unity on the basis of a practical programme - that can be summed up under the headings of working class independence, democracy in respect of both the state and the workers’ movement, and consistent internationalism. These three Marxist principles are diametrically opposed to Labourism.

Karl Kautsky: The Intellectuals and the Workers

(Stolen from the website of the excellent Marxist journal, Revolutionary History) - http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/

Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.

My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.

This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual. who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.

This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour. power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.

As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.

Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,

In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle's aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.

For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.

The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.

The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.

Nietzsche's philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.

Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one's fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a "compact majority" as a monster which must be overthrown.

From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.

That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.

An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.

In Defence of Defeatism

I reprint here a Facebook debate between myself, Sacha Ismail of the AWL and David Broder of The Commune, who left the AWL when he was asked to pen an article condemning a position on Iran that he agreed with! I think it is important to reprint this debate in order to draw out just how deeply ‘theorised’ the AWL’s social imperialism is, and how this ‘theory’ flies not only in the face of the historical experience of the workers’ movement, but also in the face of current global political reality. Sacha’s guff about HOPI being “Iranian defencist” is merely a fig-leaf for his Israeli defencism. I have dealt with this rubbish here (http://benjamin-edgar-klein.blogspot.com/2008/03/pro-imperialists-snubbed.html):

“It betrays a certain formal logic to argue that calling for the defeat of one’s ‘own’ imperialist state means automatically supporting the forces it happens to be in conflict with. We call for the defeat of the US and UK because they are imperialist states and their actions are therefore against the international interests of the working class. But we do not support the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad any more than we supported that of Saddam Hussein. We wish to see their defeat too - at the hands of the working class! But there is no question as to which is the greater enemy - imperialism, not Saddam, Ahmadinejad or political islam”.

Scratching the surface you see that the AWL’s approach to this question is merely an inversion of the trotskyist schema that ‘if we are for the defeat of imperialism then that means we support the forces engaged in battle with them’.


Katie Buse wrote
at 16:18 on 14 October 2008
sacha,

The AWL supported Israel's right to a preemtive strike on Iran, which would horrify most sane Israelis as far as I can see.
Did anyone go? what was it like?

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 21:37 on 14 October 2008
That's great, Kate, except for the fact that it's not actually, you know, true. We oppose any Israeli strike on Iran. If that's not clear enough, let me explain. We are against it, we don't want it to happen, we will participate in actions to stop it from happening.
As a member of the AWL national committee, I have some idea of what I'm talking about. In any case, that's a unanimous AWL position.
Let me ask you: what do you think about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons?
A proper report soon.

Benjamin Edgar Klein wrote
at 22:51 on 14 October 2008
As a member of the AWL National Committee, Sacha will indeed know what is going on.

Thus it is quite strange that he fails to mention that at one of these NC meetings in August his own amendment to say that the AWL should "oppose" an attack was defeated. 5-8 I think. Still AWL policy to "oppose" from their last conference, but not the view now held by the majority of their leadership.

Still, oppose or not, we are still within the framework of liberalism. Marxism however calls for international working class unity for defeatism, ie exploiting that crisis to make revolution. Yet the AWL dismiss this as "supporting the victory of Iran". Just Like Lenin supported the victory of the German Kaiser in WW1, one presumes...

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 08:59 on 15 October 2008

Ben, this is ridiculous. Our NC discussed whether to replace the word "against" with "oppose" in a motion. That's all. Since then, the committee member who you accuse of not opposing an attack on Iran, Sean, has written several articles in which he makes his opposition quite clear, including by using the word "oppose". Yawn.

So you can't be a Marxist unless you support Lenin's "revolutionary defeatist" position in WW1? So Trotsky and Luxemburg were liberals were they, when they opposed the war but rejected Lenin's "defeatism"? Defeatism is not exploiting the crisis to make revolution - "turn the imperialist war into a civil war"; that was common to all the revolutionary anti-war socialists, including those like Trotsky and Luxemburg who rejected "defeatism".

Are you totally politically illiterate?

Hal Draper's "The Myth of Lenin's Revolutionary Defeatism"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1953/defeat/index.htm

Just a point of clarification. Of course "defeatism" - being for the defeat of your own or a particular government - is appropriate in a war where you want the other side to win militarily. Eg, being defeatist in your attitude to the US in the Vietnam War. The whole argument here is about whether it makes sense to talk about "defeatism" in a war where you oppose both sides, like WW1. (Or in a different form, I would argue, the US vs Iran.)

Hal Draper: "Bury the dead. The tradition of Lenin’s defeatism was born in a political mistake in 1904-1905; it was revived in confusion in 1914, to be shelved without stock-taking in 1917; it was revived again in malice and reaction in 1924; it was turned into a hollow phrase by “explaining away” in the 1930s; it was ignored in the 1940s; and muddled into a pro-war stew in the 1950s; and any war policy based on it can only be disorienting or worse... the policy of the Third Camp... was the real content also of Lenin’s war policy when he ignored the hollow formulas of defeat."

David Broder wrote
at 09:51 on 15 October 2008
So, Sacha, do you think that Lenin was for the military victory of Germany in 1916?

Nonsense.

Without arguing your case, you just quote Draper like gospel (shame that AWL is now hostile to his ideas on "socialism from below" though - http://www.workersliberty.org/node/1206 - ) and indeed defend his idea of "military support"... and you advocate military support for the Vietcong. Thus your "third campism" collapses.

And indeed on Israel/Iran... Third campism is the positive assertion of working-class politics, not teetering between competing imperialist blocs. In this particular case leaning to the "good country" against the "bad". Israel is called "one of the most democratic societies on Earth", and the last Solidarity featured an article welcoming Tzipi Livni's coming to power. Not by an AWL member... but why print this nonsense?

You shouldn't misrepresent your NC decision by writing that the AWL opposes an attack. Surely writing "oppose" is capitulation to the kitsch left?

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 12:14 on 15 October 2008
No, David, I don't think Lenin was for a German victory in 1916; the whole point is that "defeatism" was a confused expression of the "third camp" policy of opposing both sides which he shared with eg Trotsky - which is why he quietly dropped it.

Do you think Trotsky and Luxemburg were somehow less anti-war than Lenin because they rejected his "defeatism"?

I don't quote Draper "like gospel"; I simply think he puts it better than me. Also, the 1,000 limit on these messages is a bit cramping for arguments!

Yes, we support Kadima, of course. Never mind that we have a long record of rejecting support for the Israeli Labor Party on the grounds that it's a bourgeois party. Can't you do better than that?

Benjamin Edgar Klein wrote
at 15:16 on 15 October 2008
Sacha,

Draper is wrong on this, and so are you. For several reasons:

1.Revolutionary defeatism - including defeatist propaganda in the armed forces - was the essence of the split in the second international - ie this is the context of Lenin's debate with Trotsky - the necessity to break with the right as well as the centre who vacillated on this question.

2.Lenin did not drop revolutionary defeatism, as Draper argues - it is codified in the (1920) 21 conditions of the Communist Interntaional - 4,6 and 8. Again, these do not fit very well with your idea that: "No Marxist, even in the classic period of anti-colonial revolt in the 20s to the 60s, used the "troops out now" slogan".

3.Defeatism is crucial to the success of an anti-war movement, which is why Vietnam is important - not only was military recruitment hindered, but systematic defeatist agitation carried out amongst the troops.
4. I agree with Draper in the limited sense that what has become of "revolutionary defeatism" amongst the Trots today is "revolutionary defencism" as an acid test of one's revolutionary credentials. I think this is also why Draper gets it so drastically wrong - he is looking to fight these ideas, but ends up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, despite writing stuff on Marx which actually completely undermines this nonsense (War and Revolution, Vol 5 for example) Lenin's defeatism in WW1 was correct, vindicated indeed by the Russian Revolution itself.

Given that you also refuse to condemn in advance an Israeli attack on Iran, I suspect this could be an underlying reason for your opposition to defeatism, as for you after all it might just not be a reactionary war on both sides, as you make explicit here:


http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/09/10/when-marxists-fall-out-or-defence-sean-matgamna

"Do you condemn the destruction of the Syrian reactor last year? Really? If Israel destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities and the casualties and consequences were similar to those in Syria, would you really condemn it? The point is that it is perfectly possible to oppose an attack now - not just because we judge the consequences would be a lot worse in this case, but because of what Israel is, because of what it may use the attack as an opportunity to do etc etc - without committing yourself to "condemning" after the fact when you don't yet know what the consequences will be. Anything else is just phrase-mongering".

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 16:14 on 15 October 2008
***The 21 Conditions say nothing about defeatism***, except implying it (no use of the phrase) in relation to imperialist rule over the colonies, where it is uncontroversial for us. The debate is about whether it's appropriate for all wars involving imperialist states, even ones where revolutionaries oppose both sides. Btw, are you also "defeatist" for Iran or just for the US?

Where do you get the idea that it's included in points 4, 6 and 8?

"4. The duty of propagating communist ideas includes the special obligation of forceful and systematic propaganda in the army. Where this agitation is interrupted by emergency laws it must be continued illegally. Refusal to carry out such work would be tantamount to a betrayal of revolutionary duty and would be incompatible with membership of the Communist International."

6. "Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has the obligation to unmask not only open social-patriotism but also the insincerity and hypocrisy of social-pacificism, to show the workers systematically that, without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, no international court of arbitration, no agreement on the limitation of armaments, no 'democratic' reorganisation of the League of Nations will be able to prevent new imperialist wars."

8. "A particularly marked and clear attitude on the question of the colonies and oppressed nations is necessary on the part of the communist parties of those countries whose bourgeoisies are in possession of colonies and oppress other nations. Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has the obligation of exposing the dodges of its 'own' imperialists in the colonies, of supporting every liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds, of demanding that their imperialist compatriots should be thrown out of the colonies, of cultivating in the hearts of the workers in their own country a truly fraternal relationship to the working population in the colonies and to the oppressed nations, and of carrying out systematic propaganda among their own country’s troops against any oppression of colonial peoples."

Note the rational assumption that wanting the defeat of one side means wanting the victory of the other.

So, no mention of defeatism at all. You're totally wrong. Isn't this embarrassing?

I repeat: what do you say to the fact that a large part of the anti-war revolutionary left in WW1, including Trotsky and Luxemburg, opposed Lenin's "defeatist" position?

David Broder wrote
at 16:23 on 15 October 2008
Except, Sacha, that in fact you believe that you can want the defeat of your "own" bourgeoisie, but only want the "military" (not "political") victory of the other side! Your logic certainly implies that you would "take sides" particularly in the cases where the AWL and its forerunners called for troops out now (e.g. Afghanistan, Ireland, Vietnam)

Of course there is no meaningful separation between the military and political sides of a war.

You can be for the defeat of all bourgeois camps by class struggle across borders. But you are posing it in terms of "who do you want to win, the Stalinists or the US imperialists/the Islamists or the US imperialists?"

And (it's a simple question), what's the Livni article about? What kind of dialogue is that meant to open up?

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 16:26 on 15 October 2008
David, you conflate "victory" and "revolution". Yes, of course we want our own ruling class, every ruling class, to be "defeated" by the working class. But in response to every war your position is simply "We need workers' revolution". That doesn't answer the question. Eg what about the Spanish civil war - would you simply have opposed both sides?

You have a different position from those you are allied with here, eg the CPGB. From the logic of your argument, you would be "defeatist" for both the US and Iran. In fact, for all sides in all wars. Ben, by contrast, is only defeatist for the US - which is why his position is a version of Iranian defencism.

Sorry, forgot about that. It was an interesting article by a prominent Israeli peace activist. We don't agree with it, of coruse. I know you think that every article needs to begin and end "That's why we need a struggle for workers' control", but what's the problem with printing interesting articles by such people?

David Broder wrote
at 16:42 on 15 October 2008
Not that your characterisation of what I write is vaguely true (Unlike Martin T, Paul H etc, I am not one for ending articles with bullet point programmes), but why should a "Marxist" paper feature articles which are nothing but geopolitics and ignore labour movement forces?

In this case, could it be that you don't differentiate between the class forces on the ground, as long as they're for two states? (This is also why you now support Fatah). Two states could mean anything, you should root your coverage in the struggles of the Middle Eastern workers' movements (who, if you've forgotten, are the people our support for self-determination is meant to help)

No doubt you'll reply that you "always" bang on about trade unions in Palestine and that Sean Matgamna is an expert on the Iranian workers' movement. Never mind that it's so well hidden.

Why do you assume that "all sides in all wars" are all bourgeois governments?

I am a dual defeatist in conflicts between bourgeois governments and their armies. I am for the defeat of the Iranian regime and of the US government. I would have been for the defeat of the Spanish Republic by the revolutionary workers' movement (which it crushed, partly thanks to the misleadership of the CNT and POUM)... as a necessary complement to the struggle against the fascists in the east.

Must you persist in referring to governments with country names? ("Iran", "the USA", "the Israelis" etc.) It shows an abstract and undynamic understanding of the conflict, and reflects your willingness to side with one "country" against another.

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 16:51 on 17 October 2008
David,
I'm sorry for not replying to your comments. I will do soon when I have more time.
For now I'd just like to note that Ben has not come back on the question of the 21 Conditions. He claimed that "revolutionary defeatism" was included in points 4, 6 and 8 - a claim which I have proved with quotations of the relevant sections is not true!
Erm...

Benjamin Edgar Klein wrote at 18:05 on 17 October 2008

Sacha,

This is moronic. Any idiot can quote the sections I mentioned and scream: Look, the words revolutionary defeatism do not even feature. There are factors of appearance and essence though.

Lenin argued (correctly in my view) not just for a split with the right, but also the centre, and even sections of the left that clung to the unity of the second international. His reasoning was that anti-imperialism only has meaning if one is defeatist – ie carries out systematic agitation in the army for such a defeat and for the soldiers turning on their officers to facilitate revolution . this line was confirmed both in a positive and negative sense. Positively on the one hand by the experience of 1917 itself, and negatively, by the reaction of those to 1917 who were the very same people Lenin argued for a split with. As Lenin wrote in 1914 (ie before he purportedly dropped defeatism):

“Refusal to serve with the forces, anti-war strikes, etc, are sheer nonsense, the miserable and cowardly dram of an unarmed struggle against the armed bourgeoisie, vain yearning for the destruction of capitalism without a desperate civil war or series of wars. It is the duty of every socialist to conduct propaganda of the class struggle, in the army as well; work directed towards turning a war of nations into civil war is the only socialist activity in the era of imperialist armed conflict of the bourgeoisie of al nations”.
Now, the words ‘revolutionary defeatism’ do not feature. Well done Sherlock. One wishes the Russian leadership would have had the prescience to write it down as a term in order to look out for people garbling history to justify their social imperialism by culling quotes, but they didn’t. Yet in each of the condtions you quote, there is a revolutionary defeatist thread which runs through them all – ie the political essence of defeatism outlined in the quote above is maintained.

In 1920, the Russian leadership wanted an even cleaner break with elements who vacillated on this question, leading to the 21 conditions.

"4. The duty of propagating communist ideas includes the special obligation of forceful and systematic propaganda in the army. Where this agitation is interrupted by emergency laws it must be continued illegally. Refusal to carry out such work would be tantamount to a betrayal of revolutionary duty and would be incompatible with membership of the Communist International." – what do you think the army agitation is for Sacha, sexy uniforms?

6. Exposing social pacificism and social patriotism – ie precisely those elements Lenin was arguing against in the second International

8. Systematic agiation amongst the armed forces against the oppression – again, following your twisted logic, another example of agitating for the victory of the other side

The rest of your stuff on me as an Iranian defencist and that David and I have completely different positions is just bunk, and I will return to it. Remember, part of the reason why the AWL leadership went barmy and demanded from David that he write an article condemning the CPGB position he is in broad agreement with as an act of loyalty, is precisely because we have a similar take on this question. War against the CPGB, take sides David etc? Matgamna's words, not mine. David was and is for the defeat of the AWL on this question (like everyone vaguely left-wing) but not necessarily for the CPGB’s victory…hence the Commune I suppose.