Debate With London Bus Worker
Vngelis
I was pleased at the developments shown in the meeting to launch the
Campaign for a Marxist Party and realise the process has already
progressed to a certain stage.
However, I do feel that there are many dangers manifest already. In
particular I was concerned at the absence of any reference to Marxist
philosophy as one of the three component parts of Marxism, or so Lenin
believed, any reference to the Labour Party and to what I saw as a very
definite Stalinophobia in some quarters. I feel that this will have a
very negative effect on the discussion on programme and will
marginalise those of us who hold to the method of Trotsky's
Transitional programme as the 'template' (to use a controversial
term) for the epoch. That being said, there is clearly enough democracy
and enough openness within the gathering, and in the CPGB as the most
ideologically coherent group present, to allow healthy debate.
To take these points in reverse. Stalinism was never
'counterrevolutionary through and through'. As a movement based on
the working class balancing between imperialism and the peasantry in
the deformed and degenerated workers' states, it was obliged in its
own interests to lead peasant-based revolutions against imperialism.
What it would never do was lead a mass movement of the working class to
overthrow capitalism.
However, at the end of World War II the mass base of the Italian
Communist Party had not been Stalinised, but continued to hold the
Bordegist ultra-leftist, but nonetheless revolutionary perspectives of
the early 20s because of the weakness of the Mussolini dictatorship. So
Togliatti had great difficulty in betraying that revolution on
Stalin's behalf. Similarly in Greece and elsewhere. The advance of
the so-called Red Army did spark revolutionary uprisings - for instance
in Warsaw, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy - confirming
Trotsky's analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union, the necessity
of the proletarian military policy to work in the armies and resistance
movements rather than fetish factory committees and strikes in those
circumstances.
Stalinophobia equates the ranks with the counterrevolutionary
leadership and makes impossible all serious approach to CP members and
sympathisers.
Similarly the absence of reference to the Labour Party seemed to mean
the writing off of the Labour ranks and by implication Labour voters if
they did not see the error of their ways. This appears to me to be
frustrated revolutionaries seeking to short-cut the historical process
of the raising of the consciousness of the working class. Is it now
definitely the case that the Labour Party has become 'thoroughly
bourgeoisified' and is no longer the contradictory phenomenon
described by Lenin: a 'bourgeois workers' party'? Was the
'historic defeat of clause four' the crushing blow to the class
consciousness of the British working class that Blair hoped it would be
and are we now back in the position of the US working class, where the
tactic of calling for a new workers' (Labor) party is the appropriate
way forward?
If that is the case, the organic ties with the unions must have been
broken, it is no longer possible to put pressure on the Labour Party
from that source and the bourgeoisie have inflicted a world-historic
defeat on the British working class. This, in my view, is not the case:
Keir Hardie made it clear from the beginning that socialism was not
really on the agenda for the Labour Party. It was never the case that
it could be won to socialism, as Ted Grant (and the entryist Gerry
Healy) proposed. Nor, however, is it the case that this contradiction
is now finally eliminated, as Taaffe insists. It is those continuing
organic ties fuelling the contradiction that makes it still a bourgeois
workers' party. Although it is practically impossible for Marxists to
do serious internal work in the Labour Party now, this is a question of
tactics alone. It may become possible again.
The real problem lies in the fact that a combination of defeats
compounded by the anti-union laws have consolidated the union
bureaucracy's hold over the working class - union membership is now
only seven million, compared with 13 million in the late 70s. Blair is
their creature, just as much as TUC leader Barber is. In that respect
it was highly significant that the RMT launched the initiative to set
up a national shop stewards network on November 4 and that a raft of
union general secretaries spoke in favour from the platform.
The contradiction is, comrades, that without militant shop stewards the
unions die, the right wing are too successful and the 'new left'
are propelled into office on this premise and are forced to open up
some space for a fightback. I will stress that since the defeat of the
miners' strike there have been many false dawns but they have run
into the ground in the face of the bureaucratic stranglehold the
anti-union laws have given union bureaucracies over their ranks. I
would urge all serious shop stewards to participate in this movement,
which I predict will be far more significant that the Respect gathering
of November 11.
And this brings me to my last point. Briefly the dialectic of Marxist
philosophy teaches us to look for the active contradictions in all
phenomena. We can never set the base against the leadership and so
develop revolutionary consciousness if we condemn all Stalinists, see
the Labour Party as dead and do not look for the real movement within
the unions which may revive the working class and with it the
revolutionary left.
Gerry Downing
North London
No to globalism
Gerry Downing tries to analyse the current political situation and
focuses on the creation of a shop stewards movement for a resurgence of
class struggle and subsequently class-consciousness (Letters, November
9). In seeking a new leftward trend in British society he emphasises
the organic links between the Labour Party and the trade unions.
The question posed is answered in a trade union manner when it isn't
simply a trade union issue any more. We have a convergence of nearly
all political parties and all union bureaucrats for globalism, both
right and left, as espoused primarily by the City of London's
programme: deindustrialisation, ending of UK-based agribusiness and the
mass importation of labour - all based on a mass explosion of debt
financing.
These material conditions determine this era. To break the stranglehold
of globalism one at first must be clear as to what is happening around
us. The RMT, according to Bob Crow, is trying to respond to these
pressures by preserving its structures intact and not allowing a
free-for-all in terms of jobs to all and sundry, as has happened on the
buses. But a union response in and of itself will not be enough. A
political response is required. To defeat globalism one must at first
consider it an enemy, not seek to defend it, promote it and justify it
under 'Marxist' labels.
This, I believe, is not the case with Gerry Downing's new found
associates.
VN Gelis
North London
All and sundry
VN Gelis writes: "The RMT, according to Bob Crow, is trying to
respond to these pressures [globalism] by preserving its structures
intact and not allowing a free-for-all in terms of jobs to all and
sundry, as has happened on the buses" (Letters, November 16). One
might wonder what he was referring to, if one did not know the
particular orientation of the comrade.
He believes that immigration controls should be rigorously enforced to
preserve the jobs of 'native' workers in Greece, Britain and all
other imperialist countries. I am a Metroline busworkers' TGWU shop
steward and my first task on getting elected last year was to defend
Somalian and other African, Middle Eastern, eastern European and
particularly Polish bus drivers against racist, anti-immigrant attacks
that sought to preserve the cosy relationship the old T&G leadership
had with management.
These divide-and-rule tactics were rampant on the buses following the
defeats of the early 1990s. However, neither my own garage, Thorpes in
Perivale, or the Armchair garage in Brentford are part of this dispute
because we will not come under Metroline terms and conditions until
January. I am proud to say that the epoch of company unionism is now
finishing. Metroline is led by militant trade unionists who stopped
work on Tuesday November 14 for the first time in 14 years and will
strike again later in November.
Any hint of racism from any one of us would be absolutely fatal in such
a workforce, which is more than 50% muslim in some garages. We welcome
"all and sundry", no matter what race, religion, colour or creed,
because we are principled trade unionists. From someone who claims to
be a Trotskyist internationalist, I find VN Gelis's remarks
exceedingly offensive.
Gerry Downing
World scale
The globalism referred to by VN Gelis is simply imperialism, unbridled
in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In other words,
international imperialist metastasis. I would refer readers to
Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism for a prophetic
analysis of what is happening today.
Never before in history has the concept of world socialist revolution
been more realisable as it is in this period, for it is strikingly
clear that the solution to the globalisation of capitalism lies in the
globalisation of socialism. That is, socialist revolution needs to
occur on a world scale.
The globalisation of capitalism isn't simply some unpleasant
phenomenon that is going to pass. Barring the conscious intervention of
the working class, it is here to stay, for that's what the
imperialists have been struggling to achieve for a hundred years. This
has always been the strategic goal of the capitalist class.
Michael Little
Seattle
Mass importation of labour
Gerry (Letters 23rd November) attempts an answer but skirts the issues.
Bob Crow argued at the Social Forum (London) event that the bosses were
seeking to recruit thousands of workers from E. Europe, implying
thousands would be replaced on lower wages. This has already happened
on the buses whose union the TGWU has a specific policy of agreeing to
recruiting workers on lower wages or not doing anything to stop this as
recently reported in 'Newsline' of the Holloway bus garage where E.
European workers are working on £7 an hour instead of the £10.63.
Marx commenting on similar issues which led to strikes in London stated
the following,
A Warning
Some time ago the London journeymen tailors formed a general
association 120 to uphold their demands against the London master
tailors, who are mostly big capitalists... The fact is that, as a
result of the London events, they had to agree, initially, to a 15 per
cent. wage rise in Edinburgh as well. But secretly they sent agents to
Germany to recruit journeymen tailors, particularly in the Hanover and
Mecklenburg areas, for importation to Edinburgh. The first group has
already been shipped off. The purpose of this importation is the same
as that of the importation of Indian COOLlES to Jamaica, namely,
perpetuation of slavery...
March 15, 1865