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New Interventions
Volume 12, no 2, Winter 2005-06
Current Business Riots in France Farewell Tony Blair? Karl Marx
wins poll shock Germanys grand coalition Iraqs new constitution
Ten years after Srebrenica Multiculturalism under attack
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Hasan and Louis Proyect, Natural Disasters Social Calamities 15
The political fall-out from the New Orleans hurricane and Pakistan
earthquake

Tony Greenstein, A Hypocritical Charade 19
Why state-sponsored Holocaust Memorial Days cannot challenge
racism

Mosh Machover, Zionism: A Major Obstacle 25
Why Zionisms denial of the Hebrew nation bars the way to peace
Cyril Smith, Two Essays on Karl Marx 28
A controversial look at Marx and religion and materialism
Paolo Casciola, Trotsky and the Struggles of the Colonial Peoples 35
The theory of Permanent Revolution and anti-imperialist struggles
The Israel Academic Boycott: Toby Abse, Sue Blackwell, Tony Greenstein and
Mosh Machover in debate
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Alan Woodward, Rudolf Rocker and the Anarchist Movement 61
The remarkable life of the anarchist thinker and activist
Glyn Beagley, Anarchists, Syndicalists and Workers Councils 68
Political parties and workers struggles
Second Glance: Doug Lowe investigates the reality of Peak Performing
Organisation Theory
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Reviews Gerry Healys political legacy The real Karl Marx Workers
Socialism Nineteen Eighty-Four in song George Orwell Japan
and the atomic bomb US conservatives
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Letters Bendy buses and British political facts 89


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Current Business
The Riots in France
ON 27 October, at Clichy-sous-Bois, two adolescents, Zyed and Bouna, fled the police.
Seeking refuge in a transformer station, they were both electrocuted. From that date, be-
ginning in the Parisian suburbs (the banlieue), rioting has swept similar deprived areas
surrounding the countrys cities. There have been confrontations with the CRS and the
Gendarmerie. Bands of youths, mostly (though not exclusively) from an Arab or black Af-
rican background, have wreaked havoc. Thousands of cars have been burnt out, petrol
bombs have destroyed shops, schools, cultural centres, and other public buildings. Hun-
dreds of arrests have been made, and foreign nationals threatened with deportation. The
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has been dubbed a pyromaniac fire-fighter for calling
the youths involved racaille (rabble/scum).
From 9 November, the centre-right government of Dominique de Villepin declared a
state of emergency. This gives powers to impose curfews, ban public meetings, and order
house arrests. In the National Assembly, Communist (PCF) deputies were alone in their
staunch opposition, and in citing the laws origins in 1955, during the war of Algerian in-
dependence. With the notable absence of the Parti Socialiste (by far the largest left party
electorally, and with 127 000 members) the French left, from the PCF, the Verts (Greens),
anti-racist and human rights organisations, to the League Communiste Rvolutionnaire
(LCR), has united in condemning these moves. On the ground, mayors from all sides are
reported to be sceptical about their effectiveness (see Le Monde, 10 November 2005). More
fundamentally, a broad debate is underway about long-term plans to end the deprivation
of the affected cits (housing estates) and the French model of social integration.
While obviously the French media has been dominated by these events, British and
other anglophone commentators have not been silent. There was an early attempt to link
the uprisings to Frances secular model, particularly the ban on wearing ostentatious reli-
gious symbols in schools. Some have asserted that this is an Islamic revolt, asserting a
Moslem identity against a Republic blind to cultural differences. Frances extreme right,
from the Front National to the Mouvement pour la France, has brandished a jihadist
menace. The FNs web site carries a clip showing an post-apocalypse Paris, saved by the
Second Coming of their Leader, and the words, Le Pen la bien dit (Le Pen said it!). Yet
both the supporters of Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French racists are far from reali-
ty. Religious signs have practically disappeared from schools with little conflict, reports Le
Monde (30 September 2005).
The lUnion des Organisations islamiques de France (UOIF) close to the UKs
MAB has tried to be a privileged interlocutor with the state. Its efforts to calm youths
down, by decreeing their actions un-Islamic, have not had a real impact. Indeed, they
have been criticised by other Moslems for attempting to communalise the clashes (Le
Monde, 9 November 2005). Which, as the reformist Salafist Tariq Ramadam has pointed
out, have far more to do with the problems of racial ghettos, mass unemployment and
rundown housing, than the assertion of faith (Le Monde, 9 November 2005; Guardian, 12
November 2005). Police harassment has also played its part, though undoubtedly many
rioters are no angels. The cultural mix of the banlieue, and its discontents, have much in
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common with urban districts in every country, it has no direct tie to religion.
There is little doubt that French society has failed to live up to the principles of social
republican equality. From the Marche des Beurs (Arabs in back-slang) in the early 1980s,
there has been no shortage of warnings about unemployment and discrimination amongst
minorities. It is significant that studies from that period cite a right by work as the cor-
nerstone of social and political integration (Albano Cordeiro, Limmigration, 1983). Without
jobs (up to 40 per cent are workless in the worst cits), it is hard to see the underlying dif-
ficulties resolved. There are other issues: the withdrawal of subsidies for local community
groups, the decline in community policing (police de proximit), and the narrowness of
the education system, itself with restricted means. Tariq Ramadam rightly refers to regres-
sive plans for the curriculum to give a positive view of French colonialism. However, his
much harder line on Islamic morality, such as the separation of the sexes, than he express-
es to Western audiences, casts doubt on his authority as an unbiased pedagogue (Caroline
Fourest, Frre Tariq, 2004).
More generally, the French education system suffers from its allegedly meritocratic
biases, which favour those able to pursue extended study to enter lite higher education. A
major hurdle to get over is written French, a complex language on its own, with a gram-
mar and vocabulary far from the banlieue. There is therefore a whole series of structural
reforms to confront, though who has the energy to carry them out remains in doubt. The
left as well as the right (in part because most of their leaders have benefited from litist
education and backgrounds) has difficulty putting down roots in the rundown estates.
Without these links who will guarantee that effective change can come about?
Finally, a part of the left has undergone a second childhood in celebrating uncritically
the acts of violence, regarding them as a carnival of the oppressed. The principal victims,
however, are the neighbours of those who sling Molotov cocktails at their vehicles, smash
up public transport, burn down shops and community facilities. There is little mass in-
volvement, and practically no women. One morning on France-Inter a teacher from an
cole Maternelle spoke of her grief at the destruction of her school. She ended by saying:
Quest-ce que je vais dire aux petits? (What am I going to say to the little ones?) Quite.
Andrew Coates
The Ditch Blair Project
THE vote in early November against Tony Blairs proposal that terror suspects could be
held for 90 days marks the beginning of the end for New Labours leader. Although the
number of Labour rebel votes has been bigger in the past, and the Tories opportunistically
opposed their law-and-order predilections to vote against Blair, this is the first time that
Blair has been defeated in the Commons. His bitter ad hominem comments after the vote
was announced show that he has taken the defeat very badly, and that he sees it as a per-
sonal affront. He must feel that he can no longer trust his MPs, not least when the normal-
ly loyal Nick Raynsford and significant numbers of Gordon Browns supporters voted
against the 90-day line.
Blair is on his way out, but what about Blairism? Writing in the Guardian on 15 Sep-
tember, ultra-Blairite Alan Milburn declared that not only could there be no turning back
to Old Labour, but that the only credible prospectus for the Labour Party was in moving
further along the path already taken by New Labour. What we heard from the Labour
Party conference platform speakers was pure unadulterated Blairism, whether from Blair
himself whose only regret was that he had not taken his reforms further from his
acolytes, or from the man pretty much universally tipped to be his successor, Gordon
Brown, who went out of his way to inform readers of The Times on 18 November that he
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would not be an easy touch for would-be Labour rebels.
The enduring image of the conference was the rough-housing of 82-year-old Walter
Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany and longstanding CND and Labour Party mem-
ber, who was pulled from his seat by night-club heavies employed as conference stewards,
for the crime of heckling Jack Straw during his speech on Iraq. To add insult to injury,
Wolfgang was searched by the police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act as were no
fewer than 600 other people who happened to be in the vicinity of the conference building,
a disgraceful violation of civil liberties, but one perfectly in line with New Labour think-
ing.
Thanks to the wielding of union block votes, the leadership lost the vote on four im-
portant matters, a call to legalise secondary industrial action, opposing the Blairites call
for more private sector involvement in the NHS, the public sector retirement age, and the
rights of councils to obtain funds for public housing on the same basis as housing associa-
tions. Minister Alan Johnson, to his shame a former union official, promptly informed the
press that the government would blithely ignore the vote on secondary action. The gov-
ernment subsequently backed down over its intention to raise the public sector retiring
age from 60 to 65 after various unions threatened a strike, but this only applies to those
already in post; new recruits will have to work to 65. And one can be sure that New La-
bour intends to force as many workers as possible to carry on working up to and indeed
beyond they are 65. This is certainly the impression given to me by those involved in geri-
atric studies to whom I have spoken. New Labour will not be deterred by adverse confer-
ence votes, and Blair later told the press that he wishes to cut down the unions influence
in the party, now that the constituency party vote is to a fair degree a reservoir of support
for Blairism.
It is a great illusion to consider that a Brown New Labour government would be an-
yway different in anything but small details from the Blair ones. Brown made this clear in
his speech at the conference, just as he has done on other occasions. Brown and Blair are
obviously at daggers drawn, there is a tremendous personality clash between them. But
this does not represent anything more than a personal dislike. Certain previous leading
right-wing Labour Party figures detested each other with equal intensity, yet agreed on all
but minor details; one can think of the bitter feud between Ernest Bevin and Herbert Mor-
rison. On political matters, it is hard to detect any differences between Blair and Brown.
Even a Brown fan like Polly Toynbee had to concede that she doesnt know what the
differences are between him and Blair: At the end of the week we are none the wiser
about Gordon Browns plans. But heres the consolation: But necessarily circumscribed,
speaking in code, he spelled out something more hopeful. (Guardian, 30 September) This
is truly pathetic. New Labour is not yet a dictatorship in which, as with Stalins Soviet Un-
ion, one had to wait for the tyrants demise to promote even a slightly different course to
avoid being consigned to oblivion. Someone with Browns abilities and level of support
within the party could if he so wished provide a carefully nuanced critique of aspects of
Blairism without getting dismissed. John Prescott publicly showed his disapproval of
Blairs latest education reforms. But Brown has never uttered a word of dissent. So what
else can we deduce than that he is a down-the-line New Labourite?
New Labour faces some real problems. The party leaderships manic determination
to impose PFI deals throughout the public sector, to chop public sector jobs, and to ensure
that privatised public utilities remain in private hands (whilst baling them out with public
money when they hit hard times) will continue to alienate working-class and many mid-
dle-class people. Notwithstanding the defeat of the 90-day holding proposal, the New La-
bourites are hell-bent on restricting civil rights and are quite incapable of recognising the
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degree of the disaster that their friend George W Bush has caused in Iraq. The principled
Labour lefts are few in number and have next-to-no influence. Party membership is down
to a half of the 1997 level of 400 000, constituency parties are often moribund, party mem-
bers are often demoralised and inactive, and four million fewer people voted Labour this
year than in 1997. The ignominious resignation of David Blunkett has done nothing to
help raise Labours credibility.
It is possible that some of Blairs more (even by New Labour standards) weirder
schemes may be moderated by the threat of revolts, or approved thanks to Tory MPs
votes. To expect anything else is unrealistic; indeed, we can expect more of the usual: more
boss-friendly policies, more privatisation, more education and NHS reforms, more PFI
deals, more public sector job cuts, more useless blather about choice and empowerment,
more foreign wars (whenever the USA starts them), more attacks upon civil liberties
and no doubt more resignations la Mandelson and Blunkett.
It is just possible that the Conservatives, should David Cameron gain the helm,
might rally sufficiently to provide a challenge to New Labour in the next general election,
especially if the latters support continues to dwindle. But the lack of any real debate dur-
ing the interminable leadership contest about the candidates political opinions, as op-
posed to the endless inquisition about their imbibing or otherwise of dubious substances,
gives the impression, on the one hand, that the deep divisions amongst Tory MPs, mem-
bers and voters over Europe and various social issues (to which we have referred before in
New Interventions) have only been papered over, and, on the other, that on such questions
as privatisation there is little difference between the Tory candidates and Blair. Perhaps
the most telling remarks were those when finalists Cameron and David Davis accused
each other of being an ersatz Blair. Add to this the fact that the Tory partys membership is
ageing and dwindling in size, even an inspiring leader will have problems heading an
election campaign, and neither Cameron nor Davis gives the impression of being one.
New Labour, under Blair Mark II, seems pretty well tipped to win a fourth term with
all that this implies.
Paul Flewers
Karl Marx: Top Philosopher
TO the surprise of everybody notably of Melvin Bragg, who dreamt up the whole idea
Karl Marx got the vote of 30 per cent of listeners to the BBC poll of favourite philoso-
pher. Socrates, Aristotle, Hume, Kant & Co were nowhere to be seen. Fifteen years or so
after he had been consigned to the dustbin, Marx beat them all.
What those worthy listeners meant by this, however, is another question, which re-
mained unasked. What is your favourite philosopher? What is a philosopher, anyway?
The criterion for philosophy was always a problem in some ways, the problem for
philosophy. Marx was never in the same category. As he wrote: Philosophers have hither-
to only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
Part of the trouble with trying to understand Marx is the ignorance of his develop-
ment. As a result of this, some of his ideas of the earlier writings are confused with those
which belong later.
Born of Jewish converts to Lutheranism in 1818, Marx started his academic career
aiming to be a lawyer. He didnt make it, however, being waylaid by the radical Young
Hegelians in Berlin. Always separate from the rest, he came under the influence of Feuer-
bach, notably his criticism of Hegels religious views. This was not atheism, as usually
supposed, the young Marx declaring:
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I desired there to be less trifling with the label atheism (which reminds one of
children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not
afraid of the bogy man), and that instead the content of philosophy should be
brought to the people. (Letter to Ruge, 24 November 1842)
In 1844, Marx wrote the manuscripts which, among other things, explained his debt to and
criticism of Hegel:
Hegels chief error is to conceive the contradiction of appearance as unity in es-
sence, in the idea, while in fact it has something more profound for its essence,
namely, an essential contradiction, just as this contradiction of the legislative
authority within itself, for example, is merely the contradiction of the political
state, and therefore also of civil society itself.
His Comments on James Mill were written about the same time:
Our mutual thraldom to the object at the beginning of the process is now seen
to be in reality the relationship between master and slave, that is merely the crude
and frank expression of our essential relationship.
Our mutual value is for us the value of our mutual relationships. Hence for
us man himself is mutually of no value.
The object cannot be seen as merely an object, but only as a social prod-
uct. As such it is not merely something which affects the thought in my head
or yours, but which is a link between us and everybody else. But this is in con-
tradiction with our human being.
Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings I
would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and the
other person and therefore would become recognised and felt by you your-
self as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of
yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your
thought and your love.
In outlining his adherence to what he later called communism, he wrote the following year
his Theses on Feuerbach, in which he settled accounts with materialism:
The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that
things [Gegenstaende], reality, sensuousness are conceived only in the form of
the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not sub-
jectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism the active side was set forth
abstractly by idealism which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activi-
ty as such Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from conceptual
objects, but he does conceive objects, but he does not conceive human activity
itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des Christentums he therefore regards the
theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is con-
ceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence he does
not grasp the significance of revolutionary, of practical-critical activity.
In 1847, he and Engels, with whom he had been in contact since reading the brilliant essay
The Critique of Political Economy, joined the League of the Just, converting it into a more or
less open organisation, the Communist League. After Engels had written a draft, Marx
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wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party. (Party, by the way, had nothing at all to do
with the modern meaning of the word, just referring to a trend within society.)
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-
class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the prole-
tariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by
which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
Marx and Engels returned to Germany in 1848-49, and took part in the revolution, taking
advantage of the fairly liberal laws of the Rhineland to settle in here. At first, Marx tried to
revive the Communist League, but a faction of it was intent on re-starting the revolution,
and a split took place.
From then on, he worked on his Capital, only interrupting this activity to organise the
First International, to organise work for the refugees from the Paris Commune in 1871, and
in order to try to keep himself and his family.
So to answer the question Who was Karl Marx?, I am afraid it will be necessary to
read the vast unfinished manuscript called Capital. And that is where the widespread mis-
apprehension that this is an economics book, or a book about capitalism, comes in. (The
word capitalism does not appear in the book or in any draft of it.) Capital is a critique of
political economy, and critique has its special meaning of drawing out the contradictions
of its exposition, so that they are related to the contradictions of the object. Volume 1 is
subtitled The Production-Process of Capital, although the reader of the English transla-
tion inspired by Engels would not know this. Anyway, the distance between this
Marx and the BBC listeners favourite philosopher is unknown. At this stage of the class
struggle, it is best to ignore this question and study the actual Marx.
Cyril Smith
Germanys General Election
AFTER a series of defeats in state elections for Gerhard Schrders so-called RedGreen
coalition, culminating in the defeat in the SPDs stronghold of North RhineWestphalia,
due to the unpopularity of attacks across the board on working-class people, including
pensioners and the unemployed (see Theodor Bergmanns article in New Interventions,
Volume 12, no 1, Spring 2005, for the background), Schrder gambled on a desperate stunt
in order to rally disillusioned supporters by engineering the loss of a vote of confidence in
the Bundestag and going for an early general election. The government voted itself down!
Although the government had long insisted that there is no alternative to the re-
forms it was advancing (we know the sense of reform here by New Labours use of the
term), and with the CDUCSU bloc led by Angela Merkel, portrayed as Germanys Mrs
Thatcher, threatening to act in the same way only more firmly, in the course of the election
campaign, both the SPD and the Greens presented themselves in a more social light than
a market one, and succeeded remarkably in pulling back a significant sector of their lost
supporters. Merkels campaign went in the other direction due to various blunders, such
as the promise of a flat tax.
The result was almost a tie between the two blocs, the CDUCSU leading by a slight
margin. Schrder tried to hang on as Chancellor by claiming that his party was the largest.
Once the delayed Dresden result emerged as a CDU win, the negotiations got underway
for a Grand Coalition between the SPD and the CDUCSU bloc. Schrder stepped aside,
Merkel became the Chancellor, but the SPD got the majority of cabinet posts.
Both main blocs lost votes: the CDUCSU lost 1.8 million of its 2002 result, one mil-
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lion going to the Free Democrats, which represented a firmer neo-liberalism. With 9.8 per
cent of the vote, the FDP came in third place. Notwithstanding the revival noted above,
the SPD lost 2.3 million of its 2002 vote, one million switching to the Linkspartei (Left Par-
ty), which won 8.7 per cent of the vote, thus coming in fourth place, in front of the Greens,
who lost 0.3 million votes. A majority of German voters rejected the neo-liberal reforms
advanced by the right-wing establishment parties, and the SPDGreens supporters had
already indicated their displeasure in such policies by abandoning the government parties
in the series of state elections that led Schrder to gamble on an early general election.
Schrders version of the third way is over. The Grand Coalition will be an unstable enti-
ty and will only lead to more tensions between it and the working class. The Left Party can
become the beneficiary.
The Left Party was cobbled together in the run-up to the general election. Essentially,
the Party of Democratic Socialism and WASG (Electoral Alternative: Employment and So-
cial Justice) assembled the Left Party in order not to waste left-wing votes and be sure to
pass the five per cent hurdle. While the PDS has been unable to make an impact in the
West, due to its originating in the old ruling party of East Germany, the SED, the WASG
represents dissident left-wing SPD members and prominent figures from the trade unions,
mostly from the middle and lower levels. The WASG sector was headed by ex-SPD left-
winger Oskar Lafontaine. The PDS opened up its lists to the WASG. As yet there is no new
party; the arrangement was necessitated by electoral rules. The votes given to the Left Par-
ty resulted in 54 seats in the Bundestag, which allows fraktion status, with the conse-
quent financing of secretaries, etc. The mere fact that a left-wing challenge to the estab-
lishment parties stood meant that those who might have, in their desperation and anger,
voted for the neo-Nazis had an alternative. The old neo-Nazi NPD has been gaining a base
in parts of the old East Germany, due to the unemployment caused by the de-
industrialisation. (By the way, a few years ago it emerged that the NPD leader in the
1960s, Adolf von Thadden, was a British agent I wonder if the British helped it into be-
ing?)
However, although the usual suspects from the far left have entered the Left Party, as
yet it isnt even an open socialist party, never mind one based on Marxist concepts. The
WASG people often fear the term socialist, as, in their view, the discrediting of socialism
by the Stalinist set-up means that the working class and its potential allies are not yet
ready for it. The PDS big-shots all originated in the old East German system and, being
used to holding office and being somebody, they have no concept of class politics and
struggle. Wanting to get power and influence, they keep moving rightwards, and often, in
the state governments or local authorities, particularly in Berlin, where they ruthlessly car-
ry out cuts together with the SPD, they disillusion their supporters (in Berlin PDS mem-
bers left to join the WASG and intend to stand against the PDS next year). So the Left Party
is only a potential at present. A genuinely open and democratic debate on programme
could provide a coherent way forward and avoid careerism and yet more unprincipled
wheeler-dealing. Anyway, to sum-up, the German general election ended up with a posi-
tive result for the left.
Mike Jones
Iraq: Constitutional Capers
IRAQ now has a constitution. Cobbled together through tortuous negotiations between
the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and representatives of Kurdish nationalist and Shia
religious parties, and with no popular input whatsoever, it was accepted by a referendum
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held in mid-October. As the voting took place, allegations were made of widespread
fraud, but these were subsequently blithely brushed aside by the Iraqi quisling authorities,
and the whole episode was portrayed by George W Bush and Tony Blair and their dwin-
dling gang of sycophants as evidence of the success of their objective of democratising the
country.
A constitution in and of itself can be meaningless. Stalin unveiled a marvellous one
in 1936; it proclaimed democracy and freedom. Its authors were sentenced to death in
show trials within two years; its honeyed clauses remained a dead letter throughout the
days of Stalins reign. This constitution was clearly a fraud, an attempt by the Soviet lite
to present itself to the world as a new form of democracy. Many people believed the hype,
although many others didnt. This time around, although only a few fools or charlatans
viewed the statements by Bush and Blair about the Iraqi constitution as anything other
than a cynical effort to justify the occupation of the country, just like the elections that
were held earlier this year, various critics of Bushs adventure nonetheless saw something
positive in the fact that voting took place and a constitution was endorsed.
What of the constitution itself? There are clauses guaranteeing a wide range of hu-
man rights. These were included largely at the insistence of the Kurdish parties, whose
leaders are canny enough to know that such nods to liberal ideals help to give a good im-
pression in the West, including with some people who are broadly critical of Bushs ad-
venture. Whatever the fine words, the actual conduct of the Kurdish parties is not inspir-
ing, as even though they had a guaranteed overwhelming vote in the earlier elections and
constitutional vote, there was considerable thuggery and fraud against non-Kurdish vot-
ers, and Arabs and Turkomen have suffered from pogroms at the hands of Kurdish mili-
tias.
The clauses of a constitution can, as in Stalins day, remain a dead letter. They can al-
so give legal and moral justification for those who profit by them. One can be certain that
the clauses guaranteeing the privatisation of the Iraqi economy and the decentralisation of
Iraq will be used by elements in the Kurdish and Shia lites to privatise, in the manner of
the selling-off of ex-Soviet assets in Russia that is, into their own pockets and those of
their rich friends in imperialist countries the Iraqi oil industry, which happens to be sit-
uated in the north and south of the country. The clauses concerning trade unions will inev-
itably be used to restrict the ability of working-class organisations to resist any encroach-
ments by the new Iraqi lites and the occupation forces. And the clauses that guarantee the
overarching imposition of Islamic principles a sign that the Shia leaders who insisted
upon these arent too well up in the PR business and dont realise that this sort of thing
doesnt go down too well with Western liberals will be used to solidify the growing
power of the mosque and the mullahs, particularly in the Shia areas, but no doubt in the
Sunni ones too. This is a reactionary step, although one suspects that certain elements on
the British left may not be too upset by it.
The voting in respect of the constitution highlighted the divisions in the country. The
Kurdish area voted very highly in favour of the constitution, as the clauses that guarantee
the decentralisation of Iraq can be used to back up what is essentially already an autono-
mous Kurdish statelet in the north of the country. Two of the three largely Sunni provinces
overwhelmingly rejected it, whilst somewhat conveniently, seeing that had three prov-
inces rejected it, the constitutional vote would have been nullified Ninevah accepted it.
The predominantly Shia provinces all accepted it. The constitutionally-guaranteed decen-
tralisation of Iraq will exacerbate tensions, as each region will look after its own interests
at the expense of the others, and the Sunnis, mainly situated in the centre of the country
where there is no oil, will be in a disadvantaged position. And Iraq cannot be divided easi-
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ly; as the various confessional and national groups are in many areas intermingled, any
fragmentation will be very unpleasant.
Beyond the issue of the constitution, the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate for
the occupiers. The fracas in Basra involving British troops merely demonstrated that large
parts of the Shia areas are in the grip of militias that are outwith the control of the central
authorities. In the mainly Sunni centre of Iraq, the broad front of resistance fighters have
continued with their campaigns against the occupying forces. The triumphalism of the
pro-war media over the constitution was dampened by the news of the two-thousandth
US military death. The US forces carried out with Kurdish militias a wide range of military
operations in the Sunni areas, but these have been singularly unsuccessful in rooting out
insurgents. It is not impossible that these operations were less to do with rooting out in-
surgents and jamming supply lines from Syria than disrupting the lives of the inhabitants
and thereby disorganising their opposition to the constitution. As before, the insurgents
left a token force in the towns under attack with the bulk moving on to fight elsewhere.
Presumably the US commanders consider that the ethnic tensions caused by the use of
Kurdish troops in these operations and the discontent provoked amongst the Sunnis who
have had their towns and cities attacked can be ignored; a very foolish assumption.
The war was brought home to London in July with the suicide bombings that were
carried out by home-grown extreme Islamicists. These acts, appalling and indefensible at-
tacks upon ordinary Londoners, were seen by practically everyone except Blair, his coterie
of loyal New Labour MPs and pro-war renegade leftists such as Norman Geras as the con-
sequence of Blairs support for Bushs war. The posthumously-released video starring one
of the bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan, confirmed the connection. It is true, as gov-
ernment spokesmen and apologists say, that extreme Islamicism predated the attack on
the World Trade Center four years back, but its rise was to a large degree a response to
Western interference in the Middle East, and its recent revival is directly connected to the
war in Iraq. And although one could not have ruled out the possibility of extreme Islami-
cist terrorism occurring in Western countries, the likelihood of such actions was made
immeasurably more probable, inevitable even, by Blairs wholehearted involvement in the
US occupation of Iraq. Far from those who recognise such a connection being apologists
for the bombings this is what Geras implied, as if, say, a psychologist trying to under-
stand the workings of a criminal mind is an apologist for the crime! those who deny the
connection can only view the attacks as the result of irrationality or just plain evil, which
explains nothing whatsoever. Before the war, Blair talked of the blood price that would
have to be paid. The four bombers and their accomplices were responsible for the killing
and injuring of Londoners on 7 July; nevertheless, the scene for this atrocity was set by
Blair and his New Labour cronies.
It is true that the USA is severely bogged down which does not prevent prominent
US figures from clamouring for action, not excluding military attacks, against Syria and
Iran (judging by his response to the Iranian presidents stupid comments about Israel,
Blair seems to be looking forward to this latter option, another war or two before he goes)
and its hope of using Iraq as the main base to establish its new imperium in the Middle
East and beyond has been set back a decade or two. No socialist can be unhappy about
that. However, working-class politics is not a zero-sum game. No socialist can welcome
the rise of ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq, nor can they be happy about the rise of
new lites (whether or not sponsored by the occupation authorities) which can be guaran-
teed to run their bailiwicks with little regard to the human rights clauses in the constitu-
tion, with sorry prospects for working-class and genuinely democratic organisations. One
would hope that socialists would look with grave concern at the rise of militant religious
11
movements as a political force in Iraq, although one cannot be too sure about that these
days. One thing is certain, the longer the occupation continues, the worse the divisions
and tensions in Iraq will become. There is one positive thing that socialists can do in this
and the other countries whose forces are occupying Iraq campaign for the immediate
withdrawal of those forces and the immediate termination of the occupation of Iraq.
Paul Flewers
Srebrenica: The Tenth Anniversary
THE tenth anniversary of the capture of Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb forces, and the
consequent deaths of some thousands of Bosnian Muslim able-bodied males, was marked
by the international press on 11 July. All the articles I saw gave a figure of 7000 or 8000
Muslims killed, and this has been the case since shortly after the town fell. That is in spite
of the general tendency for such figures to fall drastically once the fighting has ended and
some sort of normality prevails, with a functioning administration, criminal and forensic
investigations, and once the whereabouts of citizens are known. For example, that was the
case regarding Kosovo and other issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In fact, the portrayal of events regarding Srebrenica has remained static ever since
1995. Of course, it is an accepted fact that some thousands of Bosniak males were executed
after capture in an organised manner contrary to international law, and to minimise such a
deed is unacceptable. But the events surrounding the crime have been not subject to a
genuine independent investigation. The authorities in Serbia proper and the Bosnian Serb
ones were for a long time uninterested, even denying the mass killings. On the other hand,
the Hague Tribunal is a tool of those who set it up, and its role is to underpin the aims and
deeds of its masters. What can we determine?
Srebrenica, like a number of towns in Eastern Bosnia near Serbia and in a region
populated largely by Serbs, and which the rump Yugoslavia was determined to keep, was
mainly inhabited by Muslims. When in mid-1992 Bosnian Serb forces began seizing the
territory which they considered either belonged to them or was necessary to hold in a stra-
tegic-geographic sense, non-Serbs were removed. All parties to the conflict did the same,
but in the Serb case it was termed ethnic cleansing a great PR move. It was, however,
purely a case of military necessity, in order to secure the rear. In response to the publicity,
the UN declared these Muslim-inhabited towns to be under its protection and they were to
be demilitarised. The latter never happened, and Srebrenica was constantly re-supplied.
The Muslim commander was the infamous Naser Ori, a sadist who specialised in behead-
ing Serbs and videoing them. In the three years prior to Srebrenicas fall, troops under his
command killed over a thousand Serbs in scores of nearby villages. (Diana Johnstone gives
a total of 192 Serb villages pillaged and burnt, and over 1300 villagers killed between May
1992 and January 1994, see Fools Crusade, p111.) In spite of detailed evidence being given
by the Yugoslav government to the UN, backed up by testimony from ex-UN commander
General Morillon, Ori was only charged with seven Serb deaths and wanton destruction
of villages by the Hague Tribunal in March 2003 a slap on the wrist.
The Independent for 20 June 1995 had a big article with photos of the aftermath of the
attack on the Serb village of Visnjice by troops from Srebrenica. The attack on Srebrenica
was seen at the time as a retaliation for that raid. The Times for 1 August 1995 reported that
only about 200 soldiers and five tanks probed the Srebrenica perimeter, yet many thou-
sands of the inhabitants fled. At the time only The Times asked why, and it did suggest that
the flight from Srebrenica was strategic and designed to focus the UN on intervening, in
aid of obtaining good PR, sympathy, etc.
12
At the time Srebrenica fell, the Twenty-Eighth Infantry Division of the Bosnian Mus-
lim army was present, estimated at between 3000 and 4000 men, a force vastly superior to
that of the Serb one probing the perimeter. But prior to that, its leadership, including Ori,
had been called to Tuzla by the Sarajevo government, and was kept there. In other words,
the troops were left to fend for themselves, and the civilians left defenceless. This led to a
situation where a few thousand inhabitants approached the Dutch UN troops for protec-
tion. They were duly handed over to the Serbian forces, the males being separated out (the
Dutch troops acted according to their orders). A 15 000-strong column of able-bodied
males left Srebrenica during the night of 11 July, in an attempt to reach the Muslim lines in
Tuzla. Some were killed in skirmishes, but others were captured, and out of those it is be-
lieved that several thousand were later executed.
Although it would be quite understandable that the Serbian forces were looking for
Naser Ori and others of his ilk among the prisoners, who were known to have committed
atrocities against local Serbs during 1992-95, and that had they been found perhaps
some were among the dead they would have suffered summary justice, those executed
from among the prisoners were dispatched in an organised fashion, apparently according
to a decision taken on 12 July, over the course of three days.
Women and children among those who sought protection from the Dutch UN troops
were not detained. The 15 000 who set out for Tuzla were able-bodied males too. And in
epa, which also fell to Serb forces at this time, no massacres took place, so the charge of
genocide is ridiculous. Like the ethnic cleansing term, it is an emotional reference de-
signed to portray an image akin to the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry. Bosnian Muslims
are fellow Slavs in origins. Serb nationalists would often call them traitors for being Serbs
who had converted under Ottoman rule.
What took place was a war crime whereby POWs and possibly able-bodied male ci-
vilians were murdered. The figure of 7000 to 8000 murdered was made public soon after,
but it has been queried ever since, not just by apologists for the Bosnian Serb cause. Vari-
ous people have added up the figures of the registered displaced survivors from Srebreni-
ca, those who were seen in Tuzla but deliberately hidden from the ICRC (Red Cross), and
those killed in the fighting, then added the 7000/8000 to that figure, and find that the total
then surpasses the population of Srebrenica prior to its fall. In Fools Crusade (which I re-
viewed in New Interventions, Volume 11, no 4), Diana Johnstone writes that two months
after Srebrenicas fall, the ICRC announced that it was trying to obtain information from
Bosnian Serb authorities about 3000 persons who witnesses said had been detained, and
from Sarajevo authorities about some 5000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of
whom reached central Bosnia (p114).
Johnstone claims that the total of these two figures is the original source of the esti-
mated 8000 murdered Muslims. But most of the 5000 were presumed to have made their
way to Bosnian government territory. The Sarajevo authorities, however, would not give
the details of those males to the ICRC, which, therefore, still listed them as missing. The
Times for 2 August 1995 reported that the ICRC had knowledge of thousands of missing
BiH troops from Srebrenica hidden away north of Tuzla, the families being unaware of
their whereabouts. Johnstone cites an examination of the ICRC list by a Belgrade Universi-
ty professor, who found 500 people who had died before the fall of Srebrenica as well as
3016 listed as missing who were on the electoral register in 1996 so these people were
alive and well, or the elections were bent (pp283-4, note 76).
As pointed out above, at the time only The Times, to my knowledge, asked why Sre-
brenica fell without resistance to a far inferior force, and it did suggest that it was part of a
much bigger strategic aim. In the decade since Im not aware of any mainstream publica-
13
tion returning to examine the matter. However, The Economist for 9 July 2005 has a Special
Report on the Srebrenica massacre on the occasion of the tenth anniversary, which does
ask awkward questions and gives tentative answers. For example, it states that Radovan
Karadi had issued a presidential directive calling for an attack on Srebrenica, designed
to reduce its size and make life intolerable for the inhabitants. The Dutch UN force was
urged by General Rupert Smith, commander of UN forces, either to stand firmer or to
withdraw. The Dutch government rejected both options. The UN couldnt defend the so-
called safe areas without more troops, which member states wouldnt send. The Bosnian
government made known that it was open to territorial swaps, as part of a final settlement.
Srebrenica would be traded for Sarajevo suburbs inhabited by Serbs. The withdrawal of
Naser Ori it sees as the most mysterious event, and it talks of the best-informed observ-
ers being amazed at the ease with which the town fell, no resistance being given. Both the
UN and the Dutch have accepted some blame, but, it is stressed, the UN dissolves into na-
tional components in times of acute crisis. Governments dont want their troops to be
harmed. How much did Western governments know of what was taking place and when?
It asks whether it is too conspiratorial to suggest a link between the usefulness of Sre-
brenicas fate, and the fact that it was allowed, over five days, to unfold?
Then one must ask about the role of the Bosnian government. Talking to the present
mayor, Abdurahman Malki, who had been one of the towns defenders at the time and
who managed to get through the Serb lines to safety, the author suggests that the respon-
sibility lies as heavily on people like himself his position at the time is left unsaid as it
does on the Sarajevo authorities. Whilst placing responsibility at the door of the main
culprits the Serbs, the mayor does admit his role. There have been reports elsewhere
over the years that the Clinton government told President Izetbegovi that a sizeable mas-
sacre would be required before he could get directly involved, and the Economist report
describes a speech by Clinton at the cemetery in September 2003, which was remarkably
blunt, and politically astute in talking about the political effects of the massacre: It ena-
bled me to secure NATO support for the bombing that led to peace. It was the key to
imposing peace.
It is doubtful that well get a full picture until it suits the different protagonists, alt-
hough some Bosnian Muslim politicians and military men have in the years since exposed
some of the mythology, and prior to his death Izetbegovi admitted to Bernard Kouchner
that the claims regarding Bosnian Serb concentration camps had been inflated, with the
aim of getting NATO to bomb the Serbs. The Bosnian Serb authorities have begun to be
more cooperative, both in admitting the killings and locating the grave-sites, though some
observers put it down to Paddy Ashdown and his masters firing Serb politicians until he
finds some wholl do his bidding. It took the Soviet Union half a century to admit to the
massacre of Polish officers at Katyn, and to apologise. And it suited Britain to support the
lie that the Nazis had been responsible. So although it is not hard to conclude that squalid
realpolitik was involved in the Srebrenica events, the governments concerned will keep up
with their own portrayal for as long as it is necessary for justifying their current actions.
Whether the number of victims was 7000, 8000 or somewhat lower, thousands were mas-
sacred as bit-players in a larger political game involving a wide variety of interests.
Mike Jones
The Attack on Multiculturalism
ONE result of the suicide bombings in London on 7 July and the violent clashes in October
between Afro-Caribbean and Asian youth in Lozells in Birmingham has been an intensifi-
14
cation in the debate around the question of multiculturalism. A wide range of voices,
many on the political right but also such figures as Trevor Phillips, have been stating that
the official policies of multiculturalism have led to the rise of ethnical and religious divi-
sions in Britain, resulting in, amongst other things, ghettoisation and segregation, the riots
in Lozells, and the rise in Britain of an overt Muslim identity and Islamicist politics, at the
furthermost end of which stood the suicide bombers. One of Phillips critics is the Socialist
Workers Partys Hassan Mahamdallie. Writing in the Socialist Review for November, he
points out that critics of multiculturalism have a reactionary agenda, stating that Phillips is
helping New Labour in its quest of undermining support for multiculturalism in favour
of community cohesion, which is nothing more than a New Labour version of the old
Alf Garnett mantra, When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Were, as Mahamdallie implies, multiculturalism merely a term for people of varying
cultural backgrounds and manifestations living alongside each other, socialists would
have no problem with it. But this is not what it means, and our SWPer carefully avoids
discussing the actual theories and consequences of official multiculturalism. Writing in the
Observer on 16 October, the veteran commentator Ambalavaner Sivanandan noted the dif-
ference between the two definitions: The first envisages a culturally diverse society. The
second not really multiculturalism, but what I term culturalism engenders a cul-
turally divisive society. He states that the latter was a response of the Thatcher govern-
ment when faced with urban riots against racism in 1981. Money was poured into ethnic
projects and strengthening ethnic cultures. This approach has informed government poli-
cy ever since.
The mainstream critics of multiculturalism are concerned that its disintegrative con-
sequences undermine the existence of a national consensus. Hence their desperate quest to
elaborate a new national identity that will hopefully be all-inclusive. The results of their
efforts are not impressive. There is little chance that a positive British identity can be built
up around the imagery of Trafalgar, Waterloo, the Battle of Britain and D-Day. At most,
taking into consideration that these were all military victories, all that one will get from
pushing memories of old battles is a nasty, chauvinist attitude which the ruling class does
not wish to whip up too much at the present, particularly as they were victories over what
are now fellow members of the European Union. Otherwise, history arouses little more
than a casual, uninvolved interest or curiosity with most people. Celebrations of things
that are openly cultural music, literature, art, theatre, food cannot create a national
identity, as ones appreciation or otherwise of them is necessarily subjective, nor can the
celebration of science, on the grounds that interest in it is seen as nerdy, and that science
is today often seen as the cause of many of the worlds problems.
The socialist critique of multiculturalism is based upon different criteria. Multicul-
turalism promotes the idea that human cultures are discrete, immutable phenomena, and
therefore emphasises differences rather than shared experiences. (Ironically, multicultural-
ism shares the same theoretical basis as the mainstream critique of it, as the latter is based
upon the criterion of nationality as a discrete and eternal factor.) It helps to erect barriers
between one culturally-defined group and another, as people are continually encouraged
to identify themselves along narrow cultural or, to put it more accurately, ethni-
cal/religious lines, obscuring class divisions in society, and encouraging people of each
community to look inwards, thus reinforcing conservative social norms. It encourages
political corruption as the usually unelected community leaders vie amongst themselves
for government and local authority grants and favours, and politicians engage in pork-
barrelling to pick up community-based votes. Far from overcoming racial divisions in
Britain, official multiculturalism has helped to perpetuate bad feeling both between whites
15
and non-whites, and amongst culturally- and ethnically-defined groups as a whole.
Multiculturalism did not cause racism, nor is it the cause of the rise of political Islam
or of the riots in Lozells. Neither did it cause the social disaggregation that we see all
around us. But it has helped to exacerbate racial and religious differences, and thereby
helped to weaken working-class consciousness. If socialists consider that a national identi-
ty or identities based upon culture are undesirable, then what do we need to put in its
place? The answer is obvious: an identity based upon class. This is, in its way, a divisive
concept, as it necessarily involves a struggle for ascendancy between the two main classes
of society, the working class and the capitalist class. But it is necessary both in the short
run to defend the working conditions and living standards of the working class against the
attacks of the capitalists, and in the long run as it ultimately leads to the overcoming of all
social divisions as a socialist society is constructed. Official multiculturalism, by dividing
the working class, militates against the struggle for a socialist society; it should not be de-
fended.
Arthur Trusscott
Hasan and Louis Proyect
Natural Disasters Social
Calamities
The past year has seen several natural disasters, including the tsunami that hit Indonesia
last Boxing Day, Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in September, and the
earthquake in northern Pakistan and Kashmir in October. Such natural disasters cant be
avoided, they are beyond the capability of mankind to prevent and, in the case of earth-
quakes, even to predict. However, the subsequent social calamities we have seen give all
the indications of being greatly accentuated by socially-determined factors that could have
been averted.
Below are two pieces, an eye-witness account of the disaster in Pakistan by Hasan, a
Pakistani socialist who has been translating Capital into Urdu for the Marxist Internet Ar-
chive, and an analysis of the political fall-out from Hurricane Katrina by Louis Proyect, a
socialist in New York who runs the Marxmail discussion list.
I: Eye-Witness in Pakistan
I WENT to Baagh, a city 60 miles from Muzaffar Abad, to visit a colleague who lost 130
members of his family. The city is reduced to rubble. A pungent smell of human corpses is
felt all around. The people say that at least 50 000 people have died in one city alone. The
total number must be well above 200 000. Thousands of trucks with relief goods are arriv-
ing here from all over Pakistan. In fact in every street and road common people are collect-
ing these items and then bringing them to the quake-hit areas by themselves. No one be-
lieves the government. No common man is contributing to the Presidents Relief Fund.
In spite of this huge effort on the part of the public, relief has not reached far-flung
areas. Everywhere there are looters who stop the trucks and take away everything. I ob-
served that all those who have survived are haunted by death. Many have died; many are
dying every moment. They cannot weep at any death that occurs for tears have dried in
16
their eyes. Many have lost their senses. I met an educated man who has lost many rela-
tives. He would go to the place where dead bodies are kept and lie down among decaying
corpses. His friends had to drag him back every time. He recites this poem again and
again:
Let me move to a place where I have no friend, no, nor any companion
No one who is kind; no one who says sympathetic words to me.
Let me make a house which has not walls,
No neighbour, no one who speaks my language.
And if I fall ill, there is no one to comfort me in distress,
And if I die, there is no one to shed tears over my corpse!
At first, I could not understand this cynical attitude and extreme depression. Soon I real-
ised that all feel humiliated. A bureaucratic system of distributing relief goods has been
evolved to reduce the people to a kind of beggary. One has to be either a looter or a beggar
in order to get food or clothing. Nobody from the government or army reached them on
the first two days. They were busy in Margala Towers, one of the most expensive residen-
tial areas in the capital. It is the only building that collapsed in Islamabad because sub-
standard material had been used in its construction.
I thank the common people who are trying to reach everyone. Many will squeeze
money and prosperity out of the disaster. The bus owners charge as much fares as they
will. The truck fares have risen many times. When shopkeepers observe that you are pur-
chasing clothes or blankets for the quake victims, they rob you. And our generals and bu-
reaucrats and ministers, etc, they will be earning millions. Only a tiny part of the aid that
is being received from the international community will go the people. Our Lions will re-
ceive the Lions share. Only yesterday a brigadier was caught red-handed selling four re-
lief trucks. The government is quick to deny it. What a pity! What shame! These traders of
religion; the sellers of human shrouds! Deaths of thousands of human beings will bring
them billions of money. This is the tragedy of Pakistan, or perhaps all under-developed
countries.
This is, as Marx has commented somewhere, like the France of Balzacs novels, or
perhaps worse than that. We are carrying the stinking corpse of feudal ages with all its
decadence, moral decay, self-indulgence, corruption, depravity on our shoulders. Added
to it is all the greed, an intense, inordinate longing for wealth; a covetous desire for money
that always comes with bourgeois society. This is the Pakistan with its culture and civilisa-
tion which is the most suitable place for dictators to rule.
II: Hurricane Katrina: The Political Fallout
IF September 2001 signalled an opening bid by US imperialism to impose its hegemonic
will on the rest of the world, then September 2005 represents closure for a project that had
already been faltering under the impact of Iraqi resistance. Richard Haass, director of
policy planning in Bushs State Department and an open defender of imperialism, put it
this way recently:
Katrina will also have an impact on how citizens of the United States view for-
eign policy. The enormous problems and costs associated with the hurricane
will raise additional questions about the ability of the United States to stay the
course in Iraq. The aftermath of the catastrophe will inevitably increase politi-
cal pressure on President Bush to begin to reduce the US involvement in Iraq
and refocus US resources at home, be it on the expensive reconstruction of
17
flood-ravaged areas or on improving the countrys capacity to deal with future
disasters of this magnitude.
Hurricane Katrina exposed a number of fault-lines that are rooted in the very foundations
of American capitalist society. The frequent characterisations in the media about New Or-
leans looking Third World, while somewhat overstated, do get to the heart of whether or
not the strategic path of the American bourgeoisie over the past 30 years, which amounts
to a dismantling of the New Deal legacy by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, is
tenable. In the pages of the Nation magazine, William Greider calls for a new New Deal:
Senator Edward Kennedy calls for a Gulf Coast Regional Redevelopment Au-
thority, modeled after FDRs Tennessee Valley Authority, to lead the rebuild-
ing. Former Senator John Edwards proposes a vast new jobs program, pat-
terned after the New Deals Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civil-
ian Conservation Corps (CCC), in which the displaced and the poor are hired at
living wages to clean up and rebuild their devastated communities. In the week
after Katrina, Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Stephanie Tubbs Jones
swiftly rounded up 88 House co-sponsors, including some from Mississippi and
Louisiana, for a similar initiative.
The conclusion to this article will propose some alternatives to both Haass overweening,
neo-conservative ambitions and to Greiders nostalgia for a welfare state that can never be
recreated.
Although the mass media has depicted the New Orleans disaster as unprecedented,
Mike Davis had already called attention to how devastating such a storm could be on the
lives of poor black people in the aftermath of the Hurricane Ivan of 2004:
The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly
like Strom Thurmonds version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the
Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less mainly Black were left
behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and ageing tenements to face
the watery wrath.
New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by
the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they
had 10 000 body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one
seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the citys poorest or most
infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orleans
daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the large group mostly
concentrated in poorer neighborhoods who wanted to evacuate but couldnt.
One might expect Davis, an authority on environmental crisis, to turn his attention next to
Katrinas origins and impact. This storm is a case study in how capitalism is not a sustaina-
ble system.
To start with, Katrina like the previous years Ivan was a Category 5 hurricane.
Scientists have grown increasingly alarmed about the possibility that such storms might
be caused by global warming, since hurricanes are spawned by warm ocean currents. The
warmer the water, the more intense is the storm. Although it is difficult to prove that
global warming is directly related to the intensity of recent storms, respected scientists be-
lieve that the trends are unmistakable. One such scientist, MITs Kerry A Emanuel, former-
ly sceptical about such ties, is now convinced otherwise:
18
While looking at historical records, the atmospheric physicist at the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology found that the total power released by storms had
drastically increased more than doubling in the Atlantic Ocean in the past 30
years. The evidence was so overwhelming that he could not stand by his earlier
statements.
I wasnt even looking for it, says Mr Emanuel. The trend was just so big
that it stood out like a sore thumb.
He withdrew his name from the forthcoming paper that plays down glob-
al warmings influence on hurricanes. Then he published a new study in Nature
last month, proclaiming the opposite conclusion.
I didnt feel comfortable saying what we said a year ago, he says. I think
I see a strong global-warming signal.
If the devastation wrought on New Orleans does not serve as a wake-up call to the Ameri-
can ruling class, then probably nothing ever will. The combination of a powerful hurricane
and inadequately-maintained levees in close proximity to oil refineries has turned a major
city into a toxic dump that will take months, if not years, to reclaim. In an exclusive inter-
view with the Independent on 11 September, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste at
the Environmental Protection Agency, warned that the city will be unsafe for human habi-
tation for a decade or more. He added that the Bush administration was covering up the
danger:
Whatever future the city has, the nations lite has few plans for the poor blacks
who were the main victims of government ineptitude. While some conspiracy
theorists argue that the 17th Street canal levee was deliberately dynamited in
order to flood Black neighborhoods and drive the inhabitants out in order to fa-
cilitate gentrification, it is far more likely and easier to prove that evacuation
and rescue efforts were given short shrift in order to accomplish more or less
the same thing. Just as the Bush administration took advantage of 9/11 in order
to penetrate and control the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia, it and its lo-
cal allies in New Orleans (including many Black Democrats) seek to recast New
Orleans as more economically viable and whiter metropolis.
Such plans were already underfoot under African-American Mayor Ray Nagins admin-
istration. According to the Los Angeles Times for 6 September, Nagin, who donated thou-
sands of dollars to Bushs campaign in 2000, was behind a controversial plan to replace
many public housing projects with single-family homes and businesses. The notorious St
Thomas housing projects, for example, were replaced a few years ago by a Wal-Mart.
In a gesture that symbolised ruling-class insensitivity to its most vulnerable subjects,
President Bushs mother stated: What Im hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want
to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the peo-
ple in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very
well for them.
Considering the fact that this is the largest internal migration in the US since the
Great Depression, one might hope and expect a militant reaction to this sort of Hooverville
mentality.
Although hostility and contempt for poor black people crosses party lines, there is a
growing perception that the Bush administration with its commitment to small govern-
ment (except when it comes to military adventures overseas) is simply inadequate to solv-
ing the mess in New Orleans or responding to future disasters, like an earthquake in Cali-
19
fornia or another major terrorist attack. When you get agencies like FEMA and the EPA
and hire toadies like Michael Brown to run them, you eliminate the possibility of provid-
ing adequate protection against disaster and ensuring a rapid recovery. Ultimately, this
involves corporate profits. Hurricane Katrina, with all due respect to conspiracy theorists,
was a major blow to big business as well as the housing project denizen.
As a seaport, New Orleans was second to none. A vast array of exports made their
way overseas, especially farm goods that were sent south on barges on the Mississippi
River just as they have for over a century. In addition, oil drilling and refining infrastruc-
ture was heavily damaged. It is entirely conceivable that this damage can be repaired and
that a New Orleans might be constructed on a new basis consisting of petrochemicals,
farm exports and tourism, but it is a challenge to a weakened labour and black movement,
as well as the organised left, to take the needs of a vast refugee population into account.
Unlike the period following September 2001, society is now far more favourably dis-
posed to challenges to the Bush administration and its liberal accomplices. Despite former
President Clintons efforts to soften criticism of Bush through his partnership with the el-
der Bush in charitable fund-raising around Katrina, there are signs that other mainstream
politicians and the press are finally reacting to widespread alienation from the neo-
conservative agenda and are ready to speak out.
In contrast to March 2003, when embedded reporters in Iraq served as virtual public
relations operatives for the Pentagon, the media has openly challenged the Bush admin-
istration and its hard-core supporters in Murdoch-controlled outlets.
The sight of bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans and babies crying for milk
has had even the most flag-waving reporter crying out in anguish against government in-
action and insensitivity. Anderson Cooper, a CNN host not particularly noted for chal-
lenging officialdom, conducted an interview with Louisiana Senator Mary L Landrieu on 1
September. When she began by complimenting both Republican and Democratic politi-
cians for their response to the crisis, Cooper interjected:
Excuse me, Senator, Im sorry for interrupting, I havent heard that, because, for
the last four days, Ive been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississip-
pi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each
other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very
upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap
you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the
wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this
town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the
street for 48 hours.
Cooper clearly reflects a shifting mood in the country. Continuing casualties in Iraq,
mounting energy prices, insecurity over a jobless recovery have made the ordinary citi-
zen less receptive to Karl Roves orchestrated media events featuring the president. The
New York Times Maureen Dowd, never a great fan of the president to begin with, had this
to say on 17 September 2005:
In a ruined city still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage
and still 40 per cent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and
muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where
unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost
their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or res-
cuers isnt it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in
20
White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a
prettified background?
The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage Ws
High Noon snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting the same Rea-
ganesque stagecraft they had provided when W made a prime-time television
address from Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On that
occasion, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, and Bob DeServi, a former NBC
cameraman and a lighting expert, rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the
kind used for Monday Night Football and Rolling Stones concerts, floated
them across New York Harbor and illuminated the Statue of Liberty as a back-
drop for Mr Bush.
Dowd dismissed these efforts as a kind of Disney on Parade in the title of her op-ed
piece. All in all, there is the ineluctable sense that the media is beginning to conclude that
the emperor is not wearing any clothes.
Ultimately, the Maureen Dowds and William Greiders of the USA pin their hopes on
an ouster of the Republican Party in 2008 and a restoration of honest government and a
willingness to treat social ills with something more than private charity. They have fond
memories of New Deal traditions extending through to Lyndon Johnsons Great Society.
Realistically, there is about as much chance of restoring the welfare state as there is in time
travel. The period they look back nostalgically upon owed more to the fortuitous circum-
stances enjoyed by the American capitalist economy than the beneficence of its rulers.
The Second World War broke the back of the Great Depression through military
spending and postwar prosperity. Programmes like the GI Bill, subsidised housing and
Medicare feasibly rested on the USAs hegemonic role in the global economy. With a re-
covered Europe and Japan following the 1960s and with newer challenges from China and
India, it is no longer possible to sustain imperialism abroad and the welfare state at home.
The meanness of the Bush administration is a necessary outcome of fierce global competi-
tion. If you are forced by the logic of capital accumulation to drive down wages and cut
expenses, the inevitable outcome is politicians like Bush. When the Democrats are forced
by the very same iron laws to support neo-liberal trade bills and assaults on Social Securi-
ty, voters will most often back the Republicans rather than a cheap imitation.
As these contradictions deepen, more and more people will be open once again to the
socialist alternative. Even the New York Times resorted almost inexplicably to featuring a
story that had originally appeared in Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the International
Socialist Organization, about the difficulties involved with evacuating New Orleans. On 10
September, Gardiner Harris reported: Police agencies to the south of New Orleans were
so fearful of the crowds trying to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a
crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees,
two paramedics who were in the crowd said. Harris relied heavily on an account that was
filed by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky in the Socialist Worker, and that was
widely distributed on the Internet. Among other things, Bradshaw and Slonsky wrote:
We walked to the police command center at Harrahs on Canal Street and were
told the same thing that we were on our own, and no, they didnt have water
to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to de-
cide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post.
We would be plainly visible to the media and constitute a highly visible embar-
rassment to city officials. The police told us that we couldnt stay. Regardless,
21
we began to settle in and set up camp.
Their report and many others out of New Orleans describe in sorry detail how necessary it
was for ordinary citizens to act on their own behalf in the face of government indifference
or worse armed hostility from the cops.
How much better it would be if the government was made up of ordinary working
people who knew what it meant for a baby not to have milk to drink or for an old person
in a nursing home to be abandoned to flood waters.
Such a government not only exists, it offered to send physicians to the USA in a gen-
erous offer to help victims of Katrina that Bush turned down. We speak of revolutionary
Cuba, of course, a nation that despite rationing and hardships of one sort or another at
least knows how to protect its citizens against the ravages of a Category 5 hurricane.
When Mike Davis was calling attention to the indifference of the authorities in New
Orleans following Hurricane Ivans onslaught in 2004, Cuban officials behaved much dif-
ferently in the face of that same storm. In a report by Marjorie Cohn that was widely circu-
lated on the Internet, we learn how Cuba rose to the occasion:
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with
160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to
higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20 000
houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castros secret? According to Dr Nelson
Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in
Latin America, the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin
with. People know ahead of time where they are to go.
Cubas leaders go on TV and take charge, said Valdes. Contrast this with
George W Bushs reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the
Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appear-
ance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on
Thursday, the New York Times said, nothing about the presidents demeanor
yesterday which seemed casual to the point of carelessness suggested that
he understood the depth of the current crisis.
Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable in Cuba, Valdes
said. Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have
family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and
already know, for example, who needs insulin.
They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators,
so that people arent reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff,
Valdes observed.
Perhaps the jibes about the USA looking like a Third World country might have to be
qualified in light of the Cuban example. Although it is conventionally understood as a de-
veloping country, Cuba demonstrates that a commitment to social need rather than pri-
vate profit can go a long way, even if the country is not a major global economic power
like the USA. Furthermore, if penurious Cuba can do so well in such a crisis situation,
what would a wealthy nation like the USA be able to accomplish? These will not simply be
rhetorical questions as the economic and environmental contradictions of late capitalism
deepen as senseless warfare is pursued in far-off lands.
22
Tony Greenstein
A Hypocritical Charade
Why I Oppose Holocaust Memorial Day and State-
Sanctioned Anti-Racism
HOW, many readers may ask, can you oppose something like a day to commemorate the
Holocaust? Surely its a no-brainer. No one, except the fascist fringe, supports the Holo-
caust. How then can you oppose a day remembering the victims of the most terrible
crimes in history? How indeed.
As someone who has been active in the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement for 35
years, I dont need convincing that the Holocaust, the extermination of two-thirds of Eu-
ropes Jewry, was a terrible evil. What I cannot and will not accept is the idea that we
should support a state-sponsored commemoration of the Holocaust.
What were the origins of Holocaust Memorial Day? The idea had been around for
some time, but the Tories, whose approach to racism has always lacked a certain sophisti-
cation, werent interested. New Labour, however, one of whose defining political charac-
teristics was support for Zionism and the Israeli state, had a different approach to racism,
just as they had a different approach to the welfare state. In essence they sought to inte-
grate Black and Asian communities in Britain. The old need to divide and rule between
different sections of the working class no longer held. They sought to create a model of
Britishness which included all colours and religions. Hence they set up the Steven Law-
rence Inquiry and introduced specific offences of racially-aggravated assault. Yet at the
same time, New Labour outbid and outdid the Tories in anything they had done in respect
to the new outsiders, refugees and asylum seekers. This is the context of Holocaust Memo-
rial Day. It is a state-sponsored anti-racist event, whose aim is to cover that state in the
glories of anti-racism, even whilst it perpetrates yet further racist outrages of its own. It is
an anti-racism which seeks to divorce racism and imperialism by depoliticising the Holo-
caust.
On 10 June 1999, in reply to a question from Andrew Dismore MP, Tony Blair said: I
am determined to ensure that the horrendous crimes against humanity committed during
the Holocaust are never forgotten. This, of course, is the same Blair who took Britain into
a genocidal war against Iraq, and who has maintained an attitude of complete hostility
and contempt to asylum seekers, all of whom in his eyes are bogus. The same New Labour
administration which has introduced one Asylum and Immigration Act after another,
which has jailed refugee children in prisons, locked up asylum seekers indefinitely and all
but eliminated legal aid for asylum seekers, which has virtually abolished the appeal sys-
tem and introduced vouchers for asylum seekers before deciding to abolish state benefits
altogether, is nonetheless the midwife of Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a government
which has no compunction about seizing as hostages children and putting them into care
in order to persuade them to go back to a life of terror, torture and death, and which has
deprived these children of all education in order to prevent asylum seekers and local
communities from interacting. This is the government of the Holocaust Memorial Day.
Five years is an awfully long time in politics, but on 30 January 2000 I had a letter
printed in the Observer criticising the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day. I wrote:
23
The hypocrisy of Tony Blair et al, fresh from introducing an Asylum Act which
would have condemned even more Jewish refugees to death in the camps, beg-
gars belief. Those who sat with folded arms as the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwan-
da proceeded apace, who recognised the Khmer Rouge at the UN, and who
even now are arming Zimbabwean mercenaries in the Congo, should refrain
from capitalising upon the memories of the Holocaust. The dead of Auschwitz
have no need of New Labours spin doctors.
What is even more remarkable is that this letter was written in support of Nick Cohen, who
had just written an article criticising Holocaust Memorial Day. One can assume that, as
with many things, Cohen has now changed his views on Holocaust Memorial Day.
No example better typifies the utter hypocrisy and cant of those who parade their
consciences on Holocaust Memorial Day than that of the newly-anointed saint, Robin
Cook. Back in 1997, Cook was in the throes of his ethical foreign policy, and nothing
demonstrated this policy better than his trip around Europe. On Thursday, 27 November
1997, Cook visited the Czech Republic and told its then President, Vclav Havel, that Brit-
ain is not a soft touch for those [Czech Gypsies] who claim asylum on the basis of false
persecution. Gypsies, it might be recalled, have a long history of false persecution, as the
half a million who died in the Nazi extermination camps could no doubt testify to (Cook
Warns Off Gypsies, Guardian, 28 November 1997).
Having warmed to his task, our saint made his way to Warsaw. Head bowed against
a bitter wind, Saint Robin paid tribute to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, at the Um-
schlagplatz, from where 300 000 inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto were deported to these
same extermination camps. The best way of making sure it never happens again in Eu-
rope, he intoned, is to make sure we remember what did happen. (Pledge To Put Rec-
ord Straight, Guardian, 29 November 1997)
On 27 January 2001, New Labour declared the Holocaust Memorial Day. The previ-
ous year, no less than 44 governments sent delegations to Stockholm, Sweden, to attend
the Stockholm International Forum on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.
At the conclusion of the conference, the heads of delegations unanimously agreed to sign a
Declaration. In response to this, the government adopted a Holocaust Memorial Day and
proposed seven principles, none of which are exceptional, the third of which states: We
must make sure that future generations understand the causes of the Holocaust and reflect
upon its consequences. And it is this which Blair and the other 43 governments are de-
termined should not happen.
If one thing can be predicted with certainty in this uncertain world, it is that the 44
governments are not going to torture themselves over comparisons with the immigration
policies of Western governments between 1933 and 1939. Who remembers the 1938 Evian
Conference, when the leaders of 31 countries gathered together in this French spa town to
try to do something for the Jewish refugees. This was a conference long on platitudes, but,
apart from the offer by the Dominican Republic of 100 000 immigration certificates, virtu-
ally nothing tangible was achieved. As Christopher Sykes, the rabidly pro-Zionist British
historian, noted in his Crossroads to Israel (1973): Official observers from Nazi Germany
and Fascist Italy looked on with pleased contempt.
But the representatives of the fascist governments were not the only ones feeling
pleased. There are no greater supporters of Holocaust Memorial Day than the supporters
of Zionism. The Holocaust has become one of the main ideological weapons of supporters
of the Zionist state. Israel is apparently the only guarantee against such an occurrence. The
Holocaust is proof that the Jews needed a state. The reparations which the Zionist move-
24
ment and its various corrupt subsidiaries have extorted and extracted from different gov-
ernments and industries but not American ones! on the back of the Holocaust make
it an industry they would be loath to lose. So much so that they have repeatedly inflated
the number of Holocaust survivors. In May 1999, the State Department estimated there
were some 70 000 to 90 000 former slave labourers still alive, of whom between 14 000 and
18 000 were Jewish. Yet when claims were made for reparations, the Holocaust Industry
demanded compensation for 135 000 Jewish slave labourers. As Professor Norman Finkel-
stein observes, to believe the Holocaust industry, more former Jewish slave labourers are
alive today than a half-century ago (Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry, pp126-
27).
Yet, as Sykes observed in his book:
The Zionists were not worried by its [Evians] failure From the start they
regarded the whole enterprise with hostile indifference The fact is that what
was attempted at Evian was in no sense congenial to the spirit of Zionism If
the 31 nations had done their duty and shown hospitality to those in dire need,
then the pressure on the National Home and the heightened enthusiasm of Zi-
onism within Palestine would both have been relaxed As things stood after
Evian the outlook for the Jews was black throughout the world except for the
bright spot of Palestine and the speck of Dominica. The Zionist leaders pre-
ferred that it should remain that way If their [the Zionist leaderships] policy
entailed suffering, then that was the price that had to be paid for the rescue of
the Jewish soul.
There is enormous amounts of evidence to support the argument that the Zionists were
not only indifferent but actively hostile to any attempt to rescue the Jews of Europe which
didnt involve emigration to Palestine. In the UK and the USA, they actively opposed low-
ering the immigration barriers, and accused those who did try to do so of undermining the
war effort.
There is one lesson that Blair, New Labour and the Zionist movement will never take
to heart from the Holocaust. That immigration controls are the handmaiden of genocide
and torture. That those who erected the immigration barriers that barred Europes Jews
from fleeing are as culpable as someone who stands outside a burning house and uses a
shotgun to fire at those trying to escape. Maybe he is not the arsonist, maybe he would like
to put the fire out, but in preventing the victims of the fire from escaping, he too is guilty
of being an accessory after the fact.
There are some people who will say, yes, we agree with everything you have written,
but surely a Holocaust Memorial Day will not do any harm. Indeed it might do some good
by raising awareness. I disagree. The purpose of Holocaust Memorial Day is not to prevent
the reoccurrence of racism and fascism. The whole project of New Labour and their Wash-
ington masters is to create repressive authoritarian states which safeguard the interests of
the West. The effect of Holocaust Memorial Day is to make New Labour and the British
state smell of roses. It actually undermines the anti-racist struggle by painting our enemies
in pastel colours of light and sweet reason. The mock tears that Blair & Co weep on Holo-
caust Day, the messages from the Queen and other establishment flunkeys, act to reinforce
the very state that targets and pillories as terrorists those who support freedom else-
where.
If there is one lesson that the Holocaust serves, it is of the dangers of racism and fas-
cism. It is a lesson of Western culpability, of the lengths to which capitalism will go in or-
25
der to preserve itself. We have seen throughout the postwar era how the United States, in
its mission to rid the continent of communism, had no hesitation in destabilising demo-
cratic regimes and installing genocidal military juntas in South America. Pinochet, Viola,
Stroessner are just some of the names of these home-grown, US-supported dictators. And
to whom did the Simon Wiesenthal Centre make its Humanitarian of the Year Award? No
less than Ronald Reagans Secretary of State and author of their anti-Sandinista strategy in
Central America, Jeanne Kirkpatrick! And when the professional Holocaust Industry poli-
tician Elie Wiesel, who lectures for $20 000 a time, was asked privately to pressurise Israel
into not selling arms to the Rios Mont junta in Guatemala, which butchered over 100 000
Mayan Indians, he refused. These are the real lessons of the Holocaust for our rulers: to
cover themselves in glory whilst perpetrating the same old trade in death (see Holocaust
Industry, p146).
The Zionist movement argues that the Holocaust is unique. That comparisons cannot
be drawn. In one sense, of course, this is understandable. After all, if we draw compari-
sons some might conclude that there isnt a great deal of difference between those who
dealt in the politics of blood and soil in the 1930s and those settler Rabbis who believe to-
day that Jewish blood is precious but non-Jewish blood can be spilt with impunity, that
Jewish life is worth somewhat more than their non-Jewish equivalents. That those who ac-
cord rights depending on the religion you are born into are little different from those who
argued for similar ideas a half-century ago.
But there is a stronger reason than this. The Holocaust is one of the principal ideolog-
ical weapons of the Zionist movement and their imperialist backers. To draw too many
comparisons will weaken the effect. Which is why, although there are token references to
gays and Gypsies, the main focus of Holocaust Memorial Day is on the Jewish extermina-
tion.
If those who initiated and supported the establishment of a Holocaust Memorial Day
were at all honest, then even the name of the day would have been different Genocide
Day might be one alternative. How else to explain that up to 10 million Africans died in
the 20 years to 1911 in the Belgian Congo? Or the 14-plus millions who died in the slave
trade? To say nothing of more recent acts of genocide such as the US-sponsored one in
East Timor, or the death of some two million Cambodians by the US-supported Pol Pot
regime, or the million-plus Rwandans who died as a consequence of French and Belgian
imperialism. But a Genocide Day would also have to examine the role of imperialism, and
Holocaust or no Holocaust, that is a step too far.
Mosh Machover
Zionism: A Major Obstacle
IN this article, I would like to explain why Zionism, as a political ideology, is a major ob-
stacle to the resolution of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict.
Let me stress that I am concerned here with Zionist ideology rather than with the prac-
tice of the Zionist project. That the latter is an absolute obstacle to the resolution of the con-
flict is self-evident: it is a colonisatory project, an implantation of settlers, which has
necessarily been implemented at the expense of the mass of indigenous people and the
by denial of their national rights. Indeed, the Zionist project is the root cause of the con-
26
flict.
Zionist ideology is clearly unacceptable from the perspective of the Palestinian Arab
people. But here I propose to consider the case against Zionism from a somewhat less ob-
vious perspective that of the settler nation.
How May the Conflict Be Resolved?
Let us first ask ourselves what we mean by resolution of the conflict.
I have argued elsewhere
1
that the Zionist colonisation of Palestine unlike the colo-
nisation of southern Africa, for example was not based on exploiting the labour power
of the indigenous people, but has aimed, quite consciously and deliberately, at their elimi-
nation.
2

In several other settler states belonging to the same species of colonisation, the set-
tlers have succeeded in eliminating the entire indigenous population or in reducing it to
small and relatively insignificant remnants. The conflict between colonisers and colonised
ended with the overwhelming and virtually total victory of the former, and was in this
sense resolved.
Such an outcome is very unlikely in the case of the Israeli settler state. To be sure, the
historical record suggests that Israels Zionist leaders will exploit any opportunity (sheat
kosher in Zionist parlance) for further territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing. Moreover,
the more daring among them will attempt actively to create such opportunities. But how-
ever far this process may realistically be pushed, Israel will always find itself surrounded
by Arabs, by the Arab nation, of which the Palestinian Arab people is a constituent part.
3

In the end, the conflict in this case can only be resolved by accommodating the two
national groups directly involved: the Palestinian Arabs and the Hebrews.
4
And no ac-
commodation can be a true resolution unless it is based on equality of group (collective)
rights between these two national groups (as well as equality of individual rights to all).
This is a minimal necessary condition because its absence means, by definition, that one of
these groups will be underprivileged and oppressed. National oppression inexorably leads
to national struggle the very opposite of resolution.
Note that I am not specifying any state-institutional framework for an equality-based
resolution. In principle, many alternative frameworks are possible. I do not wish to enter
here into the controversy between those who support the so-called two-state solution and
those who advocate a single secular state.
5
In my opinion, this controversy, in the way it
is actually conducted, is a diversion. Given the present balance of power, no true resolu-
tion is possible in the short or medium term. In these circumstances, a two-state settle-
ment is bound to be a travesty: a nominally independent Palestinian state that is in reality
a disconnected set of Indian Reservations policed by corrupt lites acting as proxies for a

1. See my article Is it Apartheid?, November 2004; posted in various web-sites, for example,
http://www.pamolson.org/Art Apartheid.htm.
2. In Zionist parlance, this ethnic cleansing is referred to as transfer. On its planning and early stages,
see Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-
1948, Washington, 1992.
3. This is quite different from the case of, say, the USA, which was able to fulfil its manifest destiny by
occupying and ethnically cleansing the whole space from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
4. The latter are commonly called Israeli Jews. I have long preferred the term Hebrews, because Jew
is an ambiguous term, which can denote religious rather than (or as well as) ethnic affiliation. On the
other hand, the Hebrew nation is most clearly characterised by its use of the Hebrew language as a
common means of everyday and cultural discourse.
5. For a discussion of the ideology coded by the term secular in the slogan Secular Democratic Pales-
tine, see below.
27
dominant Israel a regional hegemonic nuclear super-power, in its turn a local hatchet-
man for the global hyper-power. A one-state set-up will be no better: an extension of direct
military occupation and subjugation.
The Regional Context
But no balance of power lasts forever. A proper resolution will become possible in the
longer term, given a radical socio-political transformation of the Arab world and some
form of unification of the Arab nation (of which the Palestinian Arab people is a compo-
nent). In such circumstances, a resolution of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict will necessarily
be embedded in a regional constellation, a confederation including the entire Arab East.
For this reason it is, in my opinion, an error to think of a resolution of the conflict within a
framework confined to the borders of Palestine/Israel (whether as a single state or divided
into two states) in isolation from its regional context.
The Impossible as Enemy of the Difficult
Let me return to the main theme: an accommodation of the two national entities, based on
equality of collective national rights.
We must not underestimate the enormous difficulty of such an accommodation.
The Hebrew nation will have to give up its longstanding dominance and the privi-
leges that go with it. That this is just doesnt make it easy. Indeed, it can only become real-
istic given a balance of power very different from the present one.
But precisely in such circumstances it will be very difficult for the Palestinian Arabs
to accept that the Hebrew nation, created in the Palestinian homeland as a consequence of
Zionist colonisation, ought to be accommodated and granted equal national rights.
The great difficulty that this represents for mainstream Palestinian nationalism is
made clear by arguments put forward by Fateh (the dominant component of the PLO led
by the late Yasir Arafat) as far back as 1970, advocating its call for a Secular Democratic
Palestine. By that time, mainstream Palestinian nationalism was coming to terms with the
painful realisation that the Israelis were there to stay, and had to be accommodated in a
future free Palestine. But it denied the highly inconvenient fact that Zionist colonisation
had given birth to a new Hebrew nation a fact that is indeed an enormously complicat-
ing factor in the conflict. The adjective secular in the formula Secular Democratic Pales-
tine encoded this denial. In a programmatic article unsigned, but to my certain
knowledge written by Nabil Shaath (then one of the main Fateh ideologues and now a
senior minister in the Palestinian Authority) Fateh explicitly rejected the idea of a bi-
national Palestine as a misconception, the call for a non-sectarian Palestine should not be
confused with a bi-national state. It argued that in the reality of Palestine the term bi-
national and the ArabJewish dichotomy [are] meaningless, or at best quite dubious.
Moreover, the article stresses that the liberated Palestine will be part of the Arab Home-
land, and will not be another alien state within it; and looks forward to the eventual uni-
ty of Palestine with other Arab states.
6

In the programmatic formula Secular Democratic Palestine proposed at that time by
Fateh, the adjective secular was inserted not in opposition to theocratic (a theocratic
democratic state is in any case a nonsensical concept), but in opposition to bi-national.
The intention was to present the PalestinianIsraeli conflict in religious terms, and to pro-
pose a future Palestine in which Jews would have individual equality and freedom of reli-
gious worship in a country whose nationality would be Arab.

6. Towards the Democratic Palestine, Fateh (English-language newspaper published by the Information
Office of the Palestine Liberation Movement), Volume 2, no 2, 19 January 1970. My emphasis.
28
Yet without accepting the fact that a Hebrew nation exists, and without according it
national rights equal to those of the Palestinian Arab people, the conflict cannot be re-
solved. Let me repeat: inequality is oppression, the opposite of resolution. It will be the
delicate task of the most progressive political forces among the Palestinians (and in the re-
gion as a whole) to persuade the Palestinian masses of this.
7

It is at this point that Zionist ideology constitutes a major obstacle. For Zionism
like a father denying the existence of his unwanted child denies the existence of a He-
brew nation, newly created in Palestine/Israel. It shares this denial with mainstream Pal-
estinian nationalism (as illustrated by the programmatic article quoted above), but for a
very different reason. According to Zionist ideology, all the Jews around the world consti-
tute a single nation. The true homeland of every Jew is not the country in which he or she
may have been born and in which his or her family may have resided for generations. The
homeland of this alleged nation is the Biblical Land of Israel, over which it has an ancient
inalienable indeed God-given national right. Non-Jews living in the Jewish home-
land are mere foreign interlopers. Zionist colonisation is justified as the return to the
homeland a right possessed by Jews, but denied to those foreign interlopers, the Pales-
tinian refugees, who have been legitimately evicted from the Jewish homeland. There is no
Hebrew nation, but merely members of the world-wide Jewish nation who have already
returned to their homeland, an advance guard of their brethren in the Diaspora, who have
a right indeed a sacred duty to follow the vanguard and be ingathered in the Land
of Israel.
Now, my argument is quite simple. In an eventual accommodation, in the framework
of a resolution of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict, the Hebrew nation can legitimately claim
acceptance as an actually existing nation. The only justification of this difficult claim is the
pragmatic one, that otherwise the conflict cannot be resolved. But it cannot possibly make
and justify this claim while it is in thrall to an ideology that denies its own national exist-
ence and instead claims a right over the whole Land of Israel on behalf of an alleged
world-wide nation. No accommodation, no resolution, will be possible so long as Israelis
subscribe to a claim that demands from the Palestinians (and from the Arab nation as a
whole) not only retroactive legitimisation of past Zionist colonisation, but, in effect, an ac-
ceptance of an alleged continuing right to future further ingathering which implies fur-
ther colonisation and expansion. Such an impossible claim precludes a true resolution of
the conflict.
Cyril Smith
Two Essays on Karl Marx
I: Karl Marx and Religion
IT is vital to understand the meaning of Marx to grasp his ideas in relation to his devel-
opment. In this connection, his conception of religion is one of the most important aspects
of his notions. As early as 1842, he wrote:
I desired there to be less trifling with the label atheism (which reminds one of

7. The Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), the most left-wing faction of
the PLO, has indeed gone a long way towards accepting this idea.
29
children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not
afraid of the bogy man), and that instead the content philosophy should be
brought to the people. (Letter to Ruge, 24 November 1842)
It was quite easy to deal with religion by just being against it, but that was not good
enough. Everybody knows that Marx wrote about religion being the opium of the people,
so we shall look at the entire passage from which this comes.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not
make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man
who has either not yet won through to himself or has already lost himself again.
But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of
man, state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an in-
verted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is
the general theory of this world, its encyclopdic compendium, its logic in
popular form, its spiritual point dhonneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its
solemn complement and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is
the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not
acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly
the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffer-
ing and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is
the opium of the people. (Introduction, Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right)
Everybody thinks that Marx was saying that religion was dope manufactured by the rul-
ing class to keep the masses happy. The real Marx, however, was concerned with much
more weighty problems. Among other things, he was thinking about how an abstract hu-
man being could exist. He concludes that one could not. Man is the world of man, state,
society, and the conception of God was a necessary conception in an inverted world.
Once the world was right side up, the idea would not be needed. Meanwhile we should
pay attention to it.
The Introduction to Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right contains Marxs first men-
tion of the proletariat. His views now took on more critical political-economic ideas, fol-
lowing Engels brilliant essay, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, which Marx was
pleased to publish in the Deutsch-Franzsiche Jahrbcher. (The trouble with Engels views on
political economy was that this was the limit of his work. See Friedrich Engels and Marxs
Critique of Political Economy, Capital and Class, no 62.)
Reading a French translation of James Mills Elements of Political Economy, Marx takes
up Mills banal definition of money as the medium of exchange:
Man becomes the poorer as man, that is, separated from this mediator, the rich-
er this mediator becomes. Christ represents originally: 1) men before God; 2)
God for men; 3) men to men. Similarly, money represents originally, in accordance
the idea of money: 1) private property for private property; 2) society for private
property; 3) private property for society. But Christ is alienated God and alienated
man. God has value only insofar as he represents Christ, and man has value only
insofar as he represents Christ.
Marx is certain that his view of money as the mediator is necessary to comprehend the sit-
uation of the proletariat. Any easy rejection of this view would be as useless as atheism.
30
The Paris Manuscripts, penned in 1844, returns to this theme:
Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice,
through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the
being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an
alien being, about a being above nature and man a question which implies
admission of the unreality of nature and of man has become impossible in
practice. Atheism, as a negation of God, has no longer any meaning, and postu-
lates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no
longer stands in any need of such a mediation. (Marx and Engels, Collected
Works, Volume 3, p306)
At this time, in 1843-44, Marx thought of himself as a follower of Feuerbach. But even this
thinker, beloved of atheists, was not one of them. His target was not so much religion but
theology, the formal study of God, the worst enemy of the awakened spirit.
But, as Marx was to realise, Feuerbach was concerned to awaken man, but as an iso-
lated individual. Sometime in 1845, Marx scribbled 11 theses on Feuerbach, and Theses 3, 4
and 6 particularly turn on the questions of religion.
Thesis 4: Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious estrangement
[Selbstentfremdung], of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary
world, and a secular [wetliche] one. His work consists in resolving the religious
world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this
work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis
lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm
can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this
secular basis. The latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then,
by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the
earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must
itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically.
Thesis 6: Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of
man [menschliche Wesen = human nature]. But the essence of man is no abstrac-
tion inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social
relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is
hence obliged:
1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious senti-
ment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract isolated human in-
dividual.
2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as species, as an in-
ner dumb generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.
Thesis 7: Feuerbach consequently does not see that the religious senti-
ment is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses
belongs in reality to a particular social form.
Marx, in these brief summaries, has thus cleared out of the way Feuerbachs treatment of
the human individual. His awakening of man is seen to be as a social atom, and not what
Marx is striving for.
Let us jump now to Marxs chief work, which took much more than his lifetime to
complete. (Its completion, by the proletarian revolution, is not yet achieved!) We begin
with a quote from the Grundrisse, the first attempt at a critique of political economy as a
31
whole:
An example in the religious sphere is Christ the mediator between God and
man mere instrument of circulation between them becomes their unity,
God-man, and as such becomes more important than God; the saints more im-
portant than Christ; the priests more important than the saints. (Marx and En-
gels, Collected Works, Volume 29, p257)
This return to our familiar theme is part of Marxs exposition of his explanation of the cen-
tral importance of money.
But his treatment of this notion in Capital is not the same as that we have seen in the
other extracts:
The religious reflections of the real world can, in any case, vanish only when the
practical relations of everyday life between man and man, and man and nature,
generally present themselves to him in a transparent and rational form. The veil
is not removed from the countenance of the social life-process, that is, the pro-
cess of material production, until it becomes production by freely associated
men, and stands under their conscious and planned control. This, however, re-
quires that society possesses a material foundation, or a series of material condi-
tions of existence, which in their turn are the natural and spontaneous product
of a long and tormented historical development. (Capital, p173)
Here, Marx brings together his views on religion and his historical view of the communist
revolution and the growth of production generally. He relates religion to the effort of at-
tempting to unite human beings without really understanding the sweeping historical
forces which have separated them.
One more quotation, from a piece of Capital, the so-called Sixth Chapter, omitted
from Volume 1, maintains this historical outlook:
This antagonistic stage cannot be avoided, any more than it is possible for man
to avoid the stage in which his spiritual energies are given a religious definition
as powers independent of himself. What we are confronted by here is the aliena-
tion [Entfremdung] of man from his own labour. (Capital, p990)
Here, Marx has set out his conception of religion in the light of his notion of the stages of
history as a whole. First, humans see themselves as a local community, with their local
gods. Then, in the era of money and exploitation, God Almighty rules over all. Finally,
there is no use for Him, as humans freely govern their own lives.
II: Marx and Materialism
Today, increasing numbers of people are struck by the suspicion that Marx was not the
man we all thought, but very few are aware how far the Marxist picture was from the re-
ality. Many think that Marx may be judged by the comprehensiveness of his complete
works. Not many are conscious that his difficulty of finishing any one of his projects was a
sign of his essential incompleteness of his overall task: the construction of communism.
Unlike his devoted followers, he was not prepared to let revolutionary impatience stand in
the way of clarity.
Let us begin with Lenin, with the early work, What the Friends of the People Are. Lenin
writes:
32
We do not say to the world, Marx wrote as far back as 1843, and he fulfilled
this programme to the letter, we do not say to the world: Cease struggling,
your whole struggle is senseless. All we do is to provide it with a true slogan
of struggle.
That is what Lenin wrote in 1893, and he meant it all his life. But this is what Marx wrote
in 1843:
We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give
you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really
fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does
not want to.
Lenin did not intend to distort the words of Marx, but was incapable of imagining such a
humanist thought possible for the founder of Marxism.
So here we have two programmes, the programmes of Marx and Lenin: on the one
side, Marxism, on the other, the figure of Karl Marx. The former holds that Marxism is a
certainty, an unlimited collection of truth, or as Lenin, echoing Plekhanov, put it, a com-
plete, integral world outlook, cast from a single sheet of steel. To the latter, on the con-
trary, it is an organic growth.
In 1843, Marx was just beginning. As he told Karl Kautsky a lifetime later, he
couldnt publish his collected works, because they had not been written. (That was in
1882.) In 1843, he had not yet developed his notions of class struggle, of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, of value. But already the notion was present of a truly human world. At
this stage he thought of himself as a Feuerbachian. But Feuerbach was some kind of mate-
rialist. For such thinkers, the world existed, and we had to make our thoughts conform to
it, and by thought, the materialists mean no more than activity of a single, isolated hu-
man head. But Marx, while partially agreeing with Feuerbach in his criticism of He-
gel, has nothing to do with him in his conception of society. His discoveries of the prole-
tariat and of communism are unaffected by Feuerbach.
When he writes his Comments on James Mill of 1844, he is quite clearly not a mate-
rialist:
If then our mutual thraldom to the object at the beginning of the process is now
seen to be in reality the relationship between master and slave, that is merely the
crude and frank expression of our essential relationship. Our mutual value is for
us the value of our mutual relationships. Hence for us man himself is mutually
of no value.
The object cannot be seen as merely an object, but only as a social product. As such it is
not merely something which affects the thought in my head or yours, but which is a link
between us and everybody else. But this is in contradiction with our human being:
Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings I would
have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and the other per-
son and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a
completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself,
and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought
and your love.
33
When he came in 1845 to write his Theses on Feuerbach, he could launch an attack on mate-
rialism. The very first Thesis begins:
The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that
things [Gegenstaende], reality, sensuousness are conceived only in the form of
the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not
subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism the active side was set
forth abstractly by idealism which, of course, does not know real, sensuous
activity as such Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from con-
ceptual objects, but he does conceive objects, but he does not conceive human
activity itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des Christentums he therefore re-
gards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while prac-
tice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence
he does not grasp the significance of revolutionary, of practical-critical activi-
ty.
And Thesis 3 returns to the subject:
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbring-
ing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must
himself be educated. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two
parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of
circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveraenderung] can be
conceived and rationally understood as revolutionary practice.
The point is that Marx is not a philosopher. He is a critic of philosophy. That does not
mean that he disagrees with this or that philosophy, but that he takes the questions that
philosophy asks and shows that the answers are to be found by relating the questions to
the contradictions of society.
Marx had learned from Hegel one lesson which he never forgot: putting in front of
society a slogan, a formula, a set of sectarian principles with which to make the world
correspond is not the point. The social formation Marx strove for all his life was a human
society, which he fought to release. While he respected the work of Fourier and Owen, he
saw it as foreshadowing the communism that arose from the sufferings of the proletariat
itself.
In 1859, Marx published Part One of Critique of Political Economy. (There was no Part
Two; Capital, Volume 1 was published eight years later.) The Preface to the Critique, which
Marx used to summarise his views, is noteworthy, among other reasons, for its complete
failure to mention the topics we have been talking about. Instead, he refers to the the so-
cial production of the being, and contains the celebrated and much misunderstood
account of relations of production relations and productive forces. I would only like to
point out that the whole of this passage ends with the statement that the pre-history of
human society accordingly closes with this social formation.
The distinction between human productive forces and social relations of production,
the key point in Marxs whole outlook, is ignored by the Marxists. They simply cannot
see what all the fuss is about. Communism, which turns on the reunification of these two,
is beyond them.
Let us jump a few decades, to 1873. In the Afterword [Nachwort] which he wrote to
the second edition of Capital, Marx felt it necessary to reply to a reviewer of the first edi-
tion on the question of the method of the book and its relationship to that of Hegel:
34
My dialectical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegeli-
an, but the direct opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he
even transforms into an independent subject, under the name of the Idea, is
the creator of the actual, and the actual is only the external appearance of the
idea. With me, the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material reflected
and translated in the mind of man.
And he goes on to contrast the dialectical method and its role in history in Hegels case
and in his own.
Marxist translators have gone to great lengths to make this look like materialism.
The best to date is Penguin translation, due to Ben Fowkes: With me, the reverse is true:
the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated in-
to forms of thought.
The Untermann translation is much more direct: With me, on the contrary, the ideal
is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into
forms of thought.
Eden and Cedar Paul give the following: In my view, on the other hand, the ideal is
nothing other than the material since it has been transposed and translated inside the hu-
man head.
Marxs original is as follows: Bei mir ist umgekehrt das Idealle nichts anders als das
in Menschenkopf ungesetzte und bersetzte Materialle.
What these people miss is the meaning of Hegel, and without that there was no pos-
sibility of recognising the message of Marx. In everybody up to and including Kant, the
pair form and matter confront each other, and there is no way of proceeding from one
to the other. Hegel was the first person to break away from this, and Marx does not go
back on it. For the translators of Capital, being materialists, the Kantian standpoint is the
most advanced they can reach. (Kant himself was able to see, dimly, the contradictions in
this. From then on, the attitude of most thinkers was pre-Kantian.) Marx is inverting Hegel
without returning to the earlier point of view. Hegels Mind (or Spirit [Geist]) is far from
that of the Marxists. His meaning comprises at least as much as his understanding of
world, and Marxs use of this word never ignores that of Hegel. What eludes Hegels
grasp is that with the victory of the proletariat the revelation of the meaning of the history
places the true significance of Mind in the heads of the individuals of the whole of society.
This appears to be a strange time to rediscover the true heritage of Marx. Bush and
Blair, along with their counterparts Bin Laden and Putin, seem to have things their own
way. How can anyone imagine that human life could be so different? Well, the works of
Karl Marx, if we decide to read them as they were written, can indicate a direction we
might take.
35
Paolo Casciola
Trotsky and the Struggles of
Colonial Peoples
The Relevance of the Theory of Permanent
Revolution
THIS is a thoroughly revised and considerably expanded version of a paper bearing the
same title I had prepared for the international symposium entitled Leon Trotzki 1879-
1940/1990. Kritiker und Verteidiger der Sowjetgesellschaft, held on 26-29 March 1990 in Wup-
pertal in Germany. It was conceived not only as an academic contribution but also, and
above all, as a discussion document and a political critique of those ostensible Trotskyists
such as the Workers Power group in Britain or Guillermo Loras Partido Obrero Revo-
lucionario in Bolivia which still claimed adherence to the stagist, class-collaborationist
policy of the anti-imperialist united front. The original English version and its Italian
translation were published in pamphlet form by the Centro Studi Pietro Tresso in April
1990, with an additional note on Trotskys positions with regard to the relations between
the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang in 1922-27.
* * *
Leon Trotskys theory of permanent revolution has a lengthy historical-political back-
ground. A conception of the permanent nature of the revolutionary process can be traced
back to some of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, especially the well-known
Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League of April 1850. In their
works, however, one can also find stagist conceptions of revolutions, that is, that the revo-
lutionary process is confined to unavoidable historical stages. This contradictory legacy
from the founding fathers of scientific communism had significant repercussions on the
subsequent evolution of the working-class movement. The pro-colonialist orthodoxy of
the Second International turned the stagist conception of revolution into an absolute dog-
ma which was substantially accepted by all wings of social democracy, including the far
left.
The break with this falsely orthodox tradition stands as one of Trotskys major contribu-
tions to the development of Marxist thought in the twentieth century. By the summer of 1905,
Trotsky had begun openly to challenge the established dogma in a fashion which went
even beyond the radical ideas expressed by Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus). In Trot-
skys opinion, the democratic stage of the revolution in Russia could grow into a socialist
revolution, thereby initiating a proletarian dictatorship supported by the peasantry. Such a
possibility actually became a reality some 12 years later. The October Revolution positively
confirmed the validity of the theory that Trotsky had elaborated, thus denying in practice the
various permutations of the stagist notion of revolution advanced by other theoreticians.
For a long time, however, the theory of permanent revolution remained a Russian
theory, that is, one which was seen, one way or another, as pertaining solely to Russian
history. Nobody in the Marxist camp including Trotsky himself understood the uni-
36
versal scope of that theory, which, after the crucial test of 1917, was put aside as an out-
dated conception.
Lenins Eurocentric Views on China
With regard to the question of revolutions in colonial and semi-colonial countries, com-
munist policy was based on a stagist perspective that assumed that the national bourgeoi-
sie was capable of carrying out the democratic tasks of the anti-feudal revolution. Any at-
tempt to generalise the basic postulate of Trotskys theory that is, the Russian national
bourgeoisies inability to solve the democratic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolu-
tion owing to its links with the feudal ruling class on the one hand, and with foreign impe-
rialism on the other was repeatedly challenged by Lenin himself in the articles that he
devoted to analysing the situation in China on the morrow of the revolution in 1911. In
Lenins words, the Chinese and Asiatic bourgeoisie was as yet siding with the people
against reaction,
1
and was therefore able to play the same progressive historical role that
had been played by the French bourgeoisie in 1789: in Asia there is still a bourgeoisie
capable of championing sincere, militant, consistent democracy, a worthy comrade of
Frances great men of the Enlightenment and great leaders of the close of the eighteenth
century.
2

Lenins stance towards the anti-feudal potential of the Chinese bourgeoisie was clear-
ly based upon inadequate information about what was happening in China at the time. In
fact, the revolution in 1911 marked the victory of an anti-Manchu bloc formed by the na-
tive bourgeoisie and considerable sections of the old possessing feudal classes, and the
pre-existing social order therefore did not undergo any noticeable change. The tasks of the
democratic revolution were sacrificed on the altar of the alliance between the urban mer-
chants and entrepreneurs on the one hand, and the big landowners on the other. The con-
servative tendencies of the national bourgeoisie became even more manifest when a lit-
tle while after the coup in Wuchang in October 1911 the powerful comprador bourgeoi-
sie in Shanghai, faced with an attempt to increase tax collection by the Nanching govern-
ment (which was financially boycotted by the gentry), turned to authoritarian modernis-
er Yuan Shi-kai. Far from entering the same path followed by the European bourgeoisie
during its revolutionary epoch, the Chinese national bourgeoisie therefore failed to assert
itself as a ruling class and to create a state apparatus of its own.
It was possibly in the wake of these developments that Lenin episodically raised
some doubts about the actual revolutionary capabilities of the native bourgeoisie. Thus, in
an article written in late 1912, he stated:
Chinas freedom was won by an alliance of peasant democrats and the liberal
bourgeoisie. Whether the peasants, who are not led by a proletarian party, will
be able to retain their democratic positions against the liberals, who are only
waiting for an opportunity to shift to the right, will be seen in the near future.
3

But this embryo of a what one can call a permanentist revision remained a dead letter. The
communist movement went on acting as before within an European framework accord-
ing to which colonial peoples of Asia had to pass through the same stages of socio-
economic development that had been experienced in Europe. Thus the task of communist

1. VI Lenin, Backward Europe and Advanced Asia, The National Liberation Movement in the East, Mos-
cow, 1969, pp83-4.
2. VI Lenin, Democracy and Narodnism in China, ibid, p59.
3. VI Lenin, Regenerated China, ibid, p67.
37
nuclei in backward countries was to wage a struggle against medieval survivals and not
against capitalism, since it was necessary for those nuclei to base themselves on the bour-
geois nationalism which is awakening, and must awake, among those peoples [of the
East], and which has its historical justification.
4

The Early Comintern and the Colonial Question
This aspect of Lenins views with regard to colonial and semi-colonial countries was to
mark an entire epoch of the history of the communist movement. Following in Lenins
footsteps, the early Third, or Communist, International (Comintern) always had an inade-
quate grasp of the colonial question. The very fact that the Comintern only discovered
this question and resolved to pay attention to it as revolutionary perspectives in ad-
vanced Europe began to vanish, is highly symptomatic. In addition, there were more than
a few ambiguities in the way the Second World Congress of the Comintern dealt with the
problem of setting out the guidelines of a revolutionary policy for colonial and semi-
colonial countries.
The approach of the Second Congress to the question led in fact to the completely er-
roneous policies pursued in Gilan, Persia and Turkey in 1920-21. In these instances, free-
dom of action for local communist movements was literally forsaken for the sake of strik-
ing compromises with such nationalist bourgeois rulers as Kemal Pasha or Reza Khan,
that is to say, for the sake of Soviet Russias raison dtat. Thus the early Comintern had
some of its colonial sections engaged in long-term alliances with ruling anti-British na-
tional bourgeoisies, even though the latter prevented local communists from educating
and organising in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited.
5
Of
course this went beyond Lenins theses of 1920 on the national and colonial question, but
nevertheless a completely erroneous, indeed suicidal, policy was derived from the theses
themselves, and, moreover, sported a seal of approval from the Comintern.
Thus, as far as revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries is concerned, the of-
ficial Comintern policy in the early 1920s continued to be based on an essentially stagist
perspective premised on the ability of the national bourgeoisie to carry out the democratic
tasks of the anti-feudal revolution. A clear permanentist view of the revolutionary pro-
cess in those countries was not advanced. As a matter of fact, Lenin did envisage a skip-
ping of the capitalist, bourgeois stage of development not in his theses, but in one of his
interventions at the Second Comintern Congress but that position was flawed insofar as
he failed to point to the subject, that is, the class, that was entitled to play the leading role
in the process of bypassing capitalism. Thus Hendrikus Sneevliet (Maring) was allowed to
bend the stick so far as to declare that the skipping of the capitalist phase was to be
achieved in cooperation with bourgeois and/or petit-bourgeois nationalist forces, and by
transforming them from within. Such stick-bending emphasised that the colonial policy of
the Comintern suffered from a right-wing interpretation from the very beginning.
Within this general framework, the official stagist line was opposed by such colonial
revolutionists as Manabendra Nath Roy and Sultan Zadeh. Trotsky himself took a critical
attitude toward the established policy in a report he delivered to the Third World Con-
gress of the Comintern in June 1921:
The basis for the liberationist struggle of the colonies is constituted by the peas-
ant masses. But the peasants in their struggle need leadership. Such a leader-

4. VI Lenin, Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organisations of the Peoples of
the East, ibid, pp252-3.
5. VI Lenin, Regenerated China, ibid, p67.
38
ship used to be provided by the native bourgeoisie. The latters struggle against
foreign domination cannot, however, be either consistent or energetic inasmuch
as the native bourgeoisie itself is intimately bound up with foreign capital and
represents to a large measure an agency of foreign capital. Only the rise of a na-
tive proletariat strong enough numerically and capable of struggle can provide
a real axis for the revolution.
6

Such permanentist statements, however, were only exceptions to the prevailing stagist
views, which found a sound expression in January 1922 in the belief of Grigory Zinoviev
and Georgy Safarov that Eastern Asia was not ripe for a socialist revolution, but only for
an anti-feudal, anti-imperialist national revolution that would hand the power over to the
national bourgeoisie.
The Anti-Imperialist United Front from Comintern Theory to Chinese Practice
This policy was subsequently fully endorsed by the Fourth World Congress of the Comin-
tern in November-December 1922 through the adoption of the slogan of the anti-
imperialist united front, which called for the creation of a common front of the colonial
proletariat and the native bourgeoisie a political bloc aimed at achieving such bourgeois-
democratic tasks as national unity and independence from imperialism. The underlying
stagist notion was, again, that a sovietisation of Eastern countries was not on the agenda
and could not be realised. The anti-imperialist united front was presented as an extension
of the tactic of the proletarian united front to colonial and semi-colonial countries. Howev-
er, it was radically, qualitatively different politically insofar as the proletarian united front,
that is, the confrontation of one class (the proletariat) against another (the bourgeoisie), was
turned in those countries into a cross-class, popular-frontist bloc.
Trotsky was not involved in the discussion on the Eastern question that took place at
the Fourth Comintern Congress, and there is no evidence that he ever supported the poli-
cy of the anti-imperialist united front. But in a report on this congress he advanced a left
variant of the European standpoint:
the colonies, if taken independently and in isolation, are completely unready
for the proletarian revolution. If they are taken in isolation, then capitalism still
has a long possibility of economic development in them. But the colonies be-
long to the European metropolitan centres and their fate is intimately bound up
with the fate of them. In the colonies, we can see the growing national revolu-
tionary movement. Communists represent there only small nuclei implanted
among the peasantry. So in the colonies we have primarily petit-bourgeois and
bourgeois national movements The growth of influence of socialist and com-
munist ideas, the emancipation of the toiling masses of the colonies, the weak-
ening of the influence of the nationalist parties, can be assured not so much by
the activities of the native communist nuclei as by the revolutionary struggle of
the proletariat of the metropolitan centres for the emancipation of the colonies.
7

Following the theses on the Eastern question adopted by the Fourth Comintern Congress,
the official documents on China in 1923 focused on the necessity to carry out a national

6. LD Trotsky, Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist Internation-
al, The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 2, New York, 1972, p223.
7. LD Trotsky, Report on the Fourth World Congress, The First Five Years of the Communist International,
Volume 2, p317.
39
revolution. The central bourgeois-democratic task of agrarian reform was completely
downplayed precisely because of its revolutionary potential, that is, its ability to mobilise
the poor peasant masses and to ignite class struggle in the countryside. Such a rejection of
any possible intervention of the oppressed onto the political scene, which was necessitated
by a desire not to frighten the native bourgeoisie, went hand in hand with an interpreta-
tion of the national democratic revolution as merely the unification of the country and the
liberation from the foreign yoke. The Chinese national bourgeoisie would have subse-
quently shown both its determination to achieve national unification and independence
and its desire to maintain pre-capitalist social relations in the rural areas.
Trotsky and the Chinese Communist Partys Entry Into the Guomindang
On the whole, the course of the second Chinese revolution demonstrated that all sections
of the native bourgeoisie, however left-wing they appeared, were quite ready to take ac-
tion against the workers and the poor peasants. The Menshevik policy of stagism and
class-collaboration forced upon the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by the Stalin
Bukharin leadership of the Comintern paved the way to Chiang Kai-sheks coup in
Shanghai in April 1927. That was the last link of a long chain of national-bourgeois coun-
ter-revolutionary activities that had set in on the morrow of the strike wave of May-June
1925, when the class antagonisms between the Chinese proletariat and the native bour-
geoisie had become crystal-clear. But Trotskys views on the Chinese revolution were not
permanentist right from the start, and until September 1927 he upheld the slogan for a
democratic dictatorship of the workers and the peasantry, that is to say, the same formu-
la that Lenin had advanced for the Russian revolution of 1905. This was linked to Trot-
skys analysis of the Guomindang.
Until early 1927, Trotsky regarded the Guomindang as a two-class embryo of a fu-
ture fully-fledged party, and he expected that the treacherous policy of its bourgeois wing
would have caused the more radical petit-bourgeois wing to split away. The CCP could
then have been able to set up a bloc with the latter, which was seen as the political repre-
sentative of the peasant component of the democratic dictatorship. And as long as the
Guomindang acted as the leading force of the national liberation movement, Trotsky did
not oppose CCP-Guomindang cooperation, provided that Chinese communists main-
tained their full political and organisational independence.
In August 1922, Hendrikus Sneevliet (Maring), in his capacity as a Comintern repre-
sentative in China, called a special plenum of the Central Committee of the CCP, where he
moved a motion that the CCP should join the Guomindang since the latter was not a par-
ty of the bourgeoisie but the joint party of various classes.
8
This was opposed by the
whole CCP leadership, and Sneevliet had to invoke the authority of the Comintern to have
the CCP leaders submitting to international discipline, that is, to the ZinovievStalin diktat.
In the end, despite a resolution drafted by Zinoviev and adopted by the Comintern Execu-
tive Committee in January 1923, the policy of CCP-Guomindang alliance was not fully
implemented until the Third Congress of the CCP in June 1923. Later on, Trotsky claimed
to have opposed entry into the Guomindang and to have called for full independence of
Chinese communists, although no document to that effect has so far been discovered. He
wrote in late 1930: I personally was from the very beginning, that is, from 1923, resolutely
opposed to the Communist Party joining the Guomindang, as well as against the ac-
ceptance of the Guomindang into the Kuomintern.
9
It is a fact, however, that one year

8. See Chen Tu-hsiu, Appeal to All the Comrades of the Chinese Communist Party, Leon Trotsky on Chi-
na, New York, 1976, p599.
9. LD Trotsky, A Letter to Max Shachtman, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p490, my emphasis.
40
previously he had partially endorsed the Comintern policy of entry into the Guomindang:
In 1922, the perspective of an entry [into the Guomindang] was not a crime in
itself, and perhaps not even a mistake, especially in the south [of China], if we ad-
mit that the Guomindang included at that time a large number of workers and
that the young Communist Party was weak and almost completely composed
of intellectuals In that event, entry would have been an episodic step in the
direction of independence The question is: what was the aim of the entry, and
what policy was followed subsequently?
10

Trotskys Mistakes on China for the Sake of Unity with the Zinovievists
These contradictory statements are but one facet of Trotskys overall inconsistent stance
with regard to the CCPs entry into the Guomindang, that is, of a twofold approach which
attained its peak at the time of the United Opposition, which resulted in April 1926 from
the merging of the Moscow-based Trotskyist Russian Left Opposition with the Zinovievite
Leningrad Opposition. As the President of the Comintern Executive Committee until Oc-
tober 1926, Zinoviev had shared responsibility with Stalin and Bukharin for the class-
collaborationist policy forced upon the CCP. And even after his political break with Stalin
in December 1925, Zinoviev went on arguing that the CCP had been right to drop inde-
pendent activity in 1923 to join the Guomindang. Despite the fact that in the spring of 1927
he came to agree with Trotsky on the need to call for the formation of workers and peas-
ants soviets in China to give a revolutionary content to the slogan for a democratic
dictatorship of the workers and the peasantry, the United Opposition did not endorse
Trotskys fresh demand that the CCP should organisationally break with the Guomin-
dang.
Thus until the beginning of March 1927, Trotsky wavered between formal opposition
to entry with the aim of safeguarding the class independence of the Chinese proletarian
vanguard, and thereby rejecting any idea of building a Chinese anti-imperialist united
front as conceived by the Comintern and a failure to call for a prompt withdrawal from
the Guomindang, since this would surely have opened up a crisis with the Zinovievite
wing of the United Opposition. True, in his autobiography, Trotsky had claimed that:
Since 1925 I had demanded the withdrawal of the communists from the Guomindang.
11

And the following year, he introduced a little change in the timing of his call for a CCP-
Guomindang break:
In 1925 I once more presented the formal proposal that the Communist Party
leave the Guomindang instantly In 1926 and 1927, I had uninterrupted con-
flicts with the Zinovievists on this question But since it was a question of
splitting with the Zinovievists, it was the general decision [of the United Oppo-
sitions Trotskyist wing] that I must submit publicly in this question and ac-
quaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it hap-
pened that the demand was put up by us so late Now I can say with certainty
that I made a mistake by submitting formally on this question.
12

As a matter of fact, however, despite these ex post facto assertions, no documents preceding
March 1927 are available in which Trotsky openly and unambiguously called for the CCP

10. LD Trotsky, Objections au livre dIsaacs, uvres, Volume 15, Paris, 1983, p243, my emphasis.
11. LD Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography, Harmondsworth, 1975, p552, my emphasis.
12. LD Trotsky, A Letter to Max Shachtman, op cit, pp490-1, my emphasis.
41
to abandon the Guomindang.
A different interpretation of Trotskys attitude to CCP-Guomindang relations has
been advanced, in a polemic against the present writer, by one of the editors of the Ger-
man-language collection of Trotskys writings on China.
13
Horst Lauscher tried to prove
that Trotsky clearly demanded its [CCPs] withdrawal well before 1927 by referring to a
paragraph of a document Trotsky had drafted in September 1926 for the Fifteenth Confer-
ence of the Bolshevik party, in which he stated that:
now the Chinese CP can no longer remain a propaganda group within the
Guomindang, but must set itself the task of building an independent proletari-
an class party, which should fight for the hegemony of the working class in the
struggle for national liberation.
14

Leaving aside the mere philological argument that Trotskys exhortation here the CCP
must set itself the task, etc has not the same immediate practical/political meaning as
demanding a prompt withdrawal of Chinese communists from the Guomindang, it should
also be remembered that only a few days later Trotsky actually raised the question of re-
vising relations between the Communist Party and the Guomindang.
15

But he did so, again, in a contradictory way. The participation of the CCP in the
Guomindang, he argued, was perfectly correct [my emphasis PC] in the period when
the CCP was a propaganda society which was only preparing itself for future [my empha-
sis PC] independent [Trotskys emphasis] political activity but which, at the same time,
sought to take part in the ongoing national liberation struggle.
16
However, after Chiang
Kai-sheks anti-communist coup of 10 March 1926 and after the start of the Northern Ex-
pedition against the warlords in July 1926, the immediate political task of Chinese com-
munists was, according to Trotsky, to fight for direct independent leadership of the
awakened working class;
17
but such a struggle was conceived within the framework of a
political bloc with the Guomindang as a whole or with particular elements of it, throughout
the republic or in particular provinces, depending on the circumstances.
18

In the end, it was only at the beginning of March 1927 that Trotsky definitely de-
clared that: If we want to try to save the Chinese Communist Party from ultimately de-
generating into Menshevism, we do not have the right to put aside one day longer the
demand for withdrawal from the Guomindang.
19
And one month later, he wrote that it
was necessary to recognise the correctness of a resolution by Chen Tu-hsiu and Peng Shu-
tse that had been adopted some nine months before by the Central Committee of the CCP,
which demanded that the party withdraw from the Guomindang and conclude a bloc

13. See Horst Lauscher, Trotsky and the Guomindang, Revolutionary History, Volume 5, no 3, Autumn
1994, pp269-70, with a rejoinder by Al Richardson on pp270-1. It is clear that Lauscher did not read
my 1990 work on Trotsky and the struggles of colonial peoples and based himself on a second-hand
knowledge of it through a deformed quotation from it made by Al Richardson in a footnote to his in-
troduction to CLR James, World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International,
Atlantic Highlands, 1993.
14. LD Trotsky, Zur 15 Parteikonferenz (Auszug), Schriften 2 ber China, Volume 1, Hamburg, 1990,
p102.
15. LD Trotsky, The Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p113.
16. Ibid, p114.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid, p116, my emphasis.
19. LD Trotsky, Second Letter to Radek, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p123.
42
with that organisation through its left wing,
20
that is, a united front with the left wing of
the Guomindang.
Nature and Dynamics of the Chinese Revolution
In 1926-27, Trotsky hoped to defeat Stalin politically through the bloc with the Zi-
novievists. In order to preserve that bloc, he submitted to the majority of the United Op-
position, including on the burning issues of the Chinese revolution which had started in
May 1925. As we have seen above, during most of the revolutionary period Trotsky did
not envisage a Chinese revolution that could follow the same course of the October Revo-
lution in Russia, and he raised the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the workers
and the peasantry, not of a proletarian dictatorship. Being still basically tied to the Euro-
pean views of the early Comintern, for a long time he refrained from challenging Stalins
stagist conceptions. On the other hand, before March 1927 the Chinese events did not occu-
py a prominent position in Trotskys political fight.
But in March 1927, as Guomindang armies were capturing the main industrial towns
of China and the Guomindang right wing was rapidly developing increasingly anti-
communist inclinations, Trotsky rejected for the first time the possibility that any wings of
the Guomindang could play a progressive role. In Trotskys words, the Guomindang as a
whole, with no distinctions between its right and left wings, was an organisation of the
past:
While driving the Communist Party away from a strictly defined organisational
position and subjecting it to the ideological discipline of Sun Yat-senism, the
Guomindang will necessarily and inevitably transfer power to the most influen-
tial, weighty, and organised elements of the united national camp, that is,
bluntly speaking, to the liberal bourgeoisie. Thus, the Guomindang under the
present conditions is a transmission belt for delivering the revolutionary
popular masses into the hands of the bourgeoisie, for politically subjugating
them to it.
21

With the agreement of Zinoviev, he called for the formation of workers and peasants so-
viets to be organised under the guidance of the communists, who were urged to quit the
Guomindang, as a concrete expression of the worker-peasant alliance. This was intended
to give a revolutionary content to the slogan of democratic dictatorship: the task was to
create a workers and peasants government in struggle against imperialism and its na-
tional-bourgeois agents. But in Trotskys opinion, such a government still had nothing to
do with the socialist revolution:
The problem of a struggle for a workers and peasants government should in
no case be identified with the problem of non-capitalist roads of development
for China. The latter can only be posed provisionally and only within the per-
spective of the development of world revolution. Only an ignoramus of the so-
cialist-reactionary variety could think that present-day China, with its current
technological and economic foundations, can through its own efforts jump over
the capitalist stage.
22


20. LD Trotsky, Class Relations in the Chinese Revolution, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p146.
21. LD Trotsky, Letter to Alsky, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, pp130-1.
22. Ibid, p129.
43
Six months later, in September 1927, Trotsky made a decisive qualitative step and une-
quivocally declared for the first time that the only way to the victory of the revolution in
China passed through a proletarian dictatorship. In other words, the tasks of the demo-
cratic revolution in China could be solved only under the leadership of the urban proletar-
iat: The Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution will go forward and be victorious either in the
soviet form or not at all.
23
This turn in Trotskys analysis took place only after Chiang Kai-
sheks bloody coup of 12 April 1927, and some months before the break of his political bloc
with the Zinovievists. It was therefore only on the morrow of the Chinese tragedy, and draw-
ing the due lessons from it, that Trotsky resolved to apply the theory of permanent revolu-
tion to China and to all colonial and semi-colonial countries.
The Generalisation of the Theory of Permanent Revolution
Thus the defeat of the second Chinese revolution of 1925-27 involved a generalisation of
the theory of permanent revolution to all backward countries throughout the world. But
there is at least one particular case in which Trotsky seems to have made an attempt, how-
ever embryonic and undeveloped, to apply a basic tenet of permanent revolution outside
the Russian tsarist empire even before 1917. In an article dealing with the national prob-
lems of the Balkan region that appeared in the Viennese Pravda in August 1910, Trotsky
argued:
The Balkan bourgeoisie, as in all countries that have come late to the road of
capitalist development, is politically sterile, cowardly, talentless, and rotten
through and through with chauvinism. It is utterly beyond its power to take on
the unification of the Balkans. The peasant masses are too scattered, ignorant
and indifferent to politics for any political initiative to be looked for from them.
Accordingly, the task of creating normal conditions of national and state exist-
ence in the Balkans falls with all its historical weight upon the shoulders of the
Balkan proletariat.
24

Apart from this exception to Trotskys pre-1917 Russia-only permanentism, the perma-
nent revolution was eventually codified as a world-wide theory in his book of 1929, The
Permanent Revolution, which was a thoroughgoing polemics against Karl Radeks views on
that matter. The book ended with a whole set of theses bearing the title What Is the Per-
manent Revolution? Basic Postulates, where the first, basic feature of the theory was re-
sumed in the following terms:
With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the
colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of permanent revolution signi-
fies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy
and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.
Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry
the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries an ex-
ceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the prole-
tariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be

23. LD Trotsky, Second Speech on the Chinese Question, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p235.
24. LD Trotsky, The Balkan Question and Social Democracy, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The
Balkan Wars 1912-1913, New York, 1980, p40. This article has been brought to my attention by Ian Har-
rison.
44
solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be re-
alised in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influ-
ence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie. No matter what the first episodic stages
of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realisation of the revo-
lutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only
under the political leadership of the proletarian vanguard, organised in the
Communist Party. This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolu-
tion is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases
itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the
democratic revolution.
25

Finally, in the so-called transitional programme adopted by the founding conference of
the Fourth International in September 1938, he unequivocally commented that, the gen-
eral trend of revolutionary development in all backward countries can be determined by
the formula of the permanent revolution in the sense definitely imparted to it by three revo-
lutions in Russia (1905, February 1917, October 1917).
26

A Revolutionary Policy for India
Trotskys generalisation of the strategy of permanent revolution to all colonial and semi-
colonial countries is graphically exemplified in the position he adopted with regard to In-
dia. As early as May 1930, in an article devoted to analysing the tasks and dangers of the
Indian revolution, Trotsky pointed to the treacherous role of the native bourgeoisie,
which had been forced into action to master the movement in order to blunt its revolu-
tionary edge.
27
Taking into account the poor peasants longing for a just distribution of
land, he argued that the struggle of the peasantry could be turned into a genuine social
revolution only under the leadership of an urban class, which then becomes the leader of
the revolutionary nation,
28
that is, the colonial proletariat. Thus one of the main features
of the Indian revolution was the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie for
the leadership of the peasant masses.
29

Trotsky sharply rejected the programme of the Stalinist Comintern, which attributes
a revolutionary role to the colonial bourgeoisie,
30
whereas the latter is capable only of a
counter-revolutionary role and not a revolutionary role,
31
and condemned Gandhis pas-
sive resistance movement which was aimed at averting a social revolution through
preaching non-violence as the tactical knot that ties the navet and self-denying blind-
ness of the dispersed petit-bourgeois masses to the treacherous manoeuvres of the liberal
bourgeoisie.
32
And he arrived at the following conclusion:
if the Indian revolution will develop on a basis of a bloc of the workers,
peasants, and the petit-bourgeoisie; if this bloc will be directed not only against
imperialism and feudalism but also against the national bourgeoisie which is

25. LD Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects, New York, 1986, pp276-7.
26. LD Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, The Transi-
tional Program for Socialist Revolution, New York, 1974, p98.
27. LD Trotsky, The Revolution in India, Its Tasks and Dangers, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1930), New
York, 1975, p243.
28. Ibid, p245.
29. Ibid, p246.
30. Ibid, p247.
31. Ibid, p248.
32. Ibid, p244.
45
bound up with them in all basic questions; if at the head of this bloc will stand
the proletariat; if this bloc comes to victory only by sweeping away its enemies
through an armed uprising and in this way raises the proletariat to the role of
the real leader of the whole nation then the question arises: in whose hands
will the power be after the victory if not in the hands of the proletariat?
33

Nine years later, in 1939, Trotsky again emphasised in unequivocal permanentist terms
the Indian bourgeoisies inability to lead a genuinely anti-imperialist struggle due to its
close ties with, and dependence upon, British imperialism. The final victory of the revolu-
tion in India could only be assured by the alliance of workers and poor peasants, since
coalition with the bourgeoisie leads to the proletariats abnegating the revolutionary
struggle against imperialism.
34
Trotsky, however, did not exclude the possibility that the
native bourgeoisie, while seeking compromises with British imperialism no matter what
the price,
35
could be compelled to take some steps on the road of struggle against the ar-
bitrary rule of Great Britain. In such a circumstance, the proletariat will naturally support
such a step. But they will support it with their own methods: mass meetings, bold slogans,
strikes, demonstrations, and more decisive combat actions,
36
and not under the discipline
of a class-collaborationist political bloc with the Indian bourgeoisie. The policy of subor-
dinating the proletariat to the bourgeoisie which the Stalinists were putting across under
the guise of Peoples Front was tantamount to a rejection of the revolutionary agrarian
programme, a rejection of arming the workers, a rejection of the struggle for power, a re-
jection of revolution.
37

Thus Trotsky recognised the need to support every oppositional and revolutionary
action directed against imperialism.
38
But he made clear that this support must be in-
spired by a firm distrust of the national bourgeoisie and their petit-bourgeois agencies. We
must not confound our organisation, our programme, our banner with theirs for a mo-
ment.
39

The Permanent Revolution in Indochina
Trotskys position regarding Indochina in the early 1930s showed a similar distrust of the
national bourgeoisie. In a criticism of a document drafted by a group of Indochinese Left
Oppositionists in Paris, he called for an uncompromising struggle against the national
bourgeoisie.
40
The only acceptable form of collaboration between classes was the collabo-
ration between the proletariat and the poor peasantry, as well as with the most oppressed
and exploited lower layers of the urban petit-bourgeoisie. This kind of revolutionary collabora-
tion is such that it transforms the proletariat into the true leader of the nation.
41
Trotsky
also made a clear distinction between the nationalism of the native bourgeoisie, which is a
means for subordinating and deceiving the masses, and the nationalism of the Indochi-
nese popular masses, which is an expression of their just and progressive hatred for

33. Ibid, p249, my emphasis.
34. LD Trotsky, India Faced with Imperialist War, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), New York, 1973,
p32.
35. Ibid, p29.
36. Ibid, pp31-2.
37. Ibid, p32.
38. LD Trotsky, Letter on India, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), op cit, p109.
39. Ibid.
40. LD Trotsky, On the Declaration by the Indochinese Oppositionists, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1930-31),
New York, 1973, p30.
41. Ibid.
46
foreign imperialists.
42
While fighting against the former, the proletariat does not have the
right to turn its back on this kind of nationalism [of the mass of the people]. On the contra-
ry, it must demonstrate in practice that it is the most consistent and devoted fighter for the
national liberation of Indochina.
43

These permanentist positions of Trotsky were endorsed by the Indochinese signato-
ries of the document to which Trotsky was referring, who were going to found the Ta Doi
Lap, the first Left Opposition organisation in Indochina. And in 1936 one of them, Ho Huu
Thuong, drafted an article
44
for the French-language theoretical journal of the Indochinese
Fourth Internationalists in which he presented a comprehensive summary of the Trotsky-
ist policy with regard to the national bourgeoisie. He criticised those conservative theore-
ticians who regarded the national bourgeoisie as a class which was still revolutionary.
Contrary to this, Ho Huu Thuong explained, the native bourgeoisie is not independent
from the international bourgeoisie. More than that, it is an agency of imperialism, and one
which goes so far as betraying at every moment its own specific class interests, because its
life and death depend on the goodwill of imperialism.
French imperialism was using the Indochinese bourgeoisie to exploit better the
working masses with semi-feudal methods. Therefore, the native bourgeoisie is the worst
enemy of the people, and the proletarian struggle should be waged first of all against it.
Ho Huu Thuong, however, did not exclude the possibility of reaching practical agree-
ments with some sections of the national bourgeoisie provided that they serve the pur-
pose of better fighting against imperialism as a whole. And at any rate, he emphasised
the need to remember that those people with whom we are setting up a bloc are our ene-
mies:
These agreements with native bourgeois forces should remain strictly practical.
No placards with common signatures. No common programmes. No common
organisations. Each class should retain its full freedom of criticism even in the
heat of the struggle A practical agreement is not a peaceful coexistence of the
wolf and the lamb A practical agreement is not an attempt at a marriage of
convenience between two basically antagonistic classes A practical agree-
ment is nothing but a new form of struggle, and one very rich in content, by
which the proletariat enters into competition with the bourgeoisie. And anyway
it is a class struggle. It can have no other meaning.
45

The Indochinese Left Oppositionists were thoroughly in agreement with Trotskys recog-
nition of the necessity to relate politically to national bourgeois movements in backward
countries. Trotsky, too, did not reject rigidly delimited and rigidly practical agreements as
serve each time a quite definite aim
46
with those sections of the native bourgeoisie that, at
a given juncture, might actually fight against imperialism. In Trotskys opinion, such
agreements had no strategic, long-term nature since he did not believe for an instant in
the capacity or readiness of the bourgeoisie either to lead a genuine struggle against impe-

42. Ibid, p31.
43. Ibid.
44. HHT [Ho Huu Thuong], tous, Le Militant (Saigon), Volume 1, no 2, 8 September 1936, p7. All quo-
tations in this and the following paragraphs are taken from that article.
45. Ibid.
46. LD Trotsky, Summary and Perspectives of the Chinese Revolution. Its Lessons for the Countries of the
Orient and for the Whole of the Comintern, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p292.
47
rialism or not to obstruct the workers and peasants.
47
In other words, like his Indochinese
followers, Trotsky did not rule out the possibility that, owing to the concrete development
of the anti-imperialist struggle, qualitatively different class forces in colonial and semi-
colonial countries could temporarily come together to fight against a common enemy. But
a crucial precondition for such a separate, practical and expedient agreement consisted in
not allowing either the organisations or the banners to become mixed directly or indirect-
ly for a single day or a single hour.
48

Latin America from Lenins Comintern to Trotskys Fourth International
The same views were held by Trotsky with regard to Latin America. Here, however, it
should be said that differently from Eastern Asia permanentist perspectives had not
been absent from the early Cominterns official documents on Latin America. In an appeal
addressed to the working class of the American continent published at the beginning of
1921, the Comintern Executive Committee called for the building of South American
communist parties that would gain influence among the peasant masses since a revolu-
tionary unity of the poor peasant class and the working class is indispensable; only a pro-
letarian revolution can liberate the peasantry by breaking the power of capitalism; only an
agrarian revolution can save the proletarian revolution from the danger of being crushed
by counter-revolution.
49
And two years later, the Fourth Comintern Congress issued an-
other appeal to Latin American workers and peasants that was completely at odds with
the stagist, class-collaborationist policy adopted by the same congress on the Eastern ques-
tion. Instead of calling for the creation of an anti-imperialist united front with the ostensi-
bly revolutionary native bourgeoisie, the appeal argued that proletarian unity must be
opposed to the bourgeois offensive. The Latin American toiling masses were urged to
struggle against their own bourgeoisie in order to fight also against Yankee imperialism
which embodies capitalist reaction.
50

Thus the policy of the early Comintern for Latin America revolved around the per-
spective of building an alliance of the urban and the rural proletariat as against both US
imperialism and national capitalism, that is, the national bourgeoisie. The various national
capitalist ruling classes were neither interested in a fight for independence which they
had formally won in the nineteenth century, but which had only led to a growing econom-
ic dependence on foreign finance capital nor in carrying out a radical agrarian reform,
because they were closely bound to, and intertwined with, the big landowners. The reali-
sation of these bourgeois-democratic tasks fell upon the shoulders of the working people.
Trotskys position on the problems of the Latin American revolution were quite simi-
lar to those of the early Comintern. For example, in the final draft of his theses of 1934,
War and the Fourth International, he displayed a total mistrust towards the belated South
American bourgeoisie, a thoroughly venal agency of foreign imperialism.
51
In the same vein,
during a discussion that took place in 1938, Trotsky argued that the Latin American bourgeoi-
sie, in the same way as the bourgeoisie in Russia and China, was incapable of resolving dem-

47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Executive Committee of the Communist International, Sur la rvolution en Amrique. Appel la
classe ouvrire des deux Amriques, LInternationale Communiste, no 15, January 1921, p3323.
50. Fourth World Congress of the Communist International, Aux ouvriers et paysans de lAmrique du
Sud, La Correspondance Internationale, no 2, 20 January 1923, p27.
51. LD Trotsky, War and the Fourth International, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), New York, 1975,
p306.
48
ocratic tasks
52
that were posed by the anti-imperialist struggle. He also raised the question of
maintaining the class independence of the proletariat against the native bourgeoisie, especial-
ly with regard to the agrarian question, which would play a decisive role within the frame-
work of a genuine fight against imperialism:
during the struggle for democratic tasks, we oppose the proletariat to the
bourgeoisie. The independence of the proletariat even in the beginning of this
movement is absolutely necessary, and we especially oppose the proletariat to
the bourgeoisie in the agrarian question If the peasants remain in support of
the bourgeois class, as is now the fact, then it will be such a semi-democratic,
semi-Bonapartistic state as now exists in every country of Latin America, with
inclinations toward the masses. This is the period in which the national bour-
geoisie searches for a bit more independence from the foreign imperialists. The
national bourgeoisie is obliged to flirt with the workers, with the peasants, and
then we have the strong man of the country oriented to the left as now in Mexi-
co. If the national bourgeoisie is obliged to give up the struggle against the for-
eign capitalists and to work under the direct tutelage of the foreign capitalists,
then we have a semi-fascist regime, as in Brazil for example. But the bourgeoisie
there is absolutely incapable of creating democratic rule, because on one side
stands imperialist capital, on the other side they are afraid of the proletariat be-
cause history there skipped a stage and the proletariat became an important factor be-
fore the democratic organisation of the whole society.
53

Military Blocs with Nationalist Forces and the Struggle Against Imperialist
Sanctions
In the course of the discussion on Latin America, Trotsky called for the need to support the
national bourgeoisie in every case where it is a direct fight against the foreign imperialists
or their reactionary fascist agents.
54
Such support for anti-imperialist mass movements led
by the native bourgeoisie should not, however, be mistaken for political support for the
bourgeoisie itself. Proletarian support for, and participation in, the anti-imperialist struggles
in colonial and semi-colonial countries should be aimed at counterposing the genuinely revo-
lutionary-democratic nationalism and expectations of the people to the reactionary national-
ism of the treacherous native bourgeoisie, that is, to sharpen the contradiction between the
progressive, anti-imperialist character of the movement and the counter-revolutionary na-
ture of the forces that were leading it.
As we have seen, Trotsky did not rule out the possibility of supporting the national
bourgeoisie insofar as the latter took some steps along the road of a direct fight against
imperialism. In his opinion, this could be done either in the form of those rigidly delim-
ited, practical agreements required by the concrete dynamics of the anti-imperialist strug-
gle or in the form of a military bloc with nationalist bourgeois and/or petit-bourgeois forces
in the event of an open military confrontation with the imperialist troops. Both form of co-
operation were aimed at winning the leadership of the mass movement from the national-
bourgeois politicians or, whenever the latter were in power and faced with an imperialist
aggression, at politically preparing their overthrow by exposing their weakness and treacher-
ous wavering in the eyes of the colonial masses.

52. LD Trotsky, Latin American Problems: A Transcript, Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement (1934-40),
New York, 1979, p784.
53. Ibid, pp784-5, my emphasis.
54. Ibid, p785.
49
In the event of imperialist aggression against a colonial or semi-colonial country,
therefore, Trotsky stressed the need for supporting the latters progressive fight for inde-
pendence from a foreign yoke. This was the case, for example, with the Italo-Ethiopian
conflict which broke out in October 1935. Trotsky had started sketching the position of the
Fourth International movement towards that conflict in a period in which the aggression
was still being prepared: the struggle of revolutionaries should have been directed not
against fascism, but against imperialism
55
as a whole. Thus he pointed to the anti-
imperialist character of Ethiopias fight and declared himself for a victory of Ethiopia over
fascist, imperialist Italy.


This point of view found a practical application in the attitude adopted by Trotskys
Italian followers with regard to the sanctions against fascist Italy decreed by democratic
imperialist powers through the League of Nations: to the policy of the Stalinist, social-
democratic and centrist forces who, being in favour of a defeat of Mussolinis war machin-
ery, supported in fact the work of the League of Nations within the framework of a sort of
international union sacre with a section of the imperialist bourgeoisie, the Trotskyists op-
posed an independent revolutionary orientation which was resumed by Alfonso Leonetti
at a meeting of the International Secretariat in late October 1935: Sanctions are a question
between imperialists. We cannot be either in favour or against imperialist sanctions; we
must denounce them, and call for the autonomous action of the proletariat.
56

Such an action, which included a revolutionary boycott of all imperialist states and
propaganda for the fraternisation of the Italian soldiers with Abyssinian fighters, was nur-
tured by the consciousness that a defeat of fascist Italy by Ethiopia could have been not
only an opportunity to revitalise the Italian proletariat in view of a possible revolutionary
overthrow of the fascist dictatorship, but also, and above all, that it would have given im-
petus to the rebellion of all oppressed colonial peoples against imperialism (Italian, British,
French or whatever), thereby helping to open up new perspectives also for the struggle of
the working class in the imperialist heartlands, be they fascist or democratic. Or, to cite
Trotsky:
If Mussolini triumphs, it means the reinforcement of fascism, the strengthening
of imperialism, and the discouragement of the colonial peoples in Africa and
elsewhere. The victory of the Negus, however, would mean a mighty blow not
only at Italian imperialism but at imperialism as a whole, and would lend a
powerful impulsion to the rebellious forces of the oppressed peoples.
57

The same reasoning was applied by Trotsky to the hypothetical assumption of a British
military aggression against semi-fascist Brazil:

55. LD Trotsky, The Italo-Ethiopian Conflict, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1935-36), New York, 1977, p41.
56. Minutes of the meeting of the International Secretariat held on 30 October 1935, in Trotsky exile pa-
pers at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, 16495. The Italo-Ethiopian conflict raised im-
portant political debates among Italian migrs. La Vrit on 25 October 1935 carried an appeal of the
Bolscevichi-Leninisti Italiani to the Italian proletariat which ended with the slogan: Down with the
imperialist war in Africa; long live the civil war in Italy. In November 1935, the official Gruppo Bol-
scevico-Leninista issued a lengthy pamphlet by Pietro Tresso (Blasco) on the Ethiopian war under the
title The New African Undertaking of Italian Imperialism and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat. An
article along the same line was also published by the dissident Gruppo Nostra Parola led by Nicola Di
Bartolomeo (Fosco) in January 1936.
57. LD Trotsky, On Dictators and the Heights of Oslo: A Letter to an English Comrade, Writings of Leon
Trotsky (1935-36), op cit, pp317-8.
50
I ask you on whose side of the conflict will the working class be? I will ask for
myself personally in this case I will be on the side of fascist Brazil against
democratic Great Britain. Why? Because in the conflict between them it will
not be a question of democracy or fascism. If England should be victorious, she
will put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and will place double chains on Brazil.
If Brazil on the contrary should be victorious, it will give a mighty impulse to
national and democratic consciousness of the country and will lead to the over-
throw of the Vargas dictatorship. The defeat of England will at the same time
deliver a blow to British imperialism and will give an impulse to the revolu-
tionary movement of the British proletariat.
58

The Policy of Military Blocs in Practice: the Sino-Japanese War
The policy of military blocs against imperialist aggression was advanced by Trotsky in a
very systematic way during the Sino-Japanese War. That policy, which he also applied to
the StalinNegrn government during the Spanish Civil War, was derived directly from
the Bolsheviks experience in the fight against General Kornilovs attempted coup against
the Kerensky-led Provisional Government in September 1917. As Trotsky himself recalled
20 years later:
The Bolsheviks did not remain neutral between the camp of Kerensky and that
of Kornilov. They fought in the first camp against the second It was precisely
in the month of August, with the Kornilov uprising, that a prodigious upswing
of the Bolsheviks began. This upswing was made possible only thanks to the
double-edged Bolshevik policy. While participating in the front lines of the
struggle against Kornilov, the Bolsheviks did not take the slightest responsibil-
ity for the policy of Kerensky. On the contrary, they denounced him as respon-
sible for the reactionary attack and as incapable of overcoming it. In this way
they prepared the political premises of the October Revolution, in which the al-
ternative of Bolshevism or counter-revolution (communism or fascism) evolved
from a historic tendency into a living and immediate reality.
59

Thus when Japanese troops invaded China in July 1937, Trotsky stated that, while active-
ly participating in the war, Chinese revolutionaries cannot and should not take upon
themselves the slightest political responsibility for the bourgeois government
60
of Chiang
Kai-shek. Instead, even in time of war they had to remain in irreconcilable opposition to
the bourgeoisie, and to weld the workers around the revolutionary vanguard, to rally the
peasants around the workers, and by that prepare for the dictatorship of the proletari-
at.
61
He fostered no illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class
of China,
62
but he also recognised that it was necessary for revolutionaries to take part in
the emancipatory and progressive struggle of China through the creation of a military bloc
with the native bourgeoisie, as it happened at the time of Chiangs Northern Expedition in
1926.

58. LD Trotsky, Anti-Imperialist Struggle is Key to Liberation: An Interview with Mateo Fossa, Writings
of Leon Trotsky (1938-39), New York, 1974, p34.
59. LD Trotsky, Ultra-Lefts in General and Incurable Ultra-Lefts in Particular (A Few Theoretical Consid-
erations), LD Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution (1931-39), New York, 1973, pp296-7.
60. LD Trotsky, Afterword, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p565.
61. Ibid.
62. LD Trotsky, On the Sino-Japanese War, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p568.
51
Within the framework of such a bloc, however, the revolutionary party must main-
tain its entire political and organisational independence, and the working class, while
remaining in the front lines of the military struggle, must prepare the political overthrow
of the bourgeoisie,
63
because the latter fears its own armed masses more than it does the
Japanese ravishers. If Chiang Kai-shek, the sinister hangman of the Chinese revolution, is
compelled by circumstances to wage a war, his programme is still based, as before, on the
oppression of his own workers and compromise with the imperialists.
64

That was Trotskys attitude towards a crucial question of the revolution in colonial
and semi-colonial countries, that is, towards the national bourgeoisie, a class that:
tolerates all forms of national degradation so long as it can hope to maintain
its own privileged existence. But at the moment when foreign capital sets out to
assume undivided domination of the entire wealth of the country, the colonial
bourgeoisie is forced to remind itself of its national obligations. Under pres-
sure of the masses it may even find itself plunged into a war. But this will be a
war waged against one of the imperialist powers, the one least amenable to ne-
gotiations, with the hope of passing into the service of some other, more mag-
nanimous power Only that class which has nothing to lose but its chains can
conduct to the very end the war against imperialism for national emancipa-
tion.
65


The Israel Academic Boycott A
Debate
THE policy of boycotting Israeli academic institutions that was initiated by the annual
conference of the Association of University Teachers last April, and then abandoned at a
special recall conference shortly afterwards, caused considerable controversy in left-wing
circles, and not least in this magazine. Toby Abse contributed a short piece that was criti-
cal of the ban, and we publish below three sharp criticisms of Tobys article, by Sue
Blackwell, who was the prime mover behind the boycott campaign within the AUT, and
Tony Greenstein and Mosh Machover, who are both distinguished by their long-standing
principled opposition to Zionism. Following this is Tobys response to these criticisms.
Not for the first time, the question of the AUTs boycott confronts us with the ques-
tion of how to provide effective and principled opposition to the policies and actions of the
state of Israel and support for the Palestinians whilst remaining carefully distinguishable
from the murk of anti-Semitic agitation.
Before considering that, I must state that Tobys original article contains an assertion
with which I strongly disagree. He states that the AUTs boycott was part of a tsunami of

63. Ibid, p570.
64. LD Trotsky, Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World
Revolution, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), New York, 1973, p203.
65. LD Trotsky, Revolution and War in China, Leon Trotsky on China, op cit, p584.
52
Jew-baiting that has swept the British left from Blairs entourage via the London Mayor to
Galloways followers, referring specifically to the New Labour posters sporting flying
pigs bearing the faces of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin and equating the former with
Fagin, Livingstones drunken tirade against a Jewish Evening Standard reporter and the
eggs thrown by Respect supporters at elderly Jews attending a memorial service for the
victims of Hitlers V2s.
There was, to my mind, something sinister about the New Labour posters. I cannot
believe that there was nobody in either the design studio or the New Labour propaganda
branch who did not notice the use of pigs and a fictional figure infamous for its anti-
Semitic overtones with two well-known Jewish politicians, and think that it could be in-
terpreted as anti-Semitic? We are not talking of simpletons here, but clever advertising and
propaganda merchants. I do not believe the imagery was accidental. It was a clever device.
Any critical response could be brushed aside by the perpetrators as an over-reaction,
whilst at the same time a nudge-nudge, wink-wink reminder of the Jewish parentage of
the posters subjects could be aimed at the less enlightened members of the electorate. I do
not, however, consider that Ken Livingstones inebriated shouting-match demonstrated
any anti-Jewish feelings; he could have perhaps chosen his words a little more carefully,
but the Mail Group of newspapers hardly enjoys a clean reputation when it comes to prej-
udice, and anyone from a minority, be he black, Asian, Jewish or whatever, working for its
rags is in danger of doing the reactionaries dirty work. As for the pelting of the Jewish
memorial service in Stepney, there is no evidence that the Bengali youths who hurled eggs
and cabbage stalks at the mourners were Respect supporters. There were no anti-Jewish
slogans shouted; indeed, it was more likely that these hooligans had picked up a bad old
East End habit hostility to foreigners, that is, anyone from outwith ones little patch.
To talk of a tsunami of Jew-baiting that has swept the British left is an overstate-
ment that borders on the ridiculous. Nevertheless, the left must tread carefully when deal-
ing with the question of Palestine and Israel and Zionism, and it has over the years left it-
self open to criticism. Unlike solidarity action with those fighting apartheid in South Afri-
ca, where the reactionaries in Britain and elsewhere sided with the white supremacists and
there was little danger of any misinterpretations, in this case one will find all manner of
reactionaries from the relatively marginal forces of fascism to the more widespread forces
of fundamentalist Islam posing as friends of the Palestinians not so much out of sympathy
for the oppressed of the Middle East, but because it offers them a chance to attack the
Jews. Although Zionists constantly use the experience of anti-Semitism as a means of de-
flecting criticisms of Israeli policies, crudely-put criticisms of Zionist theory and practice
can veer dangerously close in appearance to anti-Jewish sentiments masquerading in an
anti-Zionist guise.
This is all the more important these days with the emergence of a gaggle of vocifer-
ous anti-Zionist Jews who, in their disgust at Israeli government actions, have adopted not
a little of the baggage of classic anti-Semitism and see nothing at all wrong with associat-
ing with Holocaust-denying cranks. Furthermore, there are indications of anti-Jewish feel-
ings arising amongst people who are neither far-rightists nor extreme Islamicists, but who
consider themselves liberal and anti-racist, but nonetheless place the blame for the Israeli
states foul treatment of the Palestinians upon Jews as a whole, and consider that a Jewish
lobby is the main driving force behind US foreign policy. Whilst such a view is encour-
aged by the effective carte blanche currently given by Washington to Ariel Sharon and the
direct association made by Zionists between all Jews and the state of Israel, it is quite mis-
taken, and it has very dangerous consequences. Our opposition to Zionism must therefore
be carefully distinguished in both words and deeds from any possible association from
53
anti-Jewish sentiments.
Proposals for an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions had been circulat-
ing for some time prior to the vote in the AUT. Over three years ago, various left-wingers
(including this writer) became concerned about the actual modus operandi of a boycott
when the manager of two academic journals, the Translator and Translation Studies Abstract,
removed from the list of contributors two Israeli academics purely upon the grounds of
their nationality. Neither of them was a political reactionary; indeed, one of them had a
record of activity with Israeli peace groups. Not only did this dismissal strike me as politi-
cally and personally wrong, it was counter-productive as it was easily and inevitably pre-
sented by the Israel lobby as an act of anti-Semitism.
Following from this inauspicious start, it was never clear whether the boycott cam-
paign was aimed at Israels academic sector as a whole or at specific academic institutions.
It was in this atmosphere that the AUTs resolution was discussed and voted on. It was not
clear whether the demand of the motion for the boycott of Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities
was the specific aim of the campaign, or the prelude to a much more extensive or even full
blacking of Israeli academic institutions. This is important, as a sharply-aimed boycott, by
focussing on specific notorious factors the victimisation of Ilan Pappe by Haifa Univer-
sity, and the validation by Bar-Ilan of the settlers Judea and Samaria College would
have brought to light in an immediate and vivid manner in British the Israeli states shab-
by treatment of the Palestinian students and the underhand manner in which Jewish aca-
demics and students who unearth uncomfortable findings about the Zionist state are dealt
with.
However, a more extensive or total boycott of Israeli academic institutions would
blunt the effectiveness of the limited campaign, as it would both downplay the above ex-
amples by lumping them in with the conduct of Israeli academia as a whole, and brand all
Israeli academic institutions and academics as overt instruments of Zionist oppression,
thus putting them all beyond the pale. This would serve to isolate those in Israeli academic
institutions who are opposed to the Israeli states treatment of the Palestinians, and, as
there is no call for an academic boycott of any other country, whatever the crimes of its
government, would enable the Israeli authorities to accuse those involved of picking solely
on them, with the obvious implication that they are acting because of anti-Semitic motives.
It will be argued that the Israeli state and its fellow-travellers abroad will anyway ac-
cuse their critics of anti-Semitism. This they do as a matter of course. But this would be
made that much more difficult, and the task of building solidarity with the Palestinians
made more easy, if the left were to organise its campaigns on this issue with sufficient care
so that the Zionists complaints could be easily and widely seen as fraudulent and self-
seeking. By not stating clearly its objectives, by making rash and incorrect decisions, the
campaign for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, whatever the honourable inten-
tions of its organisers, could well be seen as a lesson of how not to go about Palestinian sol-
idarity work.
Arthur Trusscott
The Boycott: A Response to Toby Abse
TOBY Abses article Boycotting Israeli Universities was, by any stretch of the imagina-
tion, an abysmal as well as a reactionary tirade. Indeed it is almost a textbook example of
how to construct an illogical argument. If it had been written by one of his students, the
only mark would have been an F for Failure.
Indeed it is hard to know what Tobys complaint is. That a traditionally weak and
54
apolitical/right-wing union took, albeit for a brief moment in time, a radical position on
the Israeli-Palestine situation in support of the oppressed? No doubt he is glad that the old
right in the union, coupled with Zionist co-thinkers, reasserted themselves in good time.
With the help of those other good friends of the Jews through the ages, the Daily
Mail/Express et al.
The lack of logic to which I referred is his jump from bewilderment at the sudden
radicalism of the AUT to the explanation Jew Baiting no less. Now Im sure that Abse
can enlighten us as to what he means by Jew Baiting, but let me have a guess. Call me
old-fashioned or an anti-modernist if you wish, but to me anti-Semitism has been about
bricks and bottles, calls of dirty Yid, discrimination and Jewish benches, and the belief
that Jews do not belong in the societies they live in and that they should live in Pales-
tine/Israel (or worse). Yes I know the latter sounds remarkably like Zionism, but Abse,
who is not stupid, despite impressions to the contrary, is well aware of the historical rela-
tionship between Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Now I look forward to an explanation from Abse about how the AUT resolution was
in anyway compatible with any of the above, as opposed to isolating a settler colonial state
whose treatment of the Palestinians mirrors that of the anti-Semitic states in Europe. For
Abse to trivialise anti-Semitism by comparing it with solidarity with the victims of the
USAs client state, speaks volumes about his chauvinist politics, and also raises questions
about the judgement of New Interventions Editors.
The reason that Abse, for whom Zionism has always been a blind spot, has now
joined the ranks of ex-socialists, is that he has no hesitation in joining with the right, to the
extent of bemoaning the adoption of a radical political stance by the AUT, despite the op-
position of their Executive.
Much else about his assertion that Israeli academics are critics of the occupation isnt
borne out, when one considers that the religious university of Bar Ilan was one of those
boycotted. Bar Ilan has validated the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel, established by
Military Decree, a hotbed of far-right settlers. In fact Abses assertion is a lie. With a few
honourable exceptions, Israeli academia and their academics have been complicit in the
occupation from the very start, and today more so than ever. Haifa, the other university
boycotted, hosts Professor Arnon Sofer, high priest of the science of racial demographics,
whose conference on the Demographic Problem in May had as its guest of honour none
other than Professor Yossi Artzi, Rector of Haifa University, who has openly called on the
anti-Zionist Jewish academic Professor Ilan Pappe to resign. This is the company Abse
keeps.
But a simple question to Toby Abse if what Israel does, not just to the Palestinians
but even to its own Arab citizens via agencies such as the JNF (refusing to sell, lease, etc,
land to non-Jews), were done to the Jews of Britain by an English National Fund, would
Abse condemn this as anti-Semitic? What would Abse say if say Goldsmith College, where
he teaches, were to hold a conference on the Demographic Problem Britain Policies
and the problem referred to was that there were just too many Jews in Britain, and espe-
cially in Golders Green. If he cannot answer the latter questions in the affirmative, then he
has also taken leave of his senses, as well as his integrity.
Tony Greenstein
Academic Freedom and Academic Boycott
THE vote at AUT Council to boycott Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities was indeed, as Abse
says, unexpected: our Executive had recommended the motions be referred, and Council
55
usually takes the Execs advice. There are a number of reasons why on this occasion it did
not, and I can assure Mr Abse that Jew-baiting was not among them.
Firstly, there was the appeal to delegates from Ilan Pappe, an Israeli Jew, to be part
of a historical movement and moment that may bring an end to more than a century of
colonisation, occupation and dispossession of the people in Palestine. Pappe has been vic-
timised by his employer, the University of Haifa, ever since he came to the defence of a
student called Teddy Katz, whose thesis documented a massacre of over 200 men, women
and children at a village called Tantura by the Haganah in 1948, a week after the state of
Israel came into being.
Secondly, there was the fact that two of the motions were proposed by Shereen Ben-
jamin, a Jewish colleague of mine, who began her speech by explaining that she supported
the right of Israel to exist, but nonetheless believed that there was no alternative to sup-
porting the boycott resolutions.
Thirdly, delegates may have been moved by the photographs we displayed showing
the bulldozers sent in by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to evict Arab families from
their land in order to expand their student dormitory accommodation. (Yes, I know that
Israeli courts have ruled in the Universitys favour, but the point is that the Israeli authori-
ties confiscated this land in 1968 soon after the military occupation of East Jerusalem. I be-
lieve that international law takes precedence over anything the Jerusalem District Court
has to say about the matter.)
And fourthly, Council was persuaded by our arguments that Bar-Ilan University is
violating the Fourth Geneva Convention. As Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace bloc, put it in
their open letter to Bar-Ilans President Moshe Kaveh:
The Judea and Samaria College which you and your colleagues established
and nurtured has a central role in the settlement of Ariel, increasing its popula-
tion and its economic clout. The colleges faculty and students are prime users
of the Trans-Samaria Road, the four-lane highway which was created on con-
fiscated Palestinian land in order to provide quick transportation to Ariel. The
Palestinian villagers on whose land this highway was built are excluded from
using it.
Mr Abse is right: the decision is not explicable in terms of the AUTs internal politics. It is
explicable in terms of decent trade unionists choosing to stand up for human rights.
When the left in the AUT loses the vote as is common we are expected to put
up and shut up. On this occasion it was the right who lost the vote, and their response
unprecedented in all the years I have been an AUT member was to call a Special Coun-
cil to get the decision overturned. This meeting took place against a background of legal
threats to the AUT, death threats to Ilan Pappe and myself, media hysteria in the UK, Isra-
el and the USA and a general campaign to smear proponents of the boycott as anti-
Semites. In these circumstances the outcome was predictable, but the boycott campaign
will now spread to other unions and resurface in the AUT, until the occupation is ended
and Palestinian students and teachers can enjoy the same academic freedoms as their Is-
raeli and British counterparts.
Sue Blackwell
Sue Blackwell is a member of BRICUP: British Committee for Universities of Palestine.
56
Tobias Abses Outrageous Libel
FOLLOWING the by-now hackneyed reflex of Zionist black propaganda, Tobias Abse
(New Interventions, Volume 12, no 1) claims that the decision of the AUT to boycott two Is-
raeli universities is part of a tsunami of Jew-baiting that has swept the British left (in
which left he quaintly includes Blairs entourage!).
This detestable calumny cannot be allowed to defile the pages of New Interventions
unanswered.
Lets get a few things straight.
First, Israel is a colonial settler state the last remaining one that is still active as
such, still aggressively expanding. The Israeli military regime in the Palestinian Occupied
Territories (POTs), now in its thirty-fifth year, is not less oppressive, and in many respects
more cruel, than the apartheid regime was in South Africa. In one major respect it is much,
much worse. Apartheid was based on the exploitation of non-while labour power; the
non-whites were therefore needed as part of the economy, although denied civil rights.
Zionist colonisation has always been deliberately based on the exclusion of indigenous la-
bour power. For Zionism and the Israeli settler-state, the Palestinians are surplus to re-
quirement, to be ethnically cleansed when the opportunity arises. The Israeli plans for the
POTs resemble Indian Reservations more than Bantustans. Needless to say, the exploita-
tive colonial structure of apartheid is much easier to reverse than the expulsivist Zionist
policy of ethnic cleansing. It must therefore be stopped in its tracks. Boycotting Israeli ex-
ports and public institutions is one way for progressive public opinion to exert pressure in
this direction.
Second, the boycott against Israel follows the example of the boycott against South
Africa under apartheid. The first step was taken by an ad-hoc group most of them Israel
Jews, including the present writer who called in April 2001 for a boycott of Israeli ex-
ports and leisure tourism in Israel. See www.matzpun.co. Hundreds of people in many
countries including many Jews added their signature to this call. Readers of New In-
terventions are invited to join us. Our call was soon followed by the Ban Israeli Goods (BIG)
Campaign in this country. The AUT resolution simply joins this honourable line. Socialists
should welcome rather than vituperate it as Abse does.
Third, Abse claims that while Israeli universities obviously contain some right-
wingers, Israeli academics as a group are far more critical of their government and its oc-
cupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and far more open to dialogue with Palestinians,
than Israeli society as a whole. This claim is the exact reverse of the truth: while some Is-
raeli academics are critical of the colonial policies of their government, Israeli academics as
a group are no more so than Israeli society as a whole. In any case, this is irrelevant, be-
cause the AUT boycott is directed against academic institutions, not the individual aca-
demics employed by them. No sanctions are called for against individual academics so
long as they act as individuals rather than as representatives of their institutions.
Fourth, the two academic institutions targeted have a particularly notorious record.
Bar-Ilan, the religious university, a hotbed of fanatic chauvinism, supports the Col-
lege of Judea and Samaria in Ariel (also known as Ariel College), which in fact was nur-
tured as a branch of Bar-Ilan. Ariel is an exclusively Jewish settlement constructed on ille-
gally-seized land in the occupied West Bank. (An occupying power is prohibited by the
Fourth Geneva convention from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occu-
pied territory and from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area, except for
reasons of military necessity or for the benefit of the local population.) Bar-Ilan supervises
degree programmes for students at Ariel College. The AUT resolution states that a boycott
57
by AUT members of Bar-Ilan as an institution should persist until it severs all academic
links with Ariel College. As an Israeli commentator, Tom Segev, pointed out in the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz (19 May 2005), the boycott of Bar-Ilan hurts only those Israelis who
support the perpetuation of the Israeli presence in the occupied territories.
As for Haifa University, it has a long record of hounding its few faculty members
who are anti-Zionist dissidents.
The official policy of Haifa University is well illustrated by a conference that it offi-
cially hosted in mid-May 2005 on The Demographic Problem and Israels Demographic
Policies. Haaretz (17 May 2005) reports:
Several dozen Jewish and Arab students protested Tuesday morning at Haifa
University against an academic conference titled The Demographic Problem
and Israels Demographic Policies that they described as racist. The students,
prevented by campus security personnel from entering the auditorium where
the conference was being held, sat down outside and refused to be evacuated.
Conference participants are slated to discuss the forecasts that Arabs will con-
stitute the majority of Israels population with several decades. The student pro-
testors maintain the conference is racist and anti-Arab. They attempted to dis-
tributed to conference participants certificates reading licensed racist and the
bearer of this certificate completed with honours an advanced course in racism
at Haifa University. Conference participants include demographic experts Pro-
fessor Sergio della Pergola of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Professor
Arnon Sofer of Haifa University.
In this light, Abses allegation that the boycott against Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities is an
instance of Jew-baiting is a sickening outrageous libel.
Mosh Machover
Selective Boycott or Academic Jihad?
SINCE, unlike George Galloway who no doubt would support any academic, cultural,
sporting, diplomatic, political or economic boycott of Israel I do not resort to the courts
to deal with slurs on my personal integrity (out of principle in relation to fellow socialists,
due to poverty in relation to Blairites and post-modernists), I had better begin by dealing
with some of the more absurd allegations against me before engaging with the substance
of the broader debate in a rather more detached manner. Some of this introductory para-
graph will be somewhat tedious for many readers, but certain claims might be repeated if left
unchallenged, even if they emanate from somebody as universally distrusted on the left as
Comrade Greenstein.
Firstly, I am not an ex-socialist. I have not seen the Blairite light, discovered the won-
ders of the free market and learnt to hate all benefit claimants. I continue to believe in the
ultimate need completely to expropriate the capitalist class and bring all major economic
enterprises into some form of social ownership. More immediately, I oppose all privatisa-
tion, whether overt or disguised as PFI or PPP, as well as all attacks on the welfare state,
and support all partial re-nationalisations and increases in taxes on the rich. This is proba-
bly not enough for Greenstein, who seems to have set himself up as the Chief Rabbi and
expelled me from his congregation for the offence of disagreeing with him.
Secondly, I am not a Zionist in any sense that the Zionists themselves would under-
stand. I have never visited Israel, let alone lived there, and have no intention of emigrating
58
there or urging others to do so. Moreover, I have not shown any great enthusiasm for Is-
raeli government policy, even when Likud was not in control, nor have I ever contributed
financially to Zionist causes. I believe that Israel should withdraw from all the territories
seized in 1967, and I support the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem
as its capital. I believe that Israel has a right to exist within its pre-1967 boundaries, just as
I believe, for example, that France has a right to exist within its present boundaries. I fail to
see how this makes me a Zionist in any ideological sense, although doubtless Comrade
Greenstein disagrees (and perhaps Comrade Machover too I am not clear whether he
thinks I am a dupe or perpetrator of Zionist black propaganda I have never knowingly
met an agent of Mossad).
Thirdly, I am astounded at the reference to my chauvinist politics. Since I have a
British passport, not an Israeli one, I would interpret this phrase in a conventional sense as
suggesting that I am some sort of enthusiast for British imperialism, or regularly wave the
Cross of St George at Millwalls home games. Whilst I would have whole-heartedly sup-
ported the British states war against Nazi Germany between September 1939 and May
1945, I have actively and publicly opposed all the wars fought by the British state in my
own lifetime (Falklands, Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq).
Fourthly, I have never met, spoken to (even on the phone) or corresponded with
(even via e-mail) Professor Sofer or Professor Artzi allegedly the company Abse keeps.
Having dealt with most of the scurrilous jibes to refute every one of Comrade
Greensteins numerous innuendoes would exhaust any readers patience I want to turn
to matters of more general interest. The first question I want to address is the question of
Jew-baiting since I have been accused of a sickening outrageous libel.
I have never suggested that Comrade Blackwell was anti-Semitic, and the other two
comrades have a stronger claim to being Jewish than myself (according to the kind of rab-
binical definition used by Comrade Greensteins father, rather than the Reform rabbi who
converted my mother). Therefore, I assume my critics were objecting to my general infer-
ences about the popularity of the boycott campaign, rather than claiming that I have li-
belled them as individuals.
Are all supporters of the boycott campaign sincere supporters of a bi-national, secu-
lar, democratic (and presumably socialist) state in Israel/Palestine like my three individu-
al critics? Frankly, no. The increase in Jew-baiting in both Britain and France in recent
times is not a Zionist myth, even if Zionists have been cynically exploiting it to call upon
Diaspora Jews to leave Europe for Israel forthwith. This does not seem an appropriate
place to discuss the French instances further, beyond observing that France has the largest
Jewish community, the largest Muslim community and the largest Fascist organisation in
Western Europe, and this coincidence has unfortunately not led to Jewish/Muslim unity
against Fascism on any large scale. In the British case, this year has seen the highest num-
ber of anti-Semitic incidents since records began to be kept about 20 years ago. The most
notable and well-publicised outrages were the attacks on Jewish cemeteries in Manchester
and East London.
I am not attributing these actions to the left, merely providing some broader street-
level social context, outside the rarefied world of the campuses or small left-wing meet-
ings, in which the AUTs actions and the response to them need to be placed. Jew-baiting
on the British left has a far more direct link with the disgusting opportunist alliance be-
tween various left groups from the Marxist tradition (most notably the Socialist Workers
Party and Socialist Action, although arguably some cadres from other groups too) and po-
litical Islam (basically the soft Jihadis of the Muslim Association of Britain and the Islamic
Party of Britain, since the harder Jihadi groups that Blair is trying to proscribe did not en-
59
dorse any such tactical alliance with kaffirs). Arguably, the roots of this ghastly lash-up
(which, questions of anti-Semitism aside, is a total betrayal of the lefts traditional stance
on womens rights, gay rights, secular education and Enlightenment values generally) go
back to the support given by sections of the left to the ultra-reactionary fundamentalist
counter-revolutionaries in Afghanistan and to what some of us called Bosnomania (un-
critical support for the fundamentalist Izetbegovis spurious claims to represent a multi-
ethnic ideal at a time when Sarajevo was crawling with Jihadis of all nationalities, includ-
ing Osamas Finest).
By far the largest single donor to Respects General Election campaign, a figure
linked to the Birmingham Central Mosque, claims that the Jews were responsible for both
11 September 2001 and the London bombings of 7 July 2005. Have the socialists in Respect
no shame? Do these comrades need to be reminded that Trotsky condemned the Nazi
Soviet pact? Do comrades need to be reminded that the Trotskyists of the 1940s, including
Tony Cliff, denounced as clerico-fascists the Muslim Brotherhood, whose chief ideologist,
the bigot Qutb, is the political inspiration of both the soft and hard Jihadis of our own
day? Bookmarks, the SWP bookshop, was recently the venue for a book-launch for a total-
ly deranged anti-Zionist Israeli Jewish musician who believes in The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion (just like Hamas and its sister organisation, the MAB), and associates with notori-
ous Holocaust deniers linked to David Irving. In such a climate, the boundaries between
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, Israelis and British Jews, get a little blurred, to put it po-
litely.
The fact that some British leftists still seem to have no problem with the MAB line
(seemingly endorsed by the Catholic Cherie Blair and the Lib-Dem Jenny Tong) that the
bus bombers of Haifa and Tel Aviv are heroes, whilst the bus bombers of Hackney and
Tavistock Square are not, seems to suggest that ordinary Israeli Jewish civilians (all of
whom, including women and children, are to be considered either former soldiers or po-
tential soldiers, as Ken Livingstones great friend, the murderous, homophobic and mi-
sogynist Sheikh Yussef el-Qaradawi, has pointed out) are somehow less human than ordi-
nary Londoners. Am I a Zionist in suggesting this is anti-Semitism?
Perhaps after 7 July, when Jihadi terrorism ceased to be a spectator sport for sections
of the British intelligentsia (including many liberals, whose petit-bourgeois, often post-
modernist world view rejects class analysis, and whose original Christian upbringing
makes them often unconsciously prone to scapegoat Jews in their new guise as Israe-
lis/Zionists as the source of all the worlds problems), some comrades can retrospectively
appreciate why Jewish academics turned up in large numbers to local AUT branch meet-
ings to demand a recall conference and a reversal of the boycott, without assuming it was
entirely the result of a well-organised Zionist conspiracy.
The second point I want to make is that supporters of the boycott were usually disin-
genuous about their aims, and this criticism might perhaps be made of two of the current
contributions to the New Interventions debate, although certainly not of the tirade by Com-
rade Machover, who overtly models his call for a boycott of Israel on that of South Africa,
a line whose meaning would be clear to even the most apolitical and inattentive AUT
member. The supporters of the boycott aimed to win over the uncommitted middle
ground in the AUT, what Comrade Blackwell called decent trade unionists, by pretend-
ing to advocate a boycott of specific institutions on empirical grounds, claiming they had
irrefutable documentary proof of exceptionally appalling repressive or racist practices in
particular universities, when what they really wanted was an ideologically-motivated total
boycott of all Israeli universities. Speakers at the pro-Palestinian lunchtime fringe meeting
at the recall conference (which as an observer at the conference I felt duty-bound to attend,
60
to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the other sides case as objectively as I could),
made no attempt to disguise the nature of this strategy, so I would be grateful if my critics
would refrain from suggesting that in labelling it a thin end of the wedge strategy I am
engaged in some Zionist libel.
The duplicitous nature of these tactics meant that they backfired in practical terms.
Insufficient care was given to collecting compelling evidence of wrongdoing of the kind
that would convince decent trade unionists rather than long-standing anti-Zionists. Em-
pirically, the original case against Haifa was very weak it rested on uncorroborated as-
sertions by Pappe, disputed by colleagues within his own institution. At the end of the day,
the allegedly persecuted Pappe has not been sacked, indeed he seems to have been promoted
(inevitably, his supporters make the riposte that he should have been promoted far earlier, but
such claims and counter-claims are endemic to university life with all its petty personal ri-
valries, and not unique to Haifa or indeed to Israel, as Comrades Blackwell and Machover
must be aware, even if Comrade Greenstein may genuinely nurse numerous illusions about
what is going on in British academia under Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly).
I cannot help comparing the hullabaloo over the Pappe case with the deafening si-
lence about the enforced early retirement of the distinguished Trotskyist historian Profes-
sor Antonio Moscato and the abolition of his popular course The History of the Workers
Movement at a southern Italian university increasingly under direct business control. This
occurred this year, and had none of the ambiguity of the Pappe case, but it happened in
Berlusconis Italy, not Sharons Israel. The switch from the Pappe issue to the Demograph-
ic Conference issue as the grounds for a boycott of Haifa appeared to the uncommitted as
a belated and cynical ruse. I myself would be very much opposed to boycotting a universi-
ty on the basis of one conference with which the vast majority of its staff had no connec-
tion; and Rectors or their equivalents (Vice-Chancellors, Masters, Principals, Wardens, etc)
often endorse obnoxious visiting speakers with warm words of welcome, sincere or oth-
erwise (I vaguely remember some such incident involving some particularly bellicose
American statesman at the University of Leeds about 15 years ago).
Nonetheless, I would acknowledge that the pro-boycott campaigners would have
been in a stronger tactical position if they had used the Demographic Conference as the
initial reason, not a fallback. The effect of what was perceived by many uncommitted
members as Pappes dodgy dossier was to discredit the rather stronger case against Bar-
Ilan. It was obvious to me in private conversations with supporters of Engage in my own
college that they felt far happier defending what they saw as tolerant multi-cultural Haifa
with its 20 per cent Palestinian student body than protecting Bar-Ilan with its more reac-
tionary reputation, and that they felt Ariel College itself was indefensible. To continue in
this tactical vein, I suspect that a call for a boycott of Engineering Departments with any
documented links to the Separation Wall might have been a far better tactic if the pro-
boycott lobby had actually wanted to undermine the occupation of the West Bank rather
than the State of Israel itself.
The third substantive point I want to make here concerns the nature of the Israeli
state, and the question of equating it with South Africa. I would argue that one has to
draw a rigorous distinction between the Occupied Territories seized in 1967 and Israel
proper. I would remind the pro-boycott camp that the Israeli Arabs or Israeli Palestini-
ans of pre-1967 Israel do have the right to vote in Israeli elections for the Knesset and, in
principle, have the right to form their own political parties (whatever limitations may exist
in practice because of security concerns). Moreover, they can attend the same educational
institutions as Israeli Jews (as the case of Haifa clearly demonstrates). I acknowledge that
they are subject to various forms of discrimination, but so are ethnic minorities in many
61
countries (including the United Kingdom) I really do not see any parallel with apart-
heid South Africa, with its separate voting rolls, separate educational institutions, legal
ban on inter-racial sex and so forth. Similarly, Comrade Greensteins claim that Israeli
treatment of the Palestinians mirrors that of the anti-Semitic states in Europe falls down if
we are discussing pre-1967 Israel.
Leaving to one side the notorious example of the Third Reich, which the more dema-
gogic anti-boycott campaigners such as Professor Steven Rose are keen to invoke as often
as possible, let us look more calmly at Fascist Italy after the introduction of the Racial
Laws in 1938 as our point of comparison. Italian Jews were banned from teaching in Italian
schools and universities, and all Jewish students had to cease attending their school or
university classes. Moreover, Jews were legally excluded from numerous professions and
occupations, and severe restrictions were placed on their ownership of property. As I
pointed out when discussing the alleged South African parallel, the Palestinian minority
within Israel proper is not treated in this way. I do not in any way endorse Israels occupa-
tion of the West Bank (Sharon seems to have left Gaza for good), but Israel is not the only
state in todays world engaged in an illegal occupation (the Turkish occupation of North-
ern Cyprus and the Chinese occupation of Tibet are two obvious examples, even if the
AUT is not prepared to acknowledge the illegality of British actions in Iraq).
In short, Israel is not a particularly benevolent state, but there are far worse examples
(although the lefts flirtation with the Jihadis seems to lead to silence, or even deliberate
obfuscation about the Sudanese states role in supporting Arab militias engaged in mass
killing of black Sudanese in Darfur), and it should not be treated as a South African-style
pariah, but judged case by case like any other state, including the British state, whose
agents have recently gunned down an innocent Brazilian at Stockwell Tube Station. To
judge Israel by different criteria does raise the question of Jew-baiting, about which I have
said enough for the moment, earlier in my reply. Doubtless, as my critics have pointed
out, the debate will go on.
Tobias Abse
Alan Woodward
Rudolf Rocker and the Anarchist
Movement
THE London Years is Rudolf Rockers autobiographical account of the period that he spent
in the UK.
1
Rocker was probably the foremost anarchist activist in the world for several
decades. Born in Germany, resident in Paris and then London from the age of 22, he tells
of the development of the anarchist movement in Britain and elsewhere from 1885 to the
end of the First World War. His personal stay, associated with the Jewish labour move-
ment in Londons East End, though he was not a Jew, was from 1895 to the end of his war-
time internment in 1918. His second son Fermin recently wrote a complementary but
lighter biography covering the same period, The East End Years.
2


1. Rudolf Rocker, The London Years, 1958 and 2005.
2. Fermin Rocker, The East End Years, 1998.
62
I must first of all record that it is an unusual but pleasant experience to read a history
book and not have to dismiss much of it as Leninist, Stalinist or reformist propaganda.
There is no division between Rockers beliefs and his actions, everything is consistent.
Were the book to be written and published today, it would need little amendment a ra-
re justification for the anarchist tradition of reprinting classic texts without explanatory
notes. Even so, notes and an index would assist understanding for the modern reader.
The history of the UK anarchist movement has been more comprehensively covered,
3

but not more persuasively written. Apart from the main theme, there are interesting pen
portraits of his partner Milly Wincop and others, including Gustav Landauer, Ted Leggatt,
John Turner, Errico Malatesta, Louise Michel, Peter Kropotkin and Francisco Ferrer, along
with a host of lesser-known figures.
Rocker has interesting chapters on the Second International and the Sydney Street
siege, plus an idiosyncratic account by a lifelong Marxist who blames Friedrich Engels for
the split in the First International, in spite of the obvious clash of the differing politics of
Marxism and anarchism.
The final chapters, 26 to 33, give some details about the plight of the German war-
time internees, who were chiefly held in Alexandra Palace. This is a useful addition to the
political literature of imprisonment, a real piece of hidden history, and should be assessed
as such.
Themes: For our purposes, there are two main aspects of the significance of the UK
anarchist movement in these years: firstly, the extent of the movement in the decade after
1895, before the massive expansion of anarcho-syndicalism of the following decade; and
secondly, the international links kept by the Jewish immigrants, primarily with their
homeland in western Russia, now Poland, and particularly the role of the Jewish anarchist
movement there in the first revolution of 1905.
Anarchism in Britain: On the first point, Rocker traces back the origins of UK anar-
chism to the split in the Communist League in 1850, and examines the part played by ex-
iles like Johann Most. He takes up the story with his own role in editing journals like the
Yiddish Arbeter Fraint, Workers Friend, and later Germinal, which is described modestly but re-
alistically, learning the Yiddish language and becoming a busy, popular speaker as well. The
London Years is largely concerned with the Jewish settlers in East London and anarchism.
There were other anarchist groups and newspapers in these years, including one run
by Guy Aldred and his paper The Spur, as well as that of Freedom, founded by Peter Kro-
potkin in 1885. Workers Friend was an agitational centre to the group, a point no doubt
picked up by Vladimir Lenin for his theories for developing the more authoritarian Bol-
shevik party. Its function was to care for the families of the Jewish workers against the op-
position of the official and religious structures, which were increasingly traditional and
conservative, and sharply opposed to the anarchism of the Workers Friend. The ideas of an-
archism always inspired the activists and the journal, and from 1900 Rockers personal ini-
tiative in setting up the more theoretical Germinal was a logical step as the movement
grew.
Workers Organisation: A special concern in the day-to-day work was the back-
breaking efforts to organise the Jewish workers against the sweated labour system in the
East End tailoring industry. The economic exploitation of the clothing workers by the self-
employed tailors was organised by the City of London financial institutions not a lot
changes here then.

3. Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, 1993, and for Britain, John Quail, The
Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British Anarchists, 1970.
63
Years of hard graft climaxed with the mini-general strike in 1912, surely one of the
supreme examples of hidden history. Workers Friend become a daily paper for the dura-
tion, and the group was engaged in a permanent round of meetings and other strike work.
The strike affected both the less poverty-stricken tailors of the West End and the myriad
Jewish workers of the East End and their families.
Rocker records the immediate solidarity with the dock strikers, whose action over-
lapped with theirs. Three hundred children were taken into the homes of the Jewish work-
ers, and strong lasting relations were built as a result. The roots of class solidarity run
deep.
Local Structures: Within the Jewish community the sense of community was always
strong. Meetings were first held in a selected pub, but then a dedicated club house was set
up in Jubilee Street, off the Commercial Road, E1. This was a meeting place, hired out to
other organisations, as well as a social centre, although the sale of alcohol was not allowed.
Rocker was familiar with the activities in the provinces, making regular visits, and
living for a while in Liverpool and Leeds. His book records the activities of city groups in
such places as Manchester, Hull and Glasgow. He notes also how the UK movement acted
as a staging post for further immigration to the Americas. His own trips to the USA and
Canada are a testament to this, a point examined below.
A French Comparison: Overall, Rockers account of the Jewish group, within the an-
archist movement, strengthens the ideas about the UK movement in comparison to what
has conventionally been seen as the larger French syndicalist counterpart. Its similar sig-
nificance is a theme that has been previously examined in another important text.
4

Pre-1914: While the relations between anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism were not
always as cordial as might be imagined, it is clear is that the subsequent expansion of an-
archo-syndicalism in the prewar period was the culmination of much hard work at this
earlier stage. The great unrest in Britain was preceded by educational bodies following the
tradition of the Communist Workers Educational Union of a half-century previously.
Concluding this factual summary, it can be seen that anarchist organisation within
the Jewish community was strong, structured and productive. So much so that the ques-
tion is posed as to why many anarchists make a point about opposing political parties
when what we have here is an obvious case of a political party, group, organisation or
whatever, that was a highly successful model for others to follow.
Political Organisation: For the purposes of clarification, we can analyse in more de-
tail the components that make up a political organisation. These are ideology and struc-
ture.
Ideology consists of unity around a common set of political ideas, and a drive to
propagate them. Conventionally the basis is laid by intellectuals, who may have defected
from other ideologies, and who draw out the implications of their analysis into the general
lines of strategy. Promotion of the ideology is through theoretical journals where the toler-
ance of dissent is dependent on several factors, but which is liable to decline if a dominant
leadership becomes more domineering.
5
This concept suggests the rejection of alternative
ideologies, organisations and all the associated implications. The downside of this com-
mitment to a specific ideology is the rise of party chauvinism, where it so dominates
members minds that all other ideas are fiercely rejected, or not even considered, but this is
another story.
Structure consists of an elected/appointed leadership charged with the constitutional

4. Bob Holton, British Syndicalism 1900-1914, 1976.
5. See Robert Michels, Political Parties, 1911 and 1968, for a lengthy discussion of the subject.
64
role of executing policy. As outlined above, this usually involves the production of a cen-
tral journal for the implementation of various functions. The leadership can function with-
in a structure that is centralised, federated or rotationally appointed on a locality basis. A
major function is to recruit new members plus the optional one of levying membership
subscriptions or persuading people to make a donation or to buy the journal. Some form
of education by meetings general or specific is also necessary.
Local organisation consists of branches, locals or cells which meet regularly with
members allocated by geography or occupation, operating within the national, central or
coordinated guidelines laid down, having a role of relating to the overall structure, and
representing the public face of the organisation.
Activity consists of specifically engaging in what is seen as the application of the ide-
ology to the problems of their members in order to legitimise the ideas and build the over-
all structure.
In most socialist organisations these follow traditional patterns, although some or-
ganisations, crippled by party chauvinism, are less flexible in their tactics.
There can optionally be participation in electoral systems as such, and this involves
additional organisations for the purpose of controlling representatives.
For example, the programme of Workers Socialism, As We See It, calls for the follow-
ing:
Socialists to build rank and file committees in all structures especially the
workplace, and to promote their aims by being active and unionised members
of a workplace, and standing as delegates in that capacity. This is a primary agi-
tational function, even for those who choose to become politically active, and
one that cannot be neglected in favour of politics. Outside this, Workers Social-
ists may be active in organisations fighting racism and including discrimination
against asylum seekers, the defence of the welfare state against closure, cuts
and privatisation, anti-war campaigns, and other fields including possible elec-
toral work at some stage. The promotion of socialist ideas, organisation, per-
spectives and literature, is an integral part of the this activity.
Workers Friend and the Political Party: It can seen that the Workers Friend group meets
many of the above criteria and can in effect be designated a political party. It is the com-
mon practice of many anarchists to pretend that their organisations are not political par-
ties on the basis that they do not include one or more of these features. This is quite inva-
lid.
Anarchist Theory and its Limitations: Usually this means in practice a refusal to
participate in electoral activity. In fact, the debate about this is another subject entirely, but
we can note in passing that the issue of voting for political parties was of course a major
cause of the split between the Marxists and libertarians in the First International of work-
ers organisations of 1864-72. Historically, the ideas of Michael Bakunin have been proved
correct, both in respect of the corruption of parliament parties and the linked issue of the
dominant political party and revolutionary politics, as shown in Russia after 1917.
6

Electoralism? Small wonder then that the argument that electoralism results in trap-
ping the successful candidates and that it provides a cover for the exercise of real power
by capitalists, has generally won the day, even with the German council communists in
1919.
7
However, to regard electoral abstention as a totally sacrosanct negative principle, ra-

6. Serge Bricianer, Pannekoek and Workers Councils, 1978.
7. Jan Appel, The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution, 1990, see the explanato-
65
ther than a tactic, is increasingly open to debate. In fact, the traditional anarchist concept of
abstention from voting was based at least as much on opposition to conventional parliamen-
tary activity as opposition to engaging in action within the state. It is of course necessary to
distinguish between the tactic of standing candidates and voting in elections. In respect of
the former, in practice some compromise in respect of participation has been the rule.
The Experience: Some anarchist organisations have promoted parliamentary action.
Rudolf Rockers own brother-in-law Guy Aldred, the leading British anarchist of the
twentieth century, favoured the Sinn Fin tactic standing, getting elected but not taking
the seat.
8
A version of this tactic was used with astonishing success by the nationalist Bob-
by Sands in the Irish Hunger Strikes of 1981, standing for election from his deathbed in pris-
on and helping ultimately to defeat Thatcher. Even the leading anarchist PJ Proudhon stood
for and was elected to the French National Assembly in 1848, though his inconsistent per-
formance there puzzled friend and foe alike. He later disowned it.
It should also be noted that measures can be taken against the defection of parlia-
mentary representatives by groups which sponsor them. The Bolsheviks supervised the
election of tribunes of the people in the Russian Duma prior to the First World War, but
with certain safeguards in respect of any possible default on their part.
9

Regarding the other point about voting in elections, Daniel Gurin relates how the
Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, during the Alliance of the Left in 1924, whilst conceding
that elections can have good or bad results, and that anarchist votes can be crucial, none-
theless continued to advocate abstention.
The Spanish Revolution: By contrast, the Spanish anarchist workers in 1930 voted
pragmatically for the new republic but abstained three years later, allowing a very reac-
tionary government into office. The alternative policy of insurrections was a disaster for
the anarchist participants. In the crucial Popular Front election in 1936, although the
CNT/FAI policy was officially for continued abstention, this was largely tokenism, and
many supporters voted against the political right. This was followed by revolutionary
events.
10

Benefits: Some political activists, including the present writer, feel that the general
tactic of electoral activity can be beneficial today in some circumstances; for instance, to
exercise a negative veto and prevent the extreme right wing taking office through non-
violent methods, such as alliances of left candidates in Germany in 1932 which could have
marshalled the divided working class. The involvement of the BNP in current elections
comes into this category. Participation can also be part of consolidating mass movements
for such social-reform objectives as anti-war activities, though to make it the sole mecha-
nism as happened in 2004 against the Iraq invasion is clearly mere reformism. It can also
be a means of helping to develop a popular movement against capitalism, subordinate to
direct action, but necessary to widen the struggle, as Rosa Luxemburg pointed out in
Germany in the postwar crisis of 1918-19.
Anarchist Parties: In conclusion, the issue of libertarian opposition to political par-
ties seems misplaced. Anarchist organisations are themselves effectively political parties,
they have ideas and perspectives, constitutions, rules and procedures; they organise activi-
ties as well as publishing journals and leaflets.
So it appears to an outsider that anarchist denials on this issue fall into the Alice in
Wonderland practice of defining words to mean what anybody wants them to mean. Such

ry notes.
8. John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Deep: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred, Glasgow Anarchist, 1988.
9. AY Badayev, Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, 1987, see especially the introduction by Tony Cliff.
10. Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain: The Experience of Civil War 1936-39, 1981.
66
delusions suggest a continuing confusion over strategy, tactics and the role of organisations.
It should also be noted that at the highest level of anarcho-syndicalist organisation in
the Spanish revolutionary period, the perceived degeneration of the CNT represented by
the formation by Angel Pestaa of the Syndicalist Party, was countered by the establish-
ment of another political party, the FAI
Anarchist Internationalism: On the second major point, the international links of the
Russian Jews were to assume great importance in the revolution in 1905. There was a
regular exchange of literature, promoting ideas and organisation. The Jewish anarchists in
Ukraine were a major part of workers resistance in the general strikes at the end of that
year. The same pattern of steady production and distribution of literature over a long pre-
paratory period was repeated in the Spanish revolution around 1930.
11

Revolution in Russia: Historically, the agitation in the Ukraine was also important both
in the revolution of 1917 itself and the war against the counter-revolutionary Tsarist White
troops. This has been told in a recent biography of Nestor Makhno and his peasant armies.
12

At the same time, labour discontent, led largely by anarchists, was central in the opposition to
the increasingly authoritarian regime of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In the agitation for a third
revolution in 1920-22, the movement created by Jewish anarchists was pivotal.
13
Its repression,
and that of Bolshevik dissenters like Gabriel Miasnikov,
14
leads straight to the horrors of Sta-
linism. We should not forget the Leninist roots of this.
15

Prison and Politics: Rockers account of his years in British internment during the
First World War opens up some intriguing possibilities. The fate of many who oppose
governments, politicians, capitalism generally and capitalists individually, the militia, the
legal system and the police, colonialists, imperialists, etc, is often a spell in prison. This can
be short-term, like many of the ill-treated early victims of the Nazis,
16
or a life sentence as
in the case of Antonio Gramsci. The purpose is to induce silence, or exile, if not compli-
ance. Death is not generally an option, as the victims may be needed at a later date, and
execution is another issue entirely.
Prisoners, such as Rosa Luxemburg, write letters,
17
whole volumes such as Gramscis
Prison Notebooks,
18
or subsequent memoirs, such as Alexander Berkmans.
19
Prisoners have
debated political issues such as Ante Ciligas analysis of the nature of Stalinist Russia,
20
or
formulated theories like George Jacksons efforts to integrate Marxism, Maoism and black
urban resistance.
21
Countless anarchists, dissenters, Marxists, national liberationists, war
protesters, workers on strike, etc, have served their time this is a subject waiting for an
author. Meanwhile some general comments can be offered.
Rockers internment resulted in a more modest essay which concerned itself with the
nuts and bolts of the situation. After being housed in temporary accommodation, the pris-
oners were put in a series of camps, Rocker was fortunate to be held in Alexandra Palace.

11. Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists: A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937, 2000.
12. Alexandre Skirda, Nestor Makhno, Anarchys Cossack: the struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-
1921, 2004.
13. Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin: Labour Protests and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1996.
14. Ibid.
15. Gregory Petrovich Maximoff, The Guillotine At Work, two volumes, 1940 and 1975.
16. Oscar Hippe, And Red is the Colour of Our Flag, 1991, the author has the distinction of being imprisoned
by both the Nazis and the Stalinists.
17. Rosa Luxemburg, Letters from Prison, 1921 and 1946.
18. Paulo Spriano, Antonio Gramsci and the Party: The Prison Years, 1979.
19. Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 1970.
20. Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma, 1940 and 1979.
21. George Jackson, Blood in my Eye, 1972, and Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, 1971,
67
This huge building was divided into occupational workshops, for tailors and suchlike. Amid
the complaints and grievances, the demand for access for visitors was important, for material
and psychological reasons. Rocker held lectures, permission having been granted after a
while, and as the internees were a politically mixed collection of miscellaneous German na-
tionals or their partners, this was seen as a central, though non-partisan, activity (English of-
ficers monitored them).
22

Some General Criticisms: Rockers book can be criticised for his omissions. Guy Al-
dred, perhaps the most consistently active anarchist in this country, is not mentioned, de-
spite being in the authors own family.
23
Similarly, the expansion of the wider anarcho-
syndicalist movement in these years is somewhat neglected. Rockers interwar role in the
anarcho-syndicalist International has a crucial significance in this later decade, but at this
early stage there was much opposition to the movement from such eminent leaders as
Errico Malatesta. Rocker does not tackle this subject, though he may in the 1950s have con-
sidered it to be a dead issue. He also skates over the question of violence, which affected
the anarchist movement especially in this period and which also was divisive.
One final omission concerns the Jewish immigrants, not all of whom went into tailor-
ing. Much of the workforce of the rapidly-growing furniture factories, for example, was
provided by people who were recruited on the dockside as they disembarked from the
boats. Later these workers were to become unionised and form the basis for the furniture
workers union, a prominent left union of its time. The Communist Party of Great Britain
was to dominate the union, which had a powerful tradition of workplace organisation be-
fore it disappeared through amalgamations in the Thatcher years.
24
There were also other
struggles involving immigrant workers at this time. One such is the little known catering
workers actions in Londons West End during 1910-14.
25

From the viewpoint of Workers Socialism, it would have been interesting to read
Rockers thoughts on the development of workers councils and the council communists
during the First World War and its aftermath. The movement drew extensively on the an-
archo-syndicalist traditions in the main countries. The current movement for Workers So-
cialism similarly shares some of these roots.
26

The Authors Later Career: Rudolf Rocker went on to play a pivotal role in the anarchist
International Workers Association. This opposed the Bolsheviks Third International, which
was rejected by many national anarchist parties and unions. It enjoyed an excellent record, but
was forced out of Germany by Hitler. It still survives if in a reduced structure.
27
Its experience
was similar to that of the council communists International, the FAI.
Rocker was forced into exile again with the Nazi takeover, and he spent his remain-
ing years in America until his death in 1958. He continued to be active, publishing the

22. Local history books have little information on the events of the period, but the Hornsey Historical So-
ciety does keep a copy of a recent booklet published by the Anglo-German Family History Society on
civilian internment. This has two essays by Richard Noschke and Rocker. The former became a re-
vived nationalist from his experience, while Rocker retained his beliefs and went on to many years of
constructive contributions in Germany after the Russian revolution of 1917. Their joint booklet is more
explicit about such concerns as diet, prisoners problems, etc, than Rockers later book. See Rudolf
Rocker and Richard Noschke, An Insight into Civilian Internment in Britain During World War One, 1998.
23. Caldwell, op cit.
24. Huw Reid, The Furniture Makers: A History of Trade Unionism in the Furniture Trade 1868-1972, 1986.
25. Wilf McCartney, Dare to be a Daniel! A History of One of Britains Earliest Syndicalist Unions, 38 Strikes
Fought, 38 Won, 1944, 1992.
26. Alan Woodward, Political Economy of Workers Socialism: A First Approximation, 2005.
27. See Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe (eds), Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Per-
spective, 1990, for a somewhat academic account of anarcho-syndicalism.
68
monumental Nationalism and Culture in 1936. This surveys European history on a grand
scale, and has recently been republished. His booklet on Spain, published in the midst of
the Spanish revolution, was an early exposure of the counter-revolutionary betrayal of the
Communist Party. The frequently reprinted Anarcho-Syndicalism is one of the best accounts
of the international labour movement from any source, and is highly recommended.
28

Conclusion: Rocker was a leading figure in the labour movement, and his belated
recognition is long overdue. If you read The London Years, be prepared for a likely desire to
follow up the experience with other interesting and revealing ventures into his perceptive
later books.
Glyn Beagley
Anarchists, Syndicalists and
Workers Councils
ALAN Woodwards reply to my article opens with both a justified and critical welcome
for my article, because it opens a debate on the contentious subject of political leadership
and revolutionary industrial action. But when reading it, I quickly detected that someone
was missing from the story and that was the anarchist worker who made up a big part
of Europes workforce after the First World War.
29

The omission on my part is one of pure oversight, born out of an attempt to concen-
trate, perhaps overmuch, on the institutional political process of dual power within the
overall revolutionary process, especially in relation to the organs that the working class
uses during periods of open crises. It was not an attempt to write the anarchist worker, or
any other section of the working class, out of the historical process. Indeed, Alans point
could be extended to include a number of other trends present within the European work-
ing class at this point in time.
I have in mind the whole period from the early twentieth century up to the end of the
Second World War. During this period, the anarchist/libertarian tradition was a genuine
mass movement, in Spain especially, but also in Russia, and to a lesser extent Italy, France
and momentarily Germany as well, if we include the syndicalist tradition, which often
overlapped or ran alongside the anarchist viewpoint. This context has to be expanded to
include Northern America. This is because the early trade union movement often sought
new sources of politics and inspiration in order to carry through its objectives of organis-
ing the working class into a mass movement.
We should also include the various Jewish workers organisations, especially the
Bundists, who were responsible for founding the trade union movement within the Tsarist
Empire, and who often played a wider role within the pan-European left. Along with them
there were other left parties, such as the Socialist Workers Party (SAP) in Germany and the
Independent Labour Party in Britain, who at times moved from reformism into a centrist
direction.

28. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, 1989; Nationalism and Culture, 1933 and 1998; The Tragedy of Spain,
1937 and 1986.
29. Alan Woodward, Another Dimension on Workers Councils: A Reply to Glyn Beagley, New Interven-
tions, Volume 12, no 1.
69
Yet what became of these organisations? For the post-Second World War period was
totally different gone was this heterodox political landscape, and in its place were the
overriding, stifling bureaucracies and mass movements of Stalinism and reformism of one
type or another.
One explanation might be that both Stalinism and reformism had, in different ways,
developed a close relationship to and involvement with the exercise of state power, the lat-
ter in association with the bourgeoisie, and the former by supplanting it when necessary or
convenient. Other left-wing movements within the working class, including the Trotskyists,
lost momentum and were dispersed, as the prospect of a democratic, all-inclusive working
revolution receded and failed.
Counter-revolution in various guises fascist, Stalinist and bourgeois wiped out
much of this vanguard. For the Bundists, it was especially difficult, because the result was
Zionism, not socialism, as the reaction to the anti-Semitic holocaust created the building
blocks for the new right-wing state of Israel. Those sections of the left who for one reason
or another failed to contribute to the successful foundation of a democratic working-class
state formation were doomed to become the victims of others. Alan writes:
The commitment, or rather non-commitment, of the new Bolshevik state to
workers management and democracy has been analysed extensively already.
Workers councils the workplace kind were all very well in winning the revo-
lution in October, but after that were soon to be amalgamated into party-
dominated trades unions. The Soviets, the first step up from the direct bodies,
were quickly by-passed as the State Council of Peoples Commissars took over.
From February to October 1917, the actual existence of a heterodox working-class move-
ment, which included anarchists, as well as syndicalists, Bundists, Mensheviks and the
more peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary Party, was a fact of political life in Russia. This
was a part of the political reality of Russia in the throes of revolution, that no one, not even
Lenin, Trotsky and the entire Bolshevik party could wish away. No matter how often they
referred to themselves as the majority!
On occasions, I reach the conclusion that Lenin and the Bolsheviks adopted both a
highly pragmatic, as well as an ideological view, of this form of reality. On the one hand,
they formed a view of the rest of the left based upon a particular interpretation of Marxist
theory, and then implemented it in a way that circumstances allowed them to do so. For
example, they adopted the traditional Marxist viewpoint that anarchism was a petit-
bourgeois and ultra-left trend within the working-class movement. But, having done this,
they then went on to analyse the local Russian variety as having two quite separate parts.
One part was described as (to use todays term) lifestyle anarchism, and the other part as
political anarchism. The former were lost to the world, but the latter could potentially become
useful allies. After all, every insurrectionary movement needs its insurrectionaries, and in due
course it is bound to attract to its side, at the moment of overturn, all of those who support its
shared, common class objectives. For Lenin, the anarchists with their revolutionary zeal
and enthusiasm had their uses after all.
But not all was well with the revolution. The early post-October government inherit-
ed a difficult legacy, and one that was soon to be further compromised by the failure of a
successful international revolution coming to the aid of beleaguered Russia. The problem
of lifting Russia out of its peasant backwardness was compounded by a heterodox revival
in 1918 within the soviets. By then, the Bolsheviks had come to look upon the soviets as
70
their own domain.
30
This threat was reinforced by the dbcle over the Constituent As-
sembly and the onset of the Civil War.
In fact, the Bolsheviks were only saved by the continuing instability in the main cen-
tre of European capitalist countries in the postwar period, initially combined with the up-
surge of peasant rebellion in the Russian countryside. The peasants reacted with undis-
guised horror at the prospect of Tsarist victory, since that would mean the reinstatement
of landlordism. Quite naturally, they gravitated towards those who urged land to the
peasants, especially when the track record of the Bolsheviks spoke for itself. After all, the
peasants, reasoned, the Bolsheviks had actually done what they had promised to do,
whilst others had only spoken about land redistribution and then walked around the edg-
es of the problem.
Eventually the Bolsheviks and their allies won the Civil War, but at a terrible cost; in
effect the country was wrecked. The bourgeoisie and much of the technocratic lite, who
ran and managed much of the most advanced sections of the economy, left Russia along
with the defeated Tsarists after the conclusion of the Civil War and the Wars of Interven-
tion. This downhill process continued with the mass epidemics, hunger and starvation.
Even if this structural dismemberment of the revolution had not occurred, it is difficult to
see just what Lenin and the Bolsheviks might have attempted to do in order to achieve the ef-
fective modernisation of Russian. Even under a best-case scenario the only thing that they had
going for them short of a pan-European revolution was to use working-class state power
plus a revolutionary government to guide the implementation of managed industrialisation of
the economy and society. Someone had to drag this vast underdeveloped country into the
twentieth century. The bourgeoisie had failed in its historical mission of confronting and
defeating the Tsarist autocracy. Consequentially, they failed to overthrow and modernise
the Tsarist Empire, and therefore matters of historical fate fell to the working class and its
revolution. But that task required a stable, widespread democratic soviet formation pre-
sent within society and the economy, as it does in every modern revolution. And that was
now missing, in its place a monster grew up and buried the revolution.
Soviets, as the highest expression of working-class unity and power, operated at
many different levels; as full-blown workers councils, which were individually work-
place-based or industry-wide networks, or as soldiers or sailors councils, or as armed
groups of workers defence units or Red Guards. They also seemed on occasion to take on
more community or locality-based social dimensions, dealing with housing issues, or al-
cohol abuse.
31

However, the real strength of this movement was its class basis and direct democra-
cy. It can only be described as a quantitative and qualitative historical development. That
is why we see so many different versions of workers councils manifest in every open
crisis throughout the globe wherever workers struggle on their own behalf. Soviets re-
place the democratic moment of a bourgeois representative political system, in which pe-
riodically we are allowed to vote and replace one government with another, for example
Labours victory over the Tories in 1997.
But soviet-style democracy introduces a permanent participatory democracy, which
includes the regular election of delegates, recall, replacement and continuing report-back
or feedback. The whole political and state system is democratic, dynamic and universal.
But this new revolutionary democratic political system is closely tied into the deeper
fate of the social development of the revolution. Any setback for workers control over the

30. Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy, Polity Press, 1990, pp22-23.
31. Ibid, pp31-32.
71
economy and its future wellbeing spells disaster for the whole revolutionary project. Once
the democratic and social aspects are compromised, then we have some real problems.
One of the problems in Russia, and this may well be a general feature of both dual
power and post-revolutionary society, is the sheer lack of effective coordination through-
out both the national and international territories. Councils, by their very definition, often
have their own limited constituency. A factory council or a shop-based movement of
councils may have a very single-industry view of the overall process, for example, as so
often with the engineering industry, and likewise with military-based formations, soldiers
of a particular regiment, or with a particular military function, such as COPCON during
the Portuguese Revolution of 1974-76.
32

This can lead all too quickly to parochialism and fragmentation of revolutionary ef-
fort, leaving someone else to get on with the important business of running the govern-
ment, something that is a thoroughly dangerous precept, especially when it takes place
behind the backs of the workers. The purpose of a genuinely revolutionary party is to as-
sist in the process of centralising workers power by constantly expanding its democrat-
ic content over all aspects of economic and social life. This did not happen in Russia to
the degree that was desirable and necessary, whether it was due to pre-conceived Bolshe-
vik perspectives about state involvement in the economic development of peasant Russia,
the limited scope of workers councils, workers control and the minority social weight of
the Russian working class, or the actual course of events, which as a material process
dragged the revolution downwards. The actual conjunctural crisis remains an important
matter for research and debate, because Russia is the only example of a successful and
then a failing revolution.
As the soviets and the Bolsheviks parted company because of a fragmented post-
revolutionary situation, were the Bolsheviks sucked into a power vacuum created between
the defeated ruling classes on the one hand and a dispersed working class on the other?
In the case of Germany and Spain, pure bourgeois counter-revolution won out, aided
by the failure of the official leaderships of the workers parties and trades unions to pre-
pare for and take state power. It resulted in strategic compromises that included outright
collaboration, for example the right wing of the SPD in Germany during 1918-19 and the
Popular Front government in Spain between 1936-39, with the bourgeois republican com-
ponent.
Earlier on in his article, Alan has rightly pointed to my propensity for blind spots,
and he does so again:
So much for the thumbnail sketches of the councils and revolutionary situations in
three countries. Before concluding, it is worth noting that a full account of workers
councils would include:
The magnificent role of councils in opposing imperialism as in China in 1925-27,
Ireland in 1920-21, Algeria in 1962-64, and Chile in 1974.
The resistance to the right wing and fascists in Spain in 1936, France in 1936 and
1968, and Portugal in 1974-76.
Workers organisations against state-capitalist Russia, as in Hungary and Poland in
1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and even in the perverse case of state-sponsored
councils in Yugoslavia in the 1950s.
Interesting incidents like the councils in the American general strikes in 1947 and in
Japan in the same year.

32. This radical wing gained control of the MFAs security apparatus, COPCON, which in the Lisbon region
in particular frequently intervened in strikes and occupations on the side of the workers. (Workers Action,
no 27, October-November 2004, p19)
72
More recent insurrections like those in Iran in 1979, Poland in 1980, and Argentina
in 2002.
In my defence, I must state that any blindness or one-sided treatment of the subject matter
was not intentional, nor did I intend to convey chauvinism of any type. It was more a mat-
ter of process. Rather, my focus has been over-concentrated and in danger of a Golden
Age of Revolution type of approach, set as it is in a particular time-frame, the first three
decades of the twentieth century and in a particular place, Europe.
For some time now I have attempted to expand my own areas of research and inter-
pretation with a broader historical scope. In this respect, Alans contribution is doubly
welcome in that it provides a framework for just such a study, by moving the focus for-
ward from the time-limited Eurocentricity of my earlier article, Workers Councils in the
Revolutionary Process (New Interventions, Volume 11, no 4) to include the anti-imperialist
and anti-Stalinist struggles, especially of the post-Second World War phase. We should be
able to grasp a fuller, richer and more complex theory and history of workers organisa-
tions during the process of dual power.
My own research in relation to the framework that Alan sets out, although limited by
lack of time and resources, demonstrates to me that the working class and its allies have
for most of the twentieth century, in fact ever since the 1905 Russian Revolution, attempt-
ed in practice to try and inform the left of something rather important about the process of
revolution, during both its open and closed phases of activity. Above all, it has tried to
demonstrate a willingness to use both existing and new forms of organisation as an ex-
pression of its class-based power.
Yet much of the left has either failed to listen and observe, or has often distorted the
historical record to suit its own purposes. We all have much to learn from the actual politi-
cal and social struggles of the international working class and its allies. We are in need of a
renewed collective effort in pursuit of this task, and it will be interesting to see just what
Alans suggested framework for further study helps us to uncover.
Second Glance
A Series of Retrospective Reviews
The article below is the first in a series that will examine works of some vintage that have
caught the interest of the contributors. These can be classics of socialist thought, works
which the reviewer thinks should be better known or re-evaluated, as well as texts which
just provide an occasion for critical discussion and polemic. If you would like to contrib-
ute, get in touch.
Our first offering is a review by Doug Lowe of Clive Gilson, Mike Pratt, Kevin Rob-
erts and Ed Weymes, Peak Performance (Harper Collins, 2000). This book is a Management
Studies text that was chosen as the Harper Collins Business Book of 2000. It promised to
reveal the secrets of Peak Performance in the running of organisations, using examples
from the world of sport like the one spotlighted here, Bayern Munich Football Club. Does
Peak Performing Organisation Theory tell us something we didnt know about contem-
porary professional soccer? Are these heirs to Adam Smith on the ball?
* * *
73
AT first glance, the book might appear to be an excessively long parody of modern mar-
keting jargon. The truth soon dawns, however, that such phrases as sharing the dream,
inspirational dreams and making magic are being repeated ad nauseum without a shred
of irony. The authors are clearly capable of alternative and lucrative careers as TV evange-
lists or snake-oil hucksters. After all, theyve managed to put together about 400 pages of
jargon and flowery prose, a mind-blowing mixture of corporatespeak and adolescent hero
worship.
Affiliated with the Waikato Management School at the University of Waikato (New
Zealand), the authors espouse the theory of Peak Performing Organisations (PPOs). The
book underpins this, based as it is on studies of a variety of successful sporting organisa-
tions, five from the United States, five from Australasia and two from Europe. From foot-
ball, Bayern Munich were chosen.
One of the books authors, Kevin Roberts, is CEO for the global advertising firm
Saatchi & Saatchi. He has been implicated in the murkier waters of New Zealand politics,
including giving motivational talks on PPO theory to the right-wing National Party in
1999.
1
On a 2001 business video, Roberts declared his belief that developing brand loyalty
should be replaced by a focus on trust and lust, that is, it is up to firms and their adver-
tisers to develop images that will have customers lusting after their products.
2
Another of
the authors, Clive Gilson, was once a revolutionary comrade of mine back in our Leaming-
ton days. A pity he ended up using his talents in the service of corporate capitalism.
Peak Performance identifies several common approaches among these organisations
that appear to sustain long-term success. These include formal structures that do not stifle
initiative or new ideas, the important role of what the authors dub inspirational players
in motivating staff, the fostering and encouragement of a family/community spirit, the
continuity of knowledge/experience/expertise in the main activities of these organisations
and the concentration of all efforts towards sporting goals/success. For the authors, the
critical element is that the organisation not individuals within it provides vital conti-
nuity to all these strands.
The authors have subsequently defended their theory when some organisations
more recent lack of success have been raised. They argue that the key factor is long-term,
sustained success, which can and will override short-term failures. They also cite the suc-
cessful application of PPO theory to non-sporting businesses such as Procter & Gamble
and Saatchi & Saatchi.
I am in no position to comment on that. Nor do I have sufficient knowledge of those
sports to comment about most of the individual organisations studied in the book. Ive
been on this planet long enough, however, to spot flannel when I read it apparently the
Australian Cricket Board is at its best when it has earned the right to tell yet another story
which adds a new ring to the contours of the cricketing soul [!] (p342). Ill confine myself
to remarks concerning the study of Bayern Munich, also referred to in the book as FCB.
The impression given is of a club existing in some cocoon of self-perpetuating excel-
lence. When Bayern actually became (or started becoming) a PPO is never stated. Accord-
ing to the authors, loyalty is retained or gained through the dissemination and repetition
of a variety of facts, half-truths and myths. These are centred upon key events and particu-
lar individuals in the clubs history. In Bayerns case, people like Franz Beckenbauer (in
fact, the Bayern study was more of a love letter to him than an analysis of the club). But

1. See New Zealand Prime Minister Storms Out of Parliament Over Tourism Scandal
(www.wsws.org/articles/1999/mar 1999/nz-m02.shtml).
2. Professor William McCarty (Western Michigan University) Video Review, International Branding for
the Twenty-First Century (www.kelley.iu.edu/ciber/fall02).
74
these means of cementing loyalty are hardly unique to Bayern. Even the lowliest football
clubs have these shared traditions.
The authors emphasis on the positive atmosphere inside the club is sharply at odds
with the reality. In Germany, the club is nicknamed FC Hollywood because of its reputa-
tion for internal bickering and personality clashes. Just a year before Peak Performance was
first published, Beckenbauer admitted: If you follow Bayern Munich, we always have had
troubles.
3
Curiously, this not the impression given by his quotes in Peak Performance.
Apparently, however, there is an FCB community, an extended family that definite-
ly includes the thousands of fans (p185), and the organisation makes magic and builds
community [eh?] (p192). There is also an emphasis placed on Bayerns supposed aversion
to 1-0 wins and its concern to be much more than a football team by embracing wider so-
cial responsibilities. This culminates in the assertion that FC Bayern Munich wants to win
championships, but the dream that gives this meaning is More than 1-0: soccer working
for the greater good of society (p372). Im not sure whether this PR balderdash is merely
Bayerns, swallowed by the authors, or Bayerns and the authors, for the benefit of the
more gullible reader.
This rosy view of the club tends to be somewhat tarnished by their extremely dubi-
ous antics between 2000 and 2003 concerning the issue of TV contracts. In late 1999, the
German Football Association (the DFB) began what became extremely protracted negotia-
tions with the Kirch Media Group for a new TV contract for the Bundesliga. Eventually a
deal was struck in April 2000. In February 2003, however, it emerged that Bayern had se-
cretly signed a huge marketing contract with Kirch back in December 1999! This constitut-
ed a grave breach of Bundesliga regulations and an official investigation was initiated. As
a result, a fit of pique by Beckenbauer led him to announce in April 2003 Bayerns inten-
tion to apply for the Italian League! A messy compromise was eventually reached involv-
ing Bayern paying a fine plus a donation to Iraqi children, but the German League still
considered Bayerns behaviour morally reprehensible.
4

Fortunately, considerably more balanced, accurate and down-to-earth information
about Bayern can be found elsewhere.
5

The authors cite the clubs record to back up its choice as a prime example of a PPO
in football. Bayern has certainly dominated German club football for a considerable part of
the last four decades, but the authors justification in choosing Bayern from the world of
football leads to suspicious sleights of hand.
Firstly, there is the seamless association of the club with the German national team,
intended no doubt to enable it to bask in its past glories (as World Cup winners and final-
ists). But German national teams have always contained a mixture of players from various
clubs, and there has been no conveyer belt of managers/coaches moving from Bayern to
international level. Its also arguable how useful this clever but unjustifiable association is.
Germany has won one World Cup since 1974 (in 1990) and one European Championship
since 1980 (in 1996). The German national teams over the last decade or so have arguably
been the worst since the Second World War.
Secondly, there are the references to Germany being Europes most consistently
competitive soccer nation (pp187, 400). Really? Italian, Spanish and English fans may
strongly beg to differ.

3. Taming the Shrews: Hitzfeld Turns FC Hollywood into German Juggernaut, 24 May 1999
(www.cnnsi.com/soccer/ world/1999/champions_league/news/1999/05/24/hitzfeld-profile/).
4. See Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger, Bayern Bye, When Saturday Comes, no 196, June 2003.
5. See, in particular, the fascinating history of German football, Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenbergers book Tor!,
WSC Books, 2003.
75
If PPO can only be fairly judged on the basis of long-term success, then let us use that
yardstick to measure Bayerns record. For any European club team the ultimate measure
of success has to be Champions League (formerly the European Cup) triumphs. Since
these competitions began in 1955, Germany has produced six champions, Holland six,
England 10, Italy 10 and Spain 10. The most successful club sides have been Real Madrid
(nine wins), AC Milan (six), Liverpool (five), Ajax and Bayern (four each).
Bayerns triumphs have been in 1974, 1975, 1976 and 2000. So their greatest period of
success was during the 1970s. It is hard to take seriously a claim for long-term sustained
success based on a record of one win in 29 years.
This begs the question, why was Bayern chosen for the book? Were other, more suc-
cessful, club sides approached but declined to participate? Why not study Brazil, the na-
tion with the most World Cup successes? Or Real Madrid or AC Milan, the most success-
ful club sides in Europe over the past 50 years? Would scrutiny of the reasons for some of
these other teams successes have disproved or undermined the PPO theory? For example,
Real Madrid, with their past dubious political associations with the far right.
Are there any sporting organisations that fit most, if not all, PPO criteria, but have
had little or no success? Perhaps it isnt too difficult for any organisation to claim adher-
ence to PPO theory to a greater or lesser extent. For example, most clubs (successful or not)
retain the intense loyalty of fans and staff, and many find key roles for ex-players. Conti-
nuity in personnel and organisational arrangements is also hardly unusual.
What the authors appear to disregard is the whole context in which Bayern Munich
exists historical, geographical, economic. Munich is a major European city and the focal
point for a relatively prosperous region. It has been so since Germanys postwar economic
growth kicked in in the 1960s. Is it really any great surprise that Bayern Munich attract
large crowds and the involvement of major businesses (such as Adidas and Opel) and
hence the permanent large-scale revenue sources that sustain all top-level football teams?
Peak Performance, then, contains serious flaws. Those more knowledgeable about the
other sports covered in the book may be able to identify specific problems with those stud-
ies. Clear problems in the Bayern Munich section alone fatally undermines the projects
credibility. Despite its claims to be all-embracing, PPO theory seems to disregard other key
factors in the success of sporting organisations.
For most football clubs, periods of success (that is, winning important competitions)
are rarely sustained for more than a few seasons because they are dependent on a unique
combination of factors that is difficult to replicate; not least being the existence of an ex-
ceptionally astute manager/coach and a group of particularly skilful/talented players that
gel together. Club football throughout Europe is becoming increasingly dominated by a
handful of clubs, but the richest dont always win the biggest prizes. Chelsea may have
won the Premiership last season, but all their money couldnt get them past Liverpools
stubborn defence and into the Champions League final.
What Bayern Munich have achieved hasnt depended on how closely theyve ad-
hered to the criteria associated with PPO theory. It has owed much to being based in a big
city, with a consequently large fan base and therefore the ability to attract substantial
amounts of money/sponsorship. Everything follows on from that, that is, the ability to at-
tract good managers, coaches, players, backroom staff, etc. Not necessarily the best in Eu-
rope (hence their relative lack of Champions League success), but certainly head and
shoulders above their rivals within Germany.
Nowadays, no misty-eyed rhetoric about dreams, magic, family and community will
convince most English football fans that a club like Manchester United is little more than a
soulless money-making machine. The defining moment in that clubs journey from suc-
76
cessful but generally admired and respected football team to a PLC motivated by the end-
less search for new markets for its merchandise (human or otherwise) was its withdrawal
from the 1999-2000 FA Cup. That most romantic of English football traditions was casually
snubbed in favour of a fast buck in a meaningless South American mini-tournament. The
recent events at that club are unlikely to win it much sympathy. What goes around
In some countries, particular historical, social and cultural factors have led to the
clear ascendancy of certain sports, with all that this implies in terms of numbers of fans,
economic clout and attractiveness as a career choice. Its hardly surprising that this gener-
ates success, for example, the New Zealand All Blacks, and that it is often underpinned by
government support as a matter of national pride/political expediency.
For socialists, the increasing concentration of wealth amongst fewer and fewer foot-
ball clubs across Europe will hardly come as a surprise. It merely reflects the centralis-
ing/monopolising tendencies Marx identified as a key aspect of capitalist development.
Although this doesnt automatically guarantee success (sometimes smaller clubs such as
Porto win the Champions League), it does mean that key domestic and international club
competitions are now dominated by the same handful of teams in the major footballing
countries.
To suggest that by merely adopting certain organisational approaches, combined
with particular corporate ideas and attitudes, as a means of achieving success (that is, at
the expense of rival clubs/firms) reflects the ideological delusions of the authors and/or
their target audiences. The harsh realities and complexities of capitalist competition (both
in and outside sport) seem to have passed them by completely.
Back to the drawing board, boys.
Thanks to my son, Jim, for his helpful comments and suggestions.
Reviews
Norman Harding, Staying Red: Why I Remain a Socialist, Index, 2005
WHEN this reviewer first became involved in left-wing politics in the late 1970s, I and
others in my situation had the opportunity of choosing from amongst the array of groups
that were touting for business at demonstrations, on picket lines and Saturday street cor-
ners and in meeting halls. Going by our own observations and listening carefully to more
experienced comrades, we noted the characteristics of each and every left group, tried to
tease out the truth from the fanciful tales told about each one by adherents of rival outfits,
and endeavoured to find a group with which we could agree the most, or perhaps disa-
gree with the least.
One group which had absolutely no attraction for me was the Workers Revolution-
ary Party. Was it the rumours of Libyan gold (we neophytes quickly heard about that),
the thuggery dealt out not only to rivals but to dissident members (we heard about that
too), the utterly impenetrable philosophical ramblings, the hysterical tone of its constant
pronouncements demanding a general strike, the branding of rival Trotskyist leaders as
GPU and FBI agents, and the forecasting of an imminent slump and police state, or was it
the fact that I (amongst others) could not really take seriously any organisation that had
Vanessa Redgrave in its leadership?
Whatever the reason, I soon asked the WRPs local organiser not to stuff any more
77
copies of Newsline into my letter-box, and I had no more contact with the party, save shar-
ing with other cheeky leftists the occasional fun of impudently asking its members about
the class nature of Libya, and, with a well-timed heckle of one of its less shining members
at the big London Assembly beanfeast it organised, upset the solemn proceedings by pro-
voking guffaws of ill-mannered laughter from non-WRP participants.
As we all know, the WRP came to grief in 1985, when its leader Gerry Healy was ex-
posed as having sexually exploited female members of his party over the years (this was
one aspect of the Healy regime that no one whom I knew suspected). Repeating the trou-
bles besetting the official communist movement after Khrushchevs Secret Speech in
1956, many of Healys closest supporters suddenly realised what a monster they had been
harbouring for decades, whilst others, especially Vanessa and Corin Redgrave, continued
to support the old gangster, and since his death have dedicated themselves to upholding
his memory.
Since the WRPs implosion, its remnants have fragmented time and again until today
it is not certain to even the most inveterate Trot-watcher just how many bits remain in
some kind of working order. Norman Harding himself sided with the WRP that ran Work-
ers Press for some years, but that fragment now appears to be divided into three micro-
factions whose differences seem to revolve around the quest of finding a suitable suitor
with which to ally themselves.
This book can be divided into two parts: the first being a lively description of Har-
dings earlier political life as a working-class militant; the second being an account of his
time as a full-timer at the partys Clapham headquarters. The contrast is clear and very
disturbing. In the former part, Harding describes his activities working in the rag trade,
dealing with the bosses sneakiness in the factory and the Stalinists dodgy dealings in the
union, fighting against the right-wing Labourites on the local council and trades council,
and campaigning against rent increases, slum landlords and nuclear weapons. The group
certainly had influence within the local working class, and was taken seriously by many
workers. A particularly nice episode was when the group was heavily involved in a rent
dispute. A leading Labour right-winger on the council harangued the miners wives lob-
bying the council, saying how their campaign had been infiltrated by Trotskyists. One of
the women replied: Dont be daft, we hijacked him.
In sharp contrast to the genuine feeling of satisfaction when describing the above ac-
tivities, Hardings account in the groups centre in Clapham has a depressive feeling about
it. Full-time party life was one long hard grind, an unremitting routine of party activity
which precluded any kind of a family life, of cultural pursuits such as listening to music,
or of simple, normal relations with other comrades. Consumed by the obsession to pro-
duce a daily paper a pointless operation for a small organisation and manic cam-
paigns, the members in the centre slaved away at their machines or desks day and night,
month after month. This part of the book is strangely apolitical; it is as if Hardings never-
ending party work also precluded any political discussion or even thinking on his part.
Then there was the question of the groups leader, Gerry Healy. Hardings book is
useful as it gives non-WRPers a close look at this loathsome creature. Most if not all left-
wing leaders, whatever their class background, run their organisations in the same way as
a particularly narrow-minded, pedantic and obsessive confectioner treats his shop. Healy
was different; he went a lot further, and treated his organisation in the same way as a par-
ticularly vicious and vindictive feudal baron would handle his estate, only in this case ne-
glecting his responsibilities in exchange for his subjects obligations. As time went on,
Healy showed all the signs of going insane, and his members had to indulge him, writing
self-criticisms, running absurd errands, as Harding describes at length. Reading this book,
78
one gets the feeling of being immersed in a political lunatic asylum.
The atmosphere that Harding describes was poisonous. Members thought nothing of
writing tell-tale minutes to the leadership stating that so-and-so had expressed mild devia-
tions from and criticisms of the party line this happened to Harding, leading to an al-
mighty row. Did this happen in other groups? Somehow, I cant imagine it.
Vanessa Redgrave emerges very badly in Hardings account. Full of her own self-
importance, she swanned around the centre as if she owned the place, demanding atten-
tion like some precious royal dignitary. Hardings withering contempt for her runs
throughout his account.
Eventually, by the mid-1980s, things reached such a pass that various party members
started conspiring against Healy. Harding acknowledges Dave Bruces key role in this op-
eration, which went so far as the bugging of Healys office. Readers will be aware of how
the WRP bandwagon hit the buffers, with all the dirty business being exposed for all to
see. Healys sexual abuse of women members came as a particularly heavy blow to Har-
ding, as it was none other than he who would take young women across to Healys flat for
what he and they thought was to be a political discussion. One can imagine his feeling of
disgust and horror when the sorry details came into the open, and one can feel this in his
heartfelt apology.
One problem with this book is that even in the earlier part, there is very little discus-
sion of the partys politics. What of the catastrophism that oozed out of almost every page
of Healyite propaganda throughout the time Harding was a member? Its clear that in
their local work in Leeds, Harding and his comrades maintained a very heavy schedule, so
its possible that the shrill pronouncements of imminent slump and revolutionary upsurge
and the sectarian denunciations remained on the pages and werent a factor in their day-
to-day work. A hint is given when John Archer, a leading figure in the group, rose to
speak at a Leeds Trades Council meeting. Oh dear, said one of Hardings comrades,
and Archer promptly launched into a denunciation of Pabloism. Readers who knew Arch-
er can easily picture the scene.
A major gap is the absence of any discussion about the split in 1974, when Alan
Thornett and his comrades, by then about the only working-class cadres left in the partys
ranks, were booted out, leaving its influence in Actors Equity as its sole presence within
the unions. (Harding shows Healys distrust of his members when he writes how he, Hea-
ly, rejected any ideas about using that influence to develop a modern equivalent of the
1930s political theatre.) An interesting fact, one on which Harding does not comment, is
that this very damaging split occurred shortly after the Socialist Labour League (as the
group was called from 1960), in grand proclamatory style, in 1973 transformed itself into
the WRP and only when its influence within the labour movement was waning. Alt-
hough he describes the madness of running a daily paper, Harding does not question the
need to publish one, the production, distribution and selling of which took up a vast
amount of the memberships time and energy, when a substantial weekly would have
been less of a burden and would surely have produced better political (and financial) re-
turns.
How was it that Harding, who one can see from this account stood up bravely
against the police, the fascists, the Labour right, the Stalinists and all other adversaries,
and other class-conscious militants along with him were in fear of the unprepossessing
small-time thug Healy, ready and willing to do his business? He says that he rationalised
away all the problematic factors. I guess we all have done this in our times as group mem-
bers and supporters, but surely things with the Healyite group had gone beyond what
could rationally be rationalised long before the group collapsed in on itself in 1985.
79
Harding remains a socialist, and he admits that he doesnt really know what sort of
organisation is needed to rejuvenate the cause. Such honesty is refreshing, and his be-
musement should not be belittled, although one can imagine sundry (to use the old Stalin-
ist term) steel-hard cadres doing just that. The history of the Healyite tradition is some-
thing that all socialists must take into consideration. Now whilst no other left-wing group
in Britain (and possibly elsewhere) has degenerated into such a vile swamp of personality
cult, personal abuse and general gangsterism, so many have developed some form or an-
other of guru-worship, considered dissent as disloyalty, and been unable to deal with tac-
tical or theoretical differences without expelling people. There have always been more
splits than fusions.
The WRP was a spectacular disaster, yet its rivals havent done too well. The Interna-
tional Socialists, in similar grandiose manner, declared itself the Socialist Workers Party a
few years after the SLL became the WRP, but, unlike the latter, after it had lost its industri-
al base in a faction fight. And the party seems to have lost its way after the death of its
leader Tony Cliff. The self-denying Militant tendency, possibly the biggest Trotskyist
group in Britain at its peak, came out proudly as the Socialist Party only after its office
boys had booted out its main man Ted Grant and lost most of its membership. The small
fry havent fared too well either. The group that I supported for many years, the Revolu-
tionary Communist Party, the last organisation on the British left to experience any real
growth, collapsed nearly a decade ago into a tiny, weird right-wing libertarian clique.
Norman Harding has provided us with a fascinating account of one working-class
militants experience within the Trotskyist movement. There are places where I wish he
had written more, and I wish that he had provided more political analysis of the Healyite
tradition. Nonetheless, its well worth reading. Lets hope that more comrades will put
their reminiscences in print.
Paul Flewers
Cyril Smith, Karl Marx and the Future of the Human, Lexington Books, 2005
Over the past 80 years or so, the notion of a revolution which would transform
social and economic relations was largely absorbed into the idea that a bureau-
cratic state would take the place of privately-owned industry. The Russian Rev-
olution was supposed to provide the model of how such a change would come
about. Marxs understanding of revolution was totally obscured by the iron-
clad dogmas of Marxism. (p143)
CYRIL Smith is actually one of those rare individuals in search of whom Diogenes was ob-
served going round carrying a lighted lantern in broad daylight an honest man. He is
an honest man insofar as he was, like many of us, an adherent of Marxism, before realis-
ing that this version of the masters thought was defective and corrupt: having realised
this, Cyril has since been busy trying to establish the real content of Marxs message. We
are greatly indebted to him in consequence.
This volume is a companion piece to the earlier Marx at the Millennium (Pluto Press,
1996). Cyril Smith begins with a short discussion of historical materialism and how it dif-
fers from the thought of Karl Marx; this is followed by an analysis of the Communist Mani-
festo. As Cyril underlines, Marx was calling for the alteration of humans on a mass scale
(p25), which necessarily requires a conception of what it means to be human. In order to
realise this conception it is necessary to take certain measures and set in train a number of
processes: these latter include the withering-away of the state. As Cyril writes:
80
In fact, Marx came to envisage the rule of the proletariat as operating through
local communes, not through a centralised state power. This conception, rein-
forced by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, was essential to his no-
tion of communism as the self-movement of the proletariat. (p35)
This was to lead to a truly human world in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all.
This approach entails a critique of all hitherto-existing political philosophy. Cyril
takes us on a guided tour of political philosophys European core. (It must be emphasised
that the bulk of non-European political thought presents, as far as one can tell, a similar
picture: the only significant point that needs making here concerns the exceptional passage
in Lao Tzu, where the best leaders are praised for bringing their ends to fruition in such a
way that the people say: We did it ourselves. Tony Benn deserves credit for spotting this
remark.) Accordingly we begin with Athenian democracy, Plato and Aristotle, and then
move on through the Stoics, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu,
Rousseau, Kant and Adam Smith. The purpose of this rapid resume is to introduce Hegels
summary of his predecessors and the distillation of his own theory in The Philosophy of
Right, which Marx criticised in his youth.
Cyril quite correctly underlines the position that Marx takes up in his Critique of
Hegels Philosophy of Right in favour of democracy. This was a text unknown to the inven-
tors of Marxism: it was unearthed by David Ryazanov in 1927. It is nonetheless an abso-
lutely crucial work for Marxs political philosophy as a whole. Hence Cyril is right to con-
centrate on the attitude of past political philosophers to this form of government. By and
large, his assessment of the thinkers that he lists is accurate, although one minor qualifica-
tion is perhaps in order. This concerns the European Middle Ages, during which there was
an undercurrent of democratic agitation centred on the mediaeval cities, which found a
certain echo in the political thought of the period. This can be seen to some extent in
Thomas Aquinas and, much more openly, in Marsilio of Padua, both of whom can be con-
strued as supporters of representative democracy under certain circumstances.
However, Cyril very rightly points to Spinoza as the first Western thinker of compar-
atively modern times to come out in support of democracy. It is interesting that two of the
greatest non-Jewish Jews in history have a similar attitude here. Cyril mentions the ex-
tensive copying that Marx made from Spinozas Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (p135).
Marxs conception of democracy as the political form of the truly human is central to his
criticism of Hegels Philosophy of Right. However, Cyril also points out correctly that
Marxs idea of true democracy is much closer to Athenian participatory democracy than
to modern bourgeois representative democracy (see page 140). Cyril writes:
In this book, we have been trying to uncover the ideas of Marx For him, the
social revolution had to be the work of the immense majority. The idea that the
masses were to be used as muscle to overthrow the old order, then handing
over power to their leaders, was quite alien to him. The new world had to be
founded on a transformation of humanity itself, by itself, its universal emanci-
pation. That is why we have concentrated on Marxs critique of the tradition of
systematic notions which explained why the world was like it is. Without deal-
ing fundamentally with all such ideas a free association of humans is not possi-
ble. (p143)
This means, of course, the tradition of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, but also a
counter-tradition that runs deep in European thought, that of mysticism. Cyril takes us
81
through the chief representatives of this outlook in Part III of the book. Adherents of
Marxism will no doubt be especially scandalised by Cyril Smiths treatment of this topic,
and will regard his enthusiasm for the likes of Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme as evi-
dence that he has finally flipped, but it is Cyril who comes out on top here. He cites Marxs
description of the labour process in general (Chapter 7, Section 1 of Capital) as a combina-
tion of the elements of Aristotles poesis with the Hermetic understanding of imagination
as an active power (p206). This relates in turn to the First Thesis on Feuerbach, where, you
will recall, Marx asserts that:
The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism that of Feuerbach includ-
edis that the object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived
only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but
not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it
happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by
idealism (cited, p200)
Indeed Cyrils comments on the Feuerbach Theses as a whole are some of the best parts of
what is, overall, a marvellous book.
The work ends with the little essay on Karl Marx and William Blake which we pub-
lished separately (see New Interventions, Volume 11, no 3). Here Cyril rightly underlines
the importance of the imagination as a common human faculty, one not to be thought of as
the exclusive possession of artists (or of lites, for that matter): it is a faculty we all need to
cultivate.
Chris Gray
Alan Woodward, Political Economy of Workers Socialism: A First Approxima-
tion, Workers Socialism, 2005
ALAN Woodward is a remarkable man. He is virtually the sole survivor (politically speak-
ing, that is) of the original International Socialism group as it was in the early 1960s. In
those years the group was critical of Lenins legacy it published a translation of Trot-
skys early article on substitutionism which attacked the organisational approach of What
Is To Be Done? and was close to the libertarian socialist grouping known as Solidarity.
Peter Sedgwick, who translated Victor Serges Memoirs of a Revolutionary, was a
member of IS in those days, and Alan stands in the same tradition. Since that time, Alan
has read deeply and widely in the history of the international workers movement, pro-
ducing a number of important studies, such as Party Over Class: How Leninism has Subvert-
ed Workers Council Organisation, Workers Socialism: A Short Guide and an article entitled
Marx, Bakunin or What? published in What Next?, no 28, 2004. What he has to say needs
to be addressed, even by those who do not agree with his viewpoint.
I must confess, however, that, in comparison with some of his earlier writings, I find
this particular work a bit of a disappointment, since the pamphlets title seems something
of a misnomer. Whilst it does contain a distinctive approach to the problems of the politi-
cal economy of workers socialism (however one wishes to define that), there is very little
in the pamphlet of what one might expect by way socialist political economy as discussed
elsewhere in recent years: the pamphlet, indeed, is more of a commentary on various as-
pects of workers struggles since 1905, and contains analyses of anarchism, Marxism and
council communism.
Let me clarify the grounds of my criticism. For some decades now, a supposed alter-
native to the Stalinist command economy has been canvassed under the title market so-
82
cialism. Alan nowhere discusses it: indeed, the words plan and market seem strangely
absent from the pamphlet. Nor is there any mention of recent books on the subject, which
is a pity, because Alan might have some trenchant criticisms of them. I am thinking, for
example, of Pat Devine, Democracy and Economic Planning (Polity Press, 1988), which, in
stark contrast to the project-mongers in the Labour Party, takes the stakeholder concept
seriously and attempts to work out a version of democratic planning described as negoti-
ated coordination. There is Brian Greens Planning the Future (Socialist Platform, 1999).
There is the four-way discussion between Hillel Ticktin, Bertell Ollman, David
Schweickart and James Lawler entitled Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists
(Routledge, 1998). There is the section of Hillel Ticktins book The Origins of the Crisis in the
USSR (ME Sharpe, 1992, pp175-81). There is David Schweickarts Against Capitalism (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993), which, besides containing some useful remarks on the po-
litical theories of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, puts forward his own version of eco-
nomic democracy, which overlaps to some extent with Alan Woodwards approach, in
that it involves each enterprise being democratically managed by its own workers. This, in
turn, is only part of the literature on the subject, which we need to discuss.
In practice, Alan seems content to ignore the contributions mentioned above because
his model appears to be the Spanish revolution of 1936. This was an extremely deep and
thorough-going revolution, possibly more so even than the earlier Russian revolution, so
the choice is not a bad one. The Stalinists suppressed the Spanish revolution for reasons of
their own, which we cannot go into here. Alans pamphlet contains a short account of the
operation of the Barcelona tramways by the CNT (pp31-33), which confirms what some of
us have known for years, namely that workers, where they understand the needs of their
industry, are quite capable of running it. He also has some observations on the Spanish
agricultural collectives (pp37-39) and on health services (pp39-40). These derive from two
extant books, viz Gaston Leval (Pierre Robert Piller), Collectives in the Spanish Revolution
(Freedom Press, 1975) translated by Vernon Richards from the original French edition of
1971, and Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939: Work-
ers Self-Management (Black Rose, 1990). Of this latter work, Alan writes that its detailed
description of collectivism in practice answers all the questions from doubters about how
workers socialism would work (p61).
As the stage Japanese are supposed to say: Ah so! Tell us more. In particular it
would be useful to know how relations between different self-managed enterprises were
handled. There is also a brief tantalising reference to Venezuela on page 63 which prompts
the same response. But at least Alan has seen fit to reproduce Reg Wrights beautiful de-
scription of the Gang System in Coventry, dating from 1961, an excellent example of
what Jrgen Habermas calls the life-world in creative practice. The pamphlet is worth
reading for this piece alone.
There is much else of value, not least the extensive and partly annotated bibliog-
raphy. I did, however, miss one or two items there. On Spain, Burnett Bollotens The Grand
Camouflage: The Spanish Civil War and Revolution 1936-39 (Pall Mall Press, 1968) documents
the activities of the Stalinists mentioned above. Similarly, on Russia, Sam Farbers ency-
clopdic Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy (Polity Press/Basil Black-
well, 1990) also merits inclusion. (There is a Leninist rejoinder in John Rees, In Defence of
October (Bookmarks, 1997), which also includes contributions by Farber and Robin Black-
burn, but in my opinion Rees does not win the argument.)
All in all, readers of this journal will profit by a perusal of Alans pamphlet. But on
the central question posed by its title, my response is similar to that of Igor Stravinsky in
relation to John Cages celebrated piano work which requires the pianist to remain seated
83
at the instrument for a period without playing a single note, after which the pianist exits
the stage: Stravinsky is reported to have said: I should like to hear more from this com-
poser.
Workers Socialism can be contacted at 87 Grove Park Road, London N15 4SL, e-mail
alan@petew.org.uk.
Chris Gray
Lorin Maazel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Libretto by JD McClatchy and Thomas
Meehan, Director: Robert LePage
LORIN Maazels reworking of Orwells novel, staged at the Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, on 14 May 2005, has been almost universally condemned by the critics, but I did
try to keep an open mind; there were many things I liked about it! Not least the fact that it
started with the sound of Big Ben striking 13 youll probably recall that the novel starts
with the clocks striking 13.
The opera starts with the Two Minutes Hate, and, unfortunately well-written as the
music is (including the National Anthem of Oceania, which seems to parody every clich
of every national anthem that has ever been written surely deliberately!), Maazel seems
to think that the Two Minutes Hate is directed at the current enemy, Eurasia (though it
will become and will always have been Eastasia in the course of the narrative), whereas
in the novel it is directed at the figure of Goldstein, enemy of the party, enemy of Big
Brother, corrupter of youth, etc, etc.
This indicates right at the outset one of the main problems with Maazels version of
Nineteen Eighty-Four that the more general political thrust of the novel is weakened in
favour of the love-story of Winston and Julia. Before pursuing this theme, I will draw at-
tention to the episodes that I thought were very well done
One of Smiths colleagues, Syme, sings a lyric in praise of Newspeak: The only lan-
guage whose vocabulary gets smaller every year! The text of the lyric is quoted in the
programme, and the first line is The beauty of Newspeak. The irony is, of course, that
once Newspeak has been fully launched, there will not be a concept of beauty. This is sung
by Laurence Brownlee in an audaciously high tenor verging on the falsetto, to, of all
things, a jaunty dance tune! Much of the score relies on parody and pastiche, and as these
were the parts that stood out and grabbed the attention, I imagine that this is deliberate on
Maazels part. There are also some beautiful passages for solo violin Maazel is a violin-
ist. Sometimes the music is a bit well, obvious I suppose when Winston and Julia
are caught, you just know there are going to be crashing chords in the orchestra, and sure
enough and there is no shortage of ominous drumbeats at crucial moments.
The other scene that I thought was very well done was the scene after the arrest,
when Winston is separated from Julia and waiting for his fate. Some ordinary that is,
non-political prisoners are brought in, including a drunken prostitute (Diana Damrau).
She makes crude advances to Winston, and then while two of Winstons colleagues are
brought in (including Syme, who hasnt quite managed to make Newspeak stick after all)
the high womans voice (uttering crude banalities) accompanies the mens voices like a
sort of threnody.
I had been wondering how Maazel was going to deal with the central political theme
of the novel you will recall that when OBrien has Winston completely at his mercy, he
reveals the reason why the Party is in power and why it will stay in power:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the
84
good of others; we are interested solely in power We know that no one ever
seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an
end There will be no art, no literature, no science If you want a picture of
the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Now that is the central thesis of Orwells novel. I thought perhaps it could be done as a
sort of Handelian aria, or perhaps like Iagos Credo in Otello, but in the event Maazel
deals with it by leaving it out!! And that was really the greatest disappointment for me.
Ive mentioned Lawrence Brownlees striking performance as Syme; Simon Keenly-
side is appropriately tormented (psychologically, I mean) as Winston Smith, convincingly
conveying the yearning for (or possibly memory of) a better world than the one he lives in,
and he is well-matched by Nancy Gustafsons Julia. And I was impressed by Richard
Margisons OBrien. All in all then it was interesting, but in the final analysis it has to be
said that Maazel has rather missed the point.
Jane Susanna Ennis
Paul Flewers (ed), George Orwell: Enigmatic Socialist, Socialist Platform, 2005
JUST what the world needs, writes Paul Flewers in his introduction. Yet another book on
George Orwell. The book itself is the answer to this. That it has been attacked in a review
by Andy Brooks, General Secretary of the antediluvian Stalinist New Communist Party
(New Worker, 16 September 2005) should arouse the interest of readers. If the NCP attacks
it, there is a fair chance it is worth reading.
Many of the essays in the book have been taken from International Socialism, the theo-
retical journal of the Socialist Workers Party. Paul writes: this organisation [the SWP]
has taken Orwell seriously and has dealt with his works and historical legacy with a skill
and sensitivity that has often been absent amongst other sections of the left. This may be
so, but an interest in Orwell, who was nothing if not an anti-totalitarian, has not cured the
SWP of an opportunistic fascination with authoritarians such as George Galloway MP and
the Muslim Association of Britain. Nor has it made the SWPs internal regime any more
democratic. The political scene is littered with bitter people and organisations who have
been expelled from the SWP. One also wonders why Ian Birchalls essay, which in part
was a critical reply to an earlier contribution to a contribution from John Molyneux, was
not published in International Socialism.
While not a Trotskyist or even a Marxist, Orwell was without doubt a socialist. Even
before his death in 1950, he suffered the unenviable fate of having his political views mis-
represented by those he would have seen as his political opponents. For their own reasons,
both Stalinists and anti-Soviet supporters of the West have depicted his postwar novels
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as Cold War propaganda and even anti-socialist
tracts. On the left, anti-Stalinists such as Trotskys biographer Isaac Deutscher denounced
Orwells work as a sort of ideological super-weapon in the Cold War, while Frank Ridley,
a leading figure in the Independent Labour Party of which Orwell was once a member, at-
tacked him as typifying the left propaganda of Wall Street.
Writing in 1969 in the wake of the revolutionary events of 1968, Peter Sedgwick
states: We should enter the study of Orwells politics both because they are our politics
too, and because they are not. (International Socialism, June 1969) It is important that one
understands Orwells roots in the ranks of those who administered the British Raj. He suf-
fered the horrors of prep school and Eton. For his family, common people were almost
subhuman. Having resigned from the colonial police in Burma, as if to compensate for his
origins, Orwell joined the ranks of the down and outs sampling the delights of the work-
85
house casual ward.
Eventually, Orwell joined the ILP in 1938. It would be near impossible to write a his-
tory of the ILP from the time it disaffiliated from the Labour Party to the time what re-
mained of it went back in some 40 years later. Ever after the defeat of the pro-Comintern
elements around Jack Gaster in the Revolutionary Policy Committee, the ILP faced the
problem of trying to create a socialist politics which were neither Stalinist or social demo-
cratic. This was Orwells dilemma. Orwells biographer Bernard Crick described the ILPs
ideas as a strange English mixture of secularised evangelism and non-communist Marx-
ism. Orwell wrote in its weekly the New Leader that while he hoped for a Labour victory at
the next general election he was all too aware of its tendency to fling every principle over-
board. Little has changed, and a viable socialist alternative to Labour remains to be built.
Before he had joined the ILP, although damned as a fool by the American writer
Henry Miller and refused help by Communist Party General Secretary Harry Pollitt, who
had taken a dislike to Orwells The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell had gone to Spain where a
fascist coup had been answered by revolution. Although at first he took the communist
view that revolution would have to be postponed until after the defeat of fascism, Orwell
joined the militia of the Partido Obrero de Unificacin Marxist. Although condemned by
the Stalinists as Trotskyist, the POUM had broken with Trotsky over whether to pressurise
the anarcho-syndicalists into completing the revolution, or whether to set up an independ-
ent vanguard.
Out of Orwells Spanish experience, during which he was seriously wounded and
saw the fratricidal fighting in Barcelona in May 1937, came for me what is his best book,
Homage to Catalonia. I first read it over 40 years ago as a teenage YCLer. Overcoming his
middle-class cynicism, Orwell enthuses for what is a genuine workers revolution and
those who were making it. I was amused to discover that when the book was published in
America in 1952 reviewers just could not understand why Orwell supported the POUM.
The best essay in this collection of interesting essays is John Newsingers Orwell and the
Spanish Revolution.
Newsinger reveals that the New Statesman, then in the grip of the Popular Front, re-
fused to publish Orwells articles on Spain, and the communists tried to destroy his pub-
lisher Frederick Warburg, who also published books by CLR James and FA Ridley. Thirty-
five years after Orwells death, the communists were still attacking him. In a collection of
essays published in 1984, Bill Alexander, an International Brigader, and the historian Rob-
ert Stradling launched a ferocious attack on Homage to Catalonia. Stradling claims that Or-
well knew too little Spanish to understand properly the political situation in Spain.
The NCP continues this campaign of libel. Mr Brooks, while claiming that had it not
been for Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell would be a forgotten 1930s writer,
suggests that those who have to study Orwell at school should see the book under review
as an excellent source to pillage and plunder. He even suggests that students pass off the
books observations as their own. Considering the number of readers of International So-
cialism involved in education, this would be unwise as well as dishonest.
One final minor quibble. Because of his view of Orwell, Paul Flewers is critical of FA
Ridley. An objective view of Ridleys work as a socialist and secularist can be found in RW
Morrells short biography The Gentle Revolutionary (Freethought History Research Group,
2003).
This book has a far more important role than as an aid to passing exams. Not only
does it correct many of the myths about Orwell, it also raises the question of what social-
ism is, and how it should lead to freedom, not to new and worse tyrannies.
Terry Liddle
86
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Ja-
pan, Harvard University Press, 2005
WE have just passed the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A total of 110 000 civilians were killed instant-
ly in the two blasts, and by the end of 1945 a further 140 000 people had perished. Japanese
have continued to die from radiation poisoning ever since. Of the 75 000 buildings in Hi-
roshima, 70 000 were destroyed by the explosion and by the fires started. Black rain fell,
coating both the living and the dead with radiation.
The official interpretation of these events is that they were necessary (a word much
used this year) because they ended the war in the Pacific. The Japanese leaders would not
have surrendered without such a shock, and the USA had to use the weapon (being the
only power that possessed it) to avoid more casualties pursuing victory island by island.
There is also the implication that the Bomb was a punishment for Pearl Harbour and pris-
on camp cruelties. Another dissident response, which followed the war, characterised the
obliteration of Hiroshima as the start of a new more frightening era, frozen in cold war,
determined by the capacity of the world to destroy itself faster than at any time in history.
The Atomic Bomb has thus been seen as both a necessary act of war and a sad indictment
of human inventiveness in the modern era.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, however, has a more concrete story to tell. In exhaustive detail,
this book gives us the matted circumstances around why the bombs were dropped. Was it
the Bomb that ended the war?
Hasegawa is a Professor of History and the Director of the Centre for Cold War Stud-
ies at California University, Santa Barbara, and in Racing the Enemy he spares no one not
Washington, Moscow nor Emperor.
A review cannot do more than give some idea of this works detail and power. We
are given an almost day-by-day account of the circumstances and decisions leading to the
use of the Bomb. It examines the after-story, and in two final chapters goes through a
number of counterfactuals, alternatives to the actual series of events. It concludes with a
discussion of the perspectives of each of the main parties that were maintained after the
war. Hasegawa begins the analysis with Yalta in 1944, the conference between Allied lead-
ers over how the postwar spoils would be divided. It was here famously that Churchill
outlined two spheres of influence in Europe (a division later denounced as an Iron Cur-
tain by Churchill himself): the Soviet Union would keep order in territories such as the
Baltic states, while Britain would superintend Greece and Yugoslavia. It was at Yalta too
that Stalin offered the Allies a pledge to help out in the war with Japan. In response, Presi-
dent Roosevelt promised his ally rights and privileges in Manchuria and the Kuril Islands
(lost by the Tsar in the war with Japan of 1904-05). The Japanese, however, showed no
signs of accepting the Allies demand for unconditional surrender; the sticking point being
the continued reign of the Emperor after the war. Even heavy conventional bombing of
their cities, including Tokyo, had not persuaded them.
When Stalin met the new American president Truman in 1945, the Russian assumed
that the USSRs help would still be required. A Russian deployment into Japanese-
occupied Manchuria was set for 15 August. However, the Americans now had the Bomb,
and Truman and his advisers went through a series of moves which would lead to its use
to compel Tokyos surrender and exclude Moscow from the Allied victory in the Pacific.
Secrecy was paramount: one lapse about the date (and Stalin certainly knew about the
Bomb as such) and the Russians might engage prematurely. Stalin certainly wanted in on
the Pacific, but not so as to provoke reprisals (things were already tense over the division
87
of Europe). On the other hand, Churchill proposed a quick way of ending the war: an offer
to the Japanese of a constitutional monarchy following surrender. Truman refused. Stalin
wouldnt have allowed such an offer to be made anyway, and it might not be too popular
in the USA either, after years of propaganda comparing Hirohito to Hitler. The fear now
was of an un-American ideology spreading to Asia after Stalin had occupied Manchuria.
Over China, the US was committed to the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek, while se-
riously underestimating the strength of the indigenous Chinese Communists (see Barbara
Tuchman, Practicing History).
On 26 July 1945, an Allied proclamation was prepared, reiterating the unconditional
surrender demand. To the Russians this was simply a preamble to their action on 15 Au-
gust. Tokyo had in fact already approached Moscow (carried out by the infamous General
Togo) to see whether the Russians could mediate a peace deal. Unconditional surrender,
however, was still unacceptable especially to Hirohito and those to whom the status of the
Imperial House was sacred.
On 6 August, the Bomb, nicknamed Little Man, was dropped on Hiroshima. The
Tokyo high command became aware that the USA had used a new weapon of unprece-
dented destructiveness and that more cities might be totally destroyed. However, far from
entertaining acceptance of the going surrender terms, the cabinet was in an outright com-
bative mood against the enemy. On 9 August, Nagasaki was obliterated. Washington now
considered doing the same to three or maybe five more cities, though the historic city of
Kyoto was to be excluded. The previous day, however, the Soviet Union had declared war
on Japan and the Soviet army had entered Manchuria, 10 hours before the Nagasaki bomb.
Now that the Russians were no longer a possible mediator, they became the greater threat.
Fearful of further Soviet advance, the Japanese accepted the American terms and surren-
dered.
Hasegawa makes a good case that it was the Russian entry that ended the war. In the
event, the Russians did go on to get the Kuril Islands, though they hardly gained an Asian
empire, and the postwar Japanese did get to live under a constitutional monarchy, though
for a time subject to American rule. Stalin had recognised the Nationalist Chinese immedi-
ately Manchuria was invaded, but it was the Chinese Communist Party that came to rule
China. Maos forces were stronger; the USA ignored intelligence reports to that effect be-
cause Washington was committed to Chiang Kai-shek. All this points to an urgent lesson,
if a superpower or anyone else has enough intelligence (or Intelligence) to observe it. That
is, know your opponent, whether that means the strength of the forces on the ground or
the priorities of an adversary.
These were the factors, the struggles of the times, that were decisive. Nuclear weap-
ons themselves were the result of advanced productive forces (and the commitment of
scientists to the defeat of fascism). Their development did initiate a riskier world; it was
called the Balance of Terror. But in 1945, Truman must have thought that with this new
power, Washington could decide events. In the event, this was an illusion. It was the strug-
gles over the production relations, over the kind of society that would emerge postwar,
that made history.
Mike Belbin
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Why America is
Different, Allen Lane, 2004
DESPITE being published last year, just before the US election, The Right Nation remains
an excellent introduction to that coalition of campaigners and politicians called the Ameri-
can Right, from conservatives to neo-conservatives.
88
Humorous at times (intellectuals wearing dollar sign brooches, politicians announc-
ing that they intend to get up a posse and ride), this book fills in the gaps that may be
missing in our knowledge of the US conservative movement.
Before the 1960s, the authors argue, the American Right were marginalised as an ec-
centric minority peculiar to certain parts of the country. Complacent Rooseveltian liberal-
ism held sway. Then came the Civil Rights Movement, and whites had to choose: the
Democrats split and the Republicans went south.
Initially, those supporting segregation and those chasing tax cuts found a candidate
in extreme Republican Barry Goldwater, but extreme was still bad news in the early
1960s, and Lyndon Johnsons suggestion that his opponent would be too quick to use the
Bomb scared voters off. After this, the low-tax-chasing rich started to fund small think
tanks. These would make a good job, as the 1970s wore on, of issuing conservative broad-
sides against the permissive and revenue-raising Liberal Establishment. Meanwhile, in-
tellectual New Yorkers like magazine editors Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol (once
co-editor of Encounter) proposed a more conservative line on everything as they took a
more aggressive stance on supporting Israel. Fundamentalist Christians also saw in a
strong Israel the right spot for the Armageddon of the Second Coming which theologi-
cally would have to entail the conversion of the Jews, but that was a small detail that was
not dwelt upon. Concurrently, Protestants allied with Catholics to proclaim against secu-
larism and sexual liberation. These disparate forces thought they had found a leader in
1968 with Richard Nixon. But he let them down by continuing to put up taxes. Their can-
didate, of course, came in the shape of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Then Bush the Elder
followed, promising a kindlier, gentler politics and no new taxes. Conservatives
thought that theyd got too much of one, as Bush failed to go far enough with his Iraq War,
but not enough (or too much) of the other. No, the Son also rises. The Bush W may be ig-
norant, but hes smart and a very much a Texan (grown in the most conservative state of
the Union). He might have been incompetent at running a baseball team, but appealing
enough to attract rich backers. And as a Bush, he was well known across the Union and
had friends in high places. If nothing else, people knew he was a conservative.
When pressed to come up with a common theme amongst the different groups in the
coalition, a leading light called it the leave us alone movement. One danger for the gov-
ernmental wing is precisely their not leaving others alone, their interventionism. After
9/11, Bush asked his people for solutions, and it was the neo-con one he chose. Not merely
defensive nationalism and international cooperation (as Colin Powell favoured) or defen-
sive nationalist power politics (c/o Condoleezza Rice), but the neo-conservative policy of
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle: pre-emptive war and nation building. If the Right are
in tune with American tradition, they can also be said to be out step with it too, not only
making costly war abroad, but also risking big government type behaviour over issues in
education and medicine. Not that this will offend the authoritarians, but it may mean crit-
ics can call on traditional themes like non-interference and freedom of choice.
The Right have come far through developing arguments (zero-tolerance, depend-
ency culture) and fostering alliances. The conservative movement is large, well organised
and philosophically confident seeing themselves as pitted against an Establishment of
big-spending bureaucrats and tenured pinkos. Conservatism seems the exciting as well as
the proper answer: leave us alone being a not unjustifiable response to the ever-
upgrading pace of capitalist modernity. If there is a lack in the book, its a lack of interest
in discussing the wider social reasons for the Rights popularity, beyond reiterating that
the USA is pretty conservative anyway. The more recent basis for the upsurge of conserva-
tism has been named elsewhere as due to the failure of the Democrat Left to connect with
89
working-class voters. The authors of The Right Nation (both Economist staffers by the way)
do state: Liberalism as a governing philosophy is dead. The success of American liberalism
was based on its ability to solve problems. (p356) Just so, but big government no longer
even claims to solve problems such as unemployment, economic crisis, urban blight
doesnt want to, doesnt try to. Is there any chance then of an alternative?
The authors put their hope in the Constitution: the USA affords room for diversity.
This may mean gay marriage in California, but not in Utah. Leave our state alone is not
only an advantageous cry in conservative states. The question is, however: where will the
Centre end up?
The Right started with local interests (albeit of southern racists) and common peeves
(if only with tax). It added intellectual clout and attacked complacency. It campaigned for
hegemony. The strength of the Right coalition is that theyre united by asserting a com-
mon interest in opposing their adversary (the taxing-irreligious-handout-untraditional-
liberal culture). There are possible contradictions involved between corporate profit and
holiness, between leave us alone and interventionism, between liberty and a state church
yet for the time being, Right groups have a common interest and an alternative (reac-
tionary) vision. Can the Left (however broadly or narrowly defined) summon such a will;
make a coalition of forces, based on minority rights and common disgruntlement, and
unite around an alternative model of liberty? Will they do more with local struggles than
mobilise to get Hillary Clinton elected? Can they (or we for that matter) envision a time
when self-flourishing and common need are not seen as at odds? Do the anti-cons repre-
sent an alternative society, an alternative democracy?
Mike Belbin
Letters
Bendy Buses
Dear Comrades
I admit to being slightly taken aback that New Interventions should allocate to John Plant
four pages of the Spring 2005 edition for a piece about bendy buses. I know that some-
times it is necessary to pad out a magazine, but this is just ridiculous. One page would
have sufficed.
There are some valid criticisms to be made about the bendy bus. They do have diffi-
culty turning around some corners, they tend to be very hot even with the windows open.
However, the fact is they form only a tiny proportion of the London bus fleet and bus
routes. In other words, anyone using the buses in London will find that the vast majority
of buses are double-deckers and conventional single-deckers. However, I doubt if John
appreciates that as he rarely forgoes the use of his car.
John makes no mention of the big increase of London bus passengers. Surely this in-
crease does not come out of thin air. It arises from the GLA, TFL and of course the
Mayor making a conscious decision to improve bus services throughout London and en-
suring that this decision is implemented. And of course money from the government has
helped. In the whole of the UK, its only in London that there has been a consistent rise in
usage. But Im pleased to say that bus usage in Brighton, Cambridge and York is now ris-
ing.
90
John cites the case of a friend being inconvenienced of where to stand waiting for a
bus. Well John, in the real world nothing is perfect. But I trust your friend coped. John be-
moans the fact that passengers can no longer pay their fares to the drivers of buses in Cen-
tral London. But most people would think that its a good thing that drivers dont have the
pressure of collecting the fares added to the stress of driving. And it makes them less like-
ly to be attacked. Of course John will say bring back conductors. But the lack of cash pay-
ers in central London plus the ever-increasing usage of the Oyster card throughout Lon-
don means that they will never come back. But if you said more revenue inspectors are
needed, I would agree with you.
On the question of the Routemaster, Im glad to see the back of them. They were use-
less for the disabled or for people with buggies. From my own almost daily travelling on
the newer London buses, I can tell that there is a much greater use of them by such users.
But John gives away his true feelings in his defence of those residents of Westminster
and Kensington and Chelsea who are against the congestion charge being extended to
their area. John who lives in East London is being rather generous to the moneyed people
of Central London. Thats not the John who once graced the pages of Socialist Press. Ah but
maybe Johns dream of bendy buses being used as spontaneous barricades to block roads
may indeed come true. Perhaps thats what the bourgeoisie of Westminster and Kensing-
ton and Chelsea will resort to in protest at the extension of congestion charging. And John
will be there cheering them on.
Fraternally
Barry Buitekant
Postwar Party Politics
Dear Comrades
Alan Spence (Condition Critical, New Interventions, Volume 11, no 3) starts with the old
Tory myth that Labour in 1945 did not have an absolute majority over some imaginary To-
ry-Liberal coalition.
His figures, to start with, omit the fact that Common Wealth and the Communist Par-
ty got a quarter of million votes each, the ILP and various Labour Independents a further
eighth of a million each, and there were about 70 000 more votes cast for a raft of smaller
socialist groups (Aldred, De Leonists, SPGB, the International Communist who stood in
Woodford Green, Trots and Bukharinists).
He also omits to mention that at least a third of the votes cast for Liberals were cast
for former members of the Popular Front (some of whom under the leadership of Hon-
our Balfour had opposed the wartime Coalition from the left when Labour had sup-
ported it), most of whom had fought the election demanding a Labour-led Coalition gov-
ernment.
He then repeats the accepted claim that the 1951 election was just a matter of Liberals
voting Tory. This totally ignores the evidence of the gallop polls. No doubt as the Tories
subsequently were able to manipulate a four-year boom-bust cycle to their advantage, it is
very convenient to assume that Attlee had so done, and explain away the evidence; but the
assumption doesnt stand up to close examination of the facts.
If he looks at the polls he will see that before both the 1950 and 1951 elections, until
about six months before the election there was a more or less constant swing from Labour
to the Tories with Liberals staying steady. Then with the election imminent there was a
compensating swing from Liberals to Labour.
If he then looks at the overall history of the period, he will find that this was the be-
ginning of the Cold War and the inception of the McCarthy period. Labour, by joining
91
Nato, by spending vast sums on armaments, by continuing (outside India and its neigh-
bours) a broadly imperialist policy, helped foster the popular belief in the necessity of an
anti-communist crusade.
It is well known that a majority of those who voted Labour in 1945 so did despite
reading Tory papers. The Tory press latched onto the anti-communist atmosphere, and
found it easy to convince Labours soft support that the Tories could wage an anti-Soviet
crusade better than Labour. The Liberals remained relatively unaffected.
Though Clement Davies was about to go over to support Churchill (there were nu-
merous resignations from the party in response to his change), the majority of the Liberal
Party took the slogan Which twin is the Tory? (on which they fought the election) seri-
ously.
They were committed to opposing Nato and arms expenditure (to opposing the
building of Britains nuclear weaponry), to advocating further decolonisation, and the par-
ty had at that time demanded that all industries valued at over 10 000 hand over one-
third of their ownership to cooperatives of their workers. Policies that put them firmly to
the left of the Labour government.
After such a beginning, the reader feels disinclined to continue further, so I cannot
comment on the rest of the article.
Fraternally
Laurens Otter
We apologise for the delay in publishing Laurens Otters letter; it was temporarily mislaid
by our Production Manager. We hope that comrade Otter has in the meantime read the
remainder of Alan Spences article on the National Health Service.

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