Category: Imperialism
Conrad’s Cuts: The critique the Weekly Worker fears?
The following is the full text of my letter that was published in the Weekly Worker today, albeit cut rather dramatically.
As I have said before, the editors of any hard copy publication have complete discretion to cut items for space, as they have limits on what can fit on paper that do not affect websites such as this.
But I would venture that the particular cuts made here are very convenient politically, and spare the CPGB’s supporters from either refuting these criticisms, or allowing them to stand. For below are some points that go to the very heart of their project, as anyone who has ever paid close attention to their evolution will know. Their main claim to uniqueness on the left in Britain and internationally is the concept that the Marxist left has deformed itself by solidifying into sects where everyone is forced to defend a particular analysis and interpretation of Marxism, and where public disagreement with majority positions is banned. They claim to have re-discovered the best traditions of the Bolsheviks in seeking to build a Marxist organisation where competing would-be Marxist analyses can contend publicly for hegemony, and where minorities have the right to seek to become a majority. But in my case they simply betrayed all that.
The weakness of their position regarding my own case is such that, in their purge motion aiming to exclude me from the Communist Platform on 14 September, they tried to equate my views with those of Pierre Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin. They were speaking of the apparent anti-Jewish racism of these figures, and trying by means of a feeble amalgam to say that I shared their views. But their text contained no quotes from either of these ideologues of 19th century anarchism to compare my views, as expressed in my Theses on the Jewish question, with Proudhon or Bakunin’s views on the Jewish question or indeed any other question. For anyone remotely interested in honesty and truth in left-wing politics, this is a very strange omission indeed.
However, if they had so wanted to find quotes to compare my views with, there are plenty available that show considerable similarity. Unfortunately for them, however, the quotes are from Karl Marx, Abram Leon, and Issac Deutscher. But it is unlikely that these centrist charlatans would have included such condemnatory references to these classical Marxist figures, as to do so would expose the nakedly anti-Marxist and anti-Communist character of their decision to force a break in the bloc with me which they initiated in early 2014, in forming the Communist Platform of Left Unity.
Condemnation of such classical Marxist figures, along with me, would be appropriate for them, as the tradition they stand in has more in common with renegades from Marxism such as Karl Kautsky and Max Shachtman, and dubious semi-Marxist centrist theoreticians such as Hal Draper.
Its pretty pathetic when leaders of an organisation have to invent lies about someone’s politics in order to avoid confronting honestly their real views. It is even more pathetic when this is done by the leaders of a small organisation, with little organisational muscle and whose only political capital is a reputation for truthfulness. If it gains the opposite reputation, why should anyone serious or honest want to touch it with a ten-foot pole?
Anyway, its their political funeral. Here is maybe another nail in their political coffin.
Tony Greenstein persists in retailing the silly falsehood that I have characterised him as a ‘Zionist’ in recent discussions. He is right that what I have written is ‘quite explicit’. On 6 September I published in my most comprehensive criticism of his politics, the following statement:
“Among these are … Tony Greenstein. They are outright opponents of the Zionist project and subjectively seek its destruction by revolutionary means, involving the Arab working class. “ (https://commexplor.com/2014/09/06/the-centrist-politics-of-tony-greenstein/)
So there is no need to ‘withdraw’ a statement never made, but whose exact opposite was published!
This symbolises the irrationality, capriciousness and personalism of Greenstein’s conduct in this dispute, and the lack of principle of those in the CPGB who have backed him. Greenstein says my criticisms of his identity politics and communalism amount to an accusation of Zionism. But Zionism is not the only type of Jewish identity politics.
In the early 20th Century, there existed the Bund, which opposed Zionism and Jewish migration to the Middle East, instead focusing on the preservation of Jewish culture. It demanded recognition as the sole representative of Jewish workers within Russian and Polish Social Democracy.
Lenin fought hard against this left-wing communalism, considered it divisive, and in contradiction to the duty of a revolutionary party to draw all layers of the specially oppressed behind the proletariat. This in the Tsarist empire when Jews were certainly an oppressed population.
Today, when Jews are no longer oppressed, but have achieved considerable political clout for their mainstream kind of identity politics – Zionism – in Western imperialist countries, the likes of Tony Greenstein and Moshe Machover promote, along with a sometimes very left-sounding anti-Zionism, their own alternative ‘left’ identity politics and communalism.
Thus the proliferation of self-described Jewish groups in the Palestine solidarity movement: Jews against Zionism, Jews for Boycotting Israeli goods, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, etc. This is in the context of a situation where many – including Greenstein (though to be fair: not Moshe Machover) make direct analogies with South African apartheid.
This brings us to the paradox of what would be involved if in the movement against apartheid there had appeared groups like ‘Whites against Apartheid’, ‘Whites for boycotting South African goods’, etc. Such groups, had they existed, would accept the racial segregation that was key to apartheid!
The same is true, mutatis mutandis, with ‘Jews against Zionism’ et al. Formal racial segregation is not the main feature of Zionism. Notions of ‘chosen-ness’ and alleged Jewish moral superiority are Zionism’s key ideological weapons.
No doubt at some level ‘left’ supporters of these groups think they are being clever and exploiting this notion of Jewish moral superiority against the Zionists. But this is self-defeating: conceding this strengthens the authority of this racist notion. This is a massive ideological concession to Zionism. The common thread between Zionism and some of its critics is what Israel Shahak called ‘Jewish ideology’.
This is the identity politics Greenstein is promoting, and why he supports communalist witch-hunts even against others of Jewish origin, who come, often from quite diverse standpoints, to oppose this ideology in principle, as well as Marxist critics like myself. This is centrist politics, revolutionary and anti-Zionist in words, capitulationist in deeds, and explains why Greenstein and others of his trend are touchy and cannot deal with criticism, especially from a Marxist standpoint.
It is also capitulation to this identity politics, despite the fine words in their frequent polemics against identity politics and intersectionality in Left Unity, that drives Jack Conrad and co to smear critics and betray the mission of the CPGB, effectively declaring the CPGB as a mono-ideological sect around this half-hearted and centrist ‘anti-Zionism’, while proscribing genuine Marxist anti-Zionism.
As Trotsky explained in his essay ‘Centrism and the Fourth International’ (1934), centrism is touchy and capricious, does not like to be called by its real name, and fears criticism. This sums up Tony Greenstein, as well as Jack Conrad and others.
Demonstrate against Imperialist War – 4 October
This demonstration has been called by the Stop the War Coalition this Saturday. The political basis for this is fundamentally inadequate and somewhat evasive, as it is not simply ‘Iraq’ or ‘Syria’ that is under attack here, but rather the new radical Islamist polity that calls itself the ‘Islamic State’. Hardly surprising given the influence of social-pacifism on the left today. Still, it is a start and all anti-war activists and socialists should be encouraged to participate, not to accept these politics, but to find ways to go beyond them toward the genuine communist politics that we need.
Racism, Jews and Palestinians: Uncut letter from Weekly Worker:
The following letter, in a severely cut form, was published in the current issue of the Weekly Worker.
I am not necessarily complaining about it being cut, as hard-copy publications have limits on space that hardly exist in online publications. However, there are substantial arguments missing from the cut version that obviously have an impact on the debate, such that it is, that is supposed to be taking place on racism, Jews, and Palestinians.
I will say no more at this point, as the arguments speak for themselves.
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Tony Greenstein is still peddling the racist pseudo-definition of ‘racism’ against Jews that is used by the bourgeois mainstream to suppress criticisms of Jewish behaviour which would be unquestionable if they were directed at any other people. He states that ‘anti-semitism’ always was concerned with the ‘social role’ of Jews, but fails to explain how criticism of the ‘social role’ of any section of society can in itself be racist. It cannot: except when combined with an ideology that racialises that role, so that the racist element supersedes social criticism. This happened in the late 19th Century when the term ‘anti-Semitism’ was coined by … biological racists as an obviously ‘racial’ term. This was then extended back in time by these racists. In fact, the entire concept of ‘race’ was absent from earlier conflicts.
Imperialist Hands off Syria, Iran, Iraq and Islamic State
Obama, Cameron and Hollande’s latest war, with the support of the elite oil-exploiting Arab monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, is yet another act of barbarism against the mainly Arab and Muslim peoples of the Middle East. Indeed, the recent neocon-inspired wars have led to barbarism on top of barbarism, with the demolition of Iraq in 2003 leading straight to the effective collapse of the country.
The political weakness of the Arab Spring – a spontaneous upsurge beginning in 2011 against the degenerate nationalist dictatorships that dominate the region, with its lack of a coherent ideology or revolutionary centre, enabled its enemies to exploit its spontaneity and the illusions of the masses in forms of Islamic and pan-Islamic nationalism. They either cemented in place new dictatorships out of the failure of such movements, as in Egypt, or used their armed power to give a degree of self-serving support to the upsurges, manipulating them with the use of selective military intervention or the supply of arms to settle old scores with the more ‘radical’ dictators: Qadaafi and Assad. Not coincidentally, these were the only two Arab regimes left that, for all their own capitulations to imperialism, had not run up the white flag of open collaboration with Israel.
Such campaigns, which led to the collapse of Libya into chaos, and the funding of the same Al Qaeda-related forces in Syria via Saudi Arabia, in effect attempted to manipulate radicalised, angry young Muslims into doing the West’s bidding in Syria as they did in Libya. This has backfired spectacularly as the Syrian insurgency ultra-radicalised through the agency of the former Al Qaeda in Iraq – now Islamic State. This established sufficient synergy between the insurgencies in the two countries to overwhelm the crucial imperialist-created Sykes-Picot line. This was something the imperialist puppet-masters did not expect to happen. Oops – they fucked it up in a big way!
Jack Conrad’s Anti-Communist Witchhunt over Gaza
Some of the arguments used to justify the recent witchhunt in the Communist Platform of Left Unity by the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain/Weekly Worker are a dead give-away about the anti-communist nature of the purge. They also show pathetic ignorance of the tradition of classical Marxism on the Jewish question. For instance, the assertion in the PCC’s anathema that “The claim that Jews do not constitute a nation within Israel but they form a ‘semi-national identity’ globally is false and it is indeed what Zionist ideology claims” can only be interpreted as a brazen attack on both Leon Trotsky, who was writing prior to the formation of the state of Israel, and also Isaac Deutscher, who wrote post-1947. Both of these classical Marxist figures, whose boots the leaders of the Weekly Worker trend are not fit to lick, went rather further than considering the Jews as a ‘semi-nation’. Both of them considered the Jews to be a fully-fledged nation.
Trotsky wrote in 1937:
“… the Jews of different countries have created their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument of modern culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come. Now the nation cannot normally exist without a common territory. Zionism springs from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day demonstrate that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question…” (Interview with Jewish correspondents in Mexico, January 18 1937, in Leon Trotsky on the Jewish Question, Pathfinder 1970)
According to Jack Conrad/Moshe Machover ‘logic’, Trotsky must have either been a Zionist, an anti-Semite, or both.
Then there is Isaac Deutscher. He had a slightly different position, which appears to have been developed after the foundation of Israel. Writing sometime around 1966, he wrote:
“It is a tragic and macabre truth that the greatest ‘re-definer’ of the Jewish identity has been Hitler; and this is one of his minor posthumous triumphs. Auschwitz was the terrible cradle of the new Jewish consciousness and the new Jewish nation…. For those who have always stressed Jewishness and its continuity, it is strange and bitter to think that the extermination of six million Jews should have given such a new lease of life to Jewry. I would have preferred the six million men, women and children to survive and Jewry to perish. It was from the ashes of six million Jews that the phoenix of Jewry has risen. What a resurrection!” (Who is a Jew?, from The Non-Jewish Jew and other Essays, Oxford 1968, p50).
Deutscher not only considered Jews to be a nation, he credits the Jewish ‘national resurrection’ to Hitler! And to boot, he makes it quite clear that he would rather that Jewish identity cease to exist. Evidently he must be a vile anti-Semite, and were he to have had the misfortune to be in the CPGB, he would have been excommunicated by its junior-Matgamna understudies as an inveterate Jew-hater.
Centrism and fear over Gaza: “Communists” vote down equality of peoples
Reacting in fear of being falsely branded as ‘anti-semitic‘ by the political mainstream that stood aloof in August in silence while more than 2000 Arabs were butchered in four weeks of carnage by the so-called Israeli Defence Force, on September 14, one small fraction of the British far left showed its lack of revolutionary politics. The Communist Platform, a tiny grouping within ‘Left Unity’ run by the publishers of the Weekly Worker, the almost-as-tiny Communist Party of Great Britain, disgraced itself by voting, in fear of the wrath of the overwhelmingly Israel-loyal British ruling class and no doubt some of its small-scale lackeys on the left, against a key aspect of communist politics: equal opposition to all forms of racism.
This point may at first glance seem subtle or even arcane. but it is not at all. It is a crucial ideological means of manufacturing consent, to steal a phrase from Noam Chomsky, for Israel’s brutality in Western societies. This concept says that Jews are a special people, eternally the victims of racism even when their fellows in the Middle East are the ones doing the overwhelming amount of the killing, and that if anyone protests too loud about this or points the finger at Israel’s supporters in the West, they are guilty of ‘anti-semitism’ – an ultimate form of evil associated of course with Hitler. This facile smear against serious critics is a key method of social control in Western countries today.
Racist philo-semitism, not anti-Jewish racism, is dominant in the West today, and acts as massive social pressure on anyone who tries to meaningfully oppose Israeli crimes. It needs to be opposed, by decent and progressive-minded people, by a firm anti-racism. This should not need saying. But this needs to be a different kind of anti-racism, with the same basic message: the equality of all peoples, but a somewhat different emphasis than in the past. In fact today, this kind of anti-racism is the only genuine kind of anti-racism.
The Centrist Politics of Tony Greenstein
I recently received a missive from Tony Greenstein, who is trying to fill in for the failure of Moshe Machover to refute the Marxist character of the views I have been arguing on the Jewish Question. Greenstein spends comparatively little time criticising my own views, though this is an improvement on Moshe, who spent none at all. Then he launches into another tirade against me for daring to engage politically with Gilad Atzmon. However, despite the mind-bending nonsense he comes out with on this, that will surely give anyone who attempts to read it a headache, he does make a couple of political criticisms of myself that are worth responding to, and hence gives me an opportunity to elaborate my views in more depth.
Actually, a meeting is in preparation at which these questions will be discussed in the Communist Platform. At that meeting, I intend to move a set of preliminary theses on the Jewish Question today, based on an extension of the insights of Karl Marx and Abram Leon into that very important question. It will be something of a challenge for those who are currently reacting to social pressures of the same kind that led to the criminal, violent assault on George Galloway, to argue that my views are not Marxist and in some way incompatible with Communism. I would contend that, to the contrary, the views of my opponents are incompatible with Communism and a capitulation to the pressures of modern imperialism, of which the Jewish/Zionist bourgeois layers in the advanced capitalist countries are a vanguard layer.
Early 20th Century Communism v Imperialism: Some strengths and weaknesses
In this article I will first of all address the question of the early Comintern’s ‘Anti-Imperialist United Front’ (AIUF), its rights and wrongs, and its application by the Comintern both in its revolutionary period and later. Later I will also address related weaknesses and inconsistencies in the early Comintern’s approach to imperialism, how those weaknesses have impacted on the left since, and how they can be corrected in our practice today. This will actually be quite a wide-ranging critique of some weaknesses in orthodox ‘Leninist’ theory, and will not abstain from criticising (when necessary) even people with the highest authority in the early 20th Century Communist movement: Lenin and Trotsky. But this is done from the standpoint of acceptance of Lenin’s understanding of imperialism, and an attempt to deal with some important, but secondary, flaws in that understanding.
The AIUF was put forward in the Theses on the Eastern Question at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922. It was an attempt to extend the concept of the United Front[1] developed by the Comintern for the workers movement of the advanced countries, to the very different circumstances of backward colonial and semi/ex-colonial countries. The concept of the United Front is pretty simple – though the devil is in the detail as we shall touch upon here. Communists are the part of the working class movement that represents its historic interests, both in immediate struggles and ultimately in those struggles that pose the need for the working class to take power. But in all countries where the working class is the decisive section of the population, the workers movement is dominated by pro-capitalist bureaucracies and misleaders, who act as a brake on the movement and systematically betray struggles that threaten the capitalist system.
Communist Explorations 