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 20^th 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.