One is always chancing one's arm when it comes to these sectarian squabbles. These things bore me, but since you've made at least one or two concrete assertions in your 'news item', allow me to address them. First of all, the SWP applauds the Palestinians resisting the Israeli state by any means necessary. Whilst we do not believe that terrorism can ever be an adequate tool, (in most circumstances it merely assists the reactionaries and warmongers, a la 9/11), I think I can safely say that the Palestinians do not, on their own, have the capacity to defeat the Israeli state. The prospects for mass action amongst a marginalised and economically excluded people are very slim, in stark contrast to, say, the South African blacks who had the Cosatu, who had a central role in the South African economy. In these circumstances, any act of resistance would seem heroic. But that is in no way co-substantial with backing terrorist tactics. We unconditionally support the Palestinians, but not uncritically. We would like to see suicide bombings end, and instead have the Palestinians armed with every kind of weapon, airjet and tank that the Israelis have.
In the same way, we did not approve of the IRA blowing up buildings full of people, but we unconditionally supported their campaign to evict Britain from their occupied territory in Northern Ireland.

I suspect that you've posted this specifically to get a rise out of the few SWPers who post here. I suppose you've got one.

What's an SWP? 9 votes. LOL. The IWCA is thicker on the ground.

What is a SWP? Nine votes? LOL. The IWCA isa thicker on the ground.

'Kaaaaaay. Not sure what that's all about. I'll take a wild guess, however, that the IWCA could comfortably fit in a phone box - if indeed it exists. It's pretty pathetic when one tiny splinter group of the far left thinks it necessary to attack another, somewhat larger, splinter of the far left, rather than trying to engage with the working class in a creative way. I think the SWP should adopt Millwall's slogan: "You don't like us, we don't care."

Or even more to the point.
“buy our papers… pllllllleasssssse?”
Face it, your politics are fucking boring, you're authoritarian and every other group on the left hates your guts and distrusts you.

"We would like to see suicide bombings end, and instead have the Palestinians armed with every kind of weapon, airjet and tank that the Israelis have. "

Whatever happened to class struggle? Lenin would be turning in his mausoleum at the thought of someone using his pseudonym to preach popular frontist nationalism. Trotsky wouldn't look twice at the SWP without labelling it a form of wannabe menshevism. It would be advisable for the SWP to accept the necessity for honesty in the workers movement and drop the 'Leninist', 'Trotskyist' or 'revolutionary' titles which they have never lived up to in words or deeds.

'lenin' [this one] might also be interested to learn that there are such thing as workers in Israel and the occupied territories.

Well, love, you might think our politics are boring, but that's what happens when you're grounded in the real world. It would be lovely, wouldn't it, to imagine that we could soar away into a complete libertarian utopia tomorrow - if only the stupid masses would realise their potential, goddamit! As for the charge of authoritarianism, there is a simple test. Can we *make* you do anything you don't want to? Do you *have* to care what we say? If every group on the left despises and distrusts us, that says much more about the state of 'the left' than it does us. But since we work within the Socialist Alliance with many other groups on the left, including independents, I think your prognosis may have a rather large hole in it.

As for this populist nationalism malarky, I think I made it perfectly clear that we are in favour of a class response to the Palestine problem - since the Palestinians alone are incapable of offering such a solution, the problem automatically generalises into one of the Arab working class tout court. Only by the overthrow of the authoritarian Arab regimes is there the slightest possibility that the Palestinians will gain the numerical and military backing necessary to defeat Israel. In the meantime, they have to resist by any means necessary. I don't think that should include sending young militants out to blow themselves up, but certainly armed attacks on Israeli settlements are perfectly justified in my view. The revolutionary left has always supported genuine national liberation struggles, even if they haven't adopted the ideology that we would regard as being most conducive to its success. I hope that clarifies the matter for you.

Thank you, drive thru!!

>
>
>Although I too thought that this assassination was a positive
act . . . .
>
>


Arguments of Trotsky aside, Karl Marx -- remember him? -- was
very clear on the subject of assassinations.

Marx argued that they were always counter productive. Why?
Because they gave the political elite greater justifications
for oppression. Those who live in the US can see clearly how
terror is used by the government to justify all sorts of
reactionary messages.

Trotskyist arguments in favor of are
bankrupt.

Marx believed that the organization of working people into
revolutionary trade unions was the best method. Strikes, work
stoppages, and rallies are useful tools. Assassinations are worthless.

"The prospects for mass action amongst a marginalised and economically excluded people are very slim..."

That would have been a far more effective quote to use; nowhere in our menshevik's article does it mention class action, although they very quickly change their tune from petty nationalism –something which has little to do with communists' conditional, historical support to national self-determination– to some sort of left posing recognition of the necessity of revolution in the neighbouring Arab bourgeois regimes, they neglect to see Israel as a capitalist state. And the obvious implcation and stated ambition after such a victory in the neighbouring Arab capitalist states is to fight Israel as nations against a nation. The quote I have given is indicative of the Cliffite –SWP + Workers Power–, Stalinist and nationalist attitudes to the struggle of the Palestinian people; there is a complete ignorance of the existence of an Israeli working class and the thousands upon thousands of Israeli Arabs who work in the factories of the Israeli capitalist state. This is none other than opportunistic pandering to nationalism since it negates any form of workers' internationalism –unity in class struggle of the workers of Israel, Palestine, the Arab bourgeois states and all capitalist countries in overthrowing this system of exploitation and oppression. Of course, according to 'lenin' this is utopian. More bankrupt than Enron.

The contradictions referred to in this thread relate to the conflict of objective and strategy. For instance the SWP supports the withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland, but they do not support a minority, like the IRA, acting on behalf of a greater number of people to achieve this objective.

I have just read the various articles arguing about whether Sept 11 is a guerilla action and the rights and wrongs of palistinian actions. This has always been the problem with left in England they spend too much time sitting round arguing and then miss the event entirely. As for the SWP if they really believed in revolution they would get out on the streets (not to sell newpapers) but to get involved in some real action. I've been on many demonstrations over many years and when the going gets tough the SWP and others on the Left leave.
The only real action happens when people organise themselves regardless of the politics or whether Lenin or Trotsky would have agreed. The "working classes" do not need a vanguard to organise them especially when they are middle class students.Don't take on the trendy issues take on the real issues that face people.
Direct action is the only action.

I have just read the various articles arguing about whether Sept 11 is a guerilla action and the rights and wrongs of palistinian actions. This has always been the problem with left in England they spend too much time sitting round arguing and then miss the event entirely. As for the SWP if they really believed in revolution they would get out on the streets (not to sell newpapers) but to get involved in some real action. I've been on many demonstrations over many years and when the going gets tough the SWP and others on the Left leave.
The only real action happens when people organise themselves regardless of the politics or whether Lenin or Trotsky would have agreed. The "working classes" do not need a vanguard to organise them especially when they are middle class students.Don't take on the trendy issues take on the real issues that face people.
Direct action is the only action.

!

Look, Deep Green, I don't know what planet you're from, but there's no way a revolution is just around the corner. If we started arguing for arming the workers right now, I think it would probably strike some as premature and most as utterly barmy. I'm all for revolution, but even Lenin knew you had to time these things. In 1905, Lenin was all on the side of the romantics, the ultra-left. Because a revolution was actually on the cards. Come 1907, when the working class movement has been utterly crushed, when the Tsar has by and large retained his power and resumed the old repressive ways of ruling, Lenin was in favour of elections to the Tsarist Duma. Because he did not look to an abstraction for instructions on what to do next, he did not simply abide by some eternal principles of action, the first question he always asked of any situation is "what is in the interests of the class?" If we ask that question today, we have to say what is in the interests of the class is socialist unity, a clear alternative to the dross of mainstream liberal democracy and a concerted effort against the far right. Thus the Socialist Alliance, thus Globalise Resistance, and thus the Anti Nazi League.

I Don not think the left should abandon Plaistinians but I do think that we should have a more class war view of Isreal palistine ,In a way I think the left has abandoned Jews and visa Versa , As An Anarchist I think the there should be No sates especially religous ones whether Chistian Jewish or Islamic. Remeber isreali does have Left paties, Kubtzez and a ,lot of unions. we need to stand up for palistinians as well as Jews In arab countries

Smash the state, workers of the world unite!

Fortunately 'lenin', our menshevik 'Leninist' has made such a revealing and conveninent post. For the SWP revolution will never be around the corner. Fascist uprisings and the need to rally in the widest possible left-labourite unity –Tony Benn, the Labour 'left' etc.– to produce this deliberately (and characteristically) ambiguous 'alternative' are always in the present or around the corner, but any talk of revolution, or proletarian revolution is some romantic ultra-leftism. There is nothing 'romantic' and 'ultra-left' about revolution –from that you'd think 'lenin' here is denouncing revolution as sectarianism; the next thing they'll recommend you read is Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder–, revolution is dialectical and scientific.

"If we started arguing for arming the workers right now, I think it would probably strike some as premature and most as utterly barmy."

For the SWP such an idea will always be in the utterly barmy category. The premature would suggest too much in the capacity of workers, regardless of consciousness.

"Come 1907, when the working class movement has been utterly crushed, when the Tsar has by and large retained his power and resumed the old repressive ways of ruling, Lenin was in favour of elections to the Tsarist Duma."

Lenin was in favour of exposing the elections to the Tsarist Duma for what they were, not for the sake of standing candidates or for opportunism. Lenin wasn't a Menshevik, as Tony Cliff –the long time leader and founder of the British SWP – would have you believe...

"Because he did not look to an abstraction for instructions on what to do next, he did not simply abide by some eternal principles of action, the first question he always asked of any situation is "what is in the interests of the class?"

I've never seen a Cliffite argue so powerfully and transform Bolshevism into Menshevism whilst pretending that they are casting sectarianism to death or teaching the proletariat that, because Lenin wasn't an ultra-leftist, he altered his tactics now and then in order to ask what the proletariat wants to hear... I believe, comrade, you have been stitched up... someone let Julie Waterstone near your copy of every Marxists' essential dictionary of biography; Tony Cliff was the opportunistic labourite, Lenin was the Bolshevik.

Now, please, by all means, go and fight Nazis with placards in Burnley, drive stakes into the liberals who dare to repeat your liberalities, deliver Socialist Worker to the newsagents– I'm not asking you to change your e-mail address, but by all means give Lenin the benefit of your silence and let the Leninists continue his work.

So this geezer's saying the SWP aren't Leninist ENOUGH?

IMC blows my mind sometimes..

Communism and Armed Struggle

The current [1993] IRA mainland bombing campaign, and the response to it of sections of the British left, has raised the question of the role, and the legitimacy, of armed struggle within liberation and socialist movements. CAT WIENER examines some of the issues.

"Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery."

(Che Guevara, in his eminently practical handbook, Guerrilla Warfare)

"The war against imperialism is a just war, and it will go on, for true peace can only come about when a nation is free from oppression and injustice...the British people who choose to ignore this or to swallow the lies of the British gutter press are responsible for the actions of their government unless they stand out against them."

(Joe O'Connell, speech from the dock at the Balcombe Street trial)

Armed struggle and negotiations

The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the imposition of a 'new world order' under the hegemony of the USA has resulted in severe military and political setbacks for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide. In El Salvador, and South Africa, in Ireland, Palestine and elsewhere, 'peace settlements' and 'negotiations' are being urged as the only way forward. In reality, these talks have little to do with peace, and everything to do with imperialism's efforts to destroy popular movements, and resolve these conflicts in its own interests.

Bourgeois ideologues today characterise armed struggle -- whether it be the grenade attacks of the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) in South Africa, or the IRA's bombs, as 'outmoded extremism', a dangerous relic of the past that threatens the moderate, 'civilised' path represented by negotiations. Yet what is the reality? The Peace Settlement in El Salvador has already been reneged on by the right-wing regime, and today the FMLN is divided between those who argue that talks must at all costs be preserved, and those who call for a return to armed struggle against the continuing poverty, hunger and repression. The Codesa talks in South Africa take place against a backdrop of unprecedented bloodshed, backed by the racist regime, and, if carried through, can only at this stage enshrine white minority rule. Those who today are exchanging the armed struggle for negotiations find themselves having to make concessions to imperialism for little return. As Benny Alexander, Press Secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) commented in relation to Codesa, 'You win the war to negotiate; you do not negotiate to win the war.

The response of the British left

'It is not enough to take sides on the question of political slogans; it is also necessary to take sides on the question of an armed uprising. Those who are opposed to it, those who do not prepare for it, must be ruthlessly dismissed from the ranks of the supporters of the revolution, sent packing to its enemies, to the traitors or cowards; for the day is approaching when the force of events and the conditions of the struggle will compel us to distinguish between enemies and friends according to this principle'
(V.I. Lenin, 'Lessons of the Moscow Uprising', Collected Works, Vol. 11)

As bombs exploded all over London through November and December, causing million of pounds' worth of damage and chaos and leaving the British police chasing their own tails, the response of the Socialist Workers Party was to attack the IRA campaign as 'indefensible' and 'no service to the fight against Britain's presence in Ireland', (Socialist Worker November1992) and 'a disaster waiting to happen' (Socialist Review, January 1993). The timing, they argued, was particularly unfortunate, since the British working class was moving into struggle and 'a generalised hatred of the Tories may grow to include a hatred of their treatment of Northern Ireland.' (Socialist Review, January 1993)

In 1982, Socialist Worker complained that the IRA's campaign then distracted British workers from fighting against Thatcher's callous policies. Plus ca change...11 years later, British troops still terrorise the streets of Belfast, and still the SWP have the gall to ask the Irish people to postpone their struggle in favour of a British movement which has stood by or even applauded while the British state has pursued its brutal war against the Irish people through shoot-to-killpolicies, torture, raids and terror, and made permanent the vicious anti-Irish PTA. Is the Republican movement to suffer another 11 years of repression while waiting for some sea-change in British politics? Perhaps the SWP should remind themselves of Lenin's dictum that 'a proletariat that tolerates the slightest coercion of other nations by its "own" nation cannot be a socialist proletariat'. (Collected Works, Vol. 21)

The RCP, on the other hand, for many years claimed that support for armed struggle was the only means of offering solidarity to the Irish movement; their slogan was 'Bring the war to Britain', and they eschewed campaigns around prisoners, civil rights, plastic bullets and strip-searching as fit only for political wimps and liberals. Today, however, they have veered swiftly away from this position which sits uncomfortably with their trendy middle class clientele, and now declare the IRA campaign to be 'trivial', 'random' and 'unhelpful to the cause of freedom and a distraction from the real issues at stake' (Living Marxism, December 1992)

Whilst the reaction of the Trotskyist left finds its sharpest expression in relation to Irish question, it is not restricted to these shores. During the uprisings of the 1980s in South Africa, the SWP condemned the armed struggle being waged by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the army of the ANC, as a campaign of guerrillaism isolated from the South African working class. It is only the sectarianism of the RCP or the SWP which has prevented them from commenting on the recent armed actions of APLA, armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, which claimed four white 'civilian' lives in December.

Communists recognise that the right to self-determination necessarily includes the right of an oppressed people to choose the means by which they conduct their liberation struggle. The British left's squeamishness on the question of Ireland is not only indicative of its squeamishness on revolutionary, anti-imperialist violence in general; it also reveals their deep-seated hostility and chauvinism towards a revolutionary struggle that directly threatens British imperialism. This position has nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism.

Imperialism is violence

'The Marxist-Leninist doctrine on class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat affirms the role of violence in revolution, makes a distinction between unjust, counter-revolutionary violence and just, revolutionary violence, between the violence of the exploiting classes, and that of the masses.'
(General Vo Nguyen Giap, 'The Political and Military Line of Our Party', Selected Writings)

As Marxists, therefore, we are not dealing with the question of violence in general, but of the legitimate violence of the working class against its oppressor, whether that take the form of the organised armed struggle waged by the National Liberation Army of Vietnam against French, Japanese and US imperialism, the rocks and stones of the intifada, or a campaign of bombs on the streets of London.

The taking up of arms has proved to be a necessary and indeed inevitable response by the working class to the constant, organised brutality and oppression that is imperialism. Imperialism knows no other mode. Since the Second World War, there has been only one year in which British armed forces have not been involved in wars and counter-revolution somewhere in the world. Today, imperialist warmongers have again declared war in the Gulf and invaded Somalia; imperialist arms and money prop up the death-squad regimes of Latin America, the barbaric occupation of East Timor by Indonesia's Suharto regime, Turkey's war against the Kurds. By what other means do the idealists of the British left think the oppressed peoples of the world should oppose the armed brutality of a ruling class that will stop at nothing to protect its own interests?

Movements of the oppressed have travelled a long way down the road of peaceful resistance before resorting to violence remember the civil rights movements of Ireland and of the black people of the USA, the anti-pass campaigns of South Africa, the petitions of the Chartists. It is the brutal response of a threatened ruling class which drives the movement to the point where it must say: This far and no further. The liberation armies of Azanian/South Africa were formed in response to the massacre of peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville. The context of the IRA bombs on the bombs on the streets ot London is the presence of British troops on the streets of Belfast and Derry.

For the facade of 'democracy' that masks impenalism's naked interests is rapidly stripped away when those interests are challenged: after the revolution of 1979, the Nicaraguans freely elected the Sandinistas to power, only to be terrorised and browbeaten into choosing, less than a decade later, a candidate more acceptable to Washington. What happened to the much-heralded 'democratic elections' in Angola when the 'wrong' candidate won?

The arguments peddled by the British left to undermine armed struggle deny this reality, and are a naive and dangerous distraction. Lenin made the point clearly: while recognising that parliamentary democracy might in certain periods be a useful tool for the working class, he warned,

'tomorrow your ballot paper is taken from you and you are given a rifle or a splendid quick-firing gun -- take this weapon of death and destruction, pay no heed to the mawkish snivellers who are afraid of war; too much still remains in the world that must be destroyed with fire and sword for the emancipation of the working class.'
(V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 21)
The real issue

'Violence is the universal objective law of all thorough national liberation revolutions.'
(General Vo Nguyen Giap, ibid)

As communists, we want to see the working class take power. We recognise that the revolutionary process may go through all sorts of transformations, that it may be bought off, that it may stop before 'thorough' liberation is achieved. Only if, within that movement, the working class is armed and organised can it ensure that the liberation struggle is brought to a socialist conclusion. James Connolly warned the Irish Citizens' Army shortly before the Easter Rising:

'In the event of victory, hold on to your guns, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty.'

All too often, the middle classes have ridden to victory on the backs of the struggle of the working class; it is the working class who do, in George Jackson's words, most of the fighting and most of the dying. What inspires the fighters of the working class is not a love of violence, in which they have always borne the severest losses, but the knowledge that only force of arms can guarantee victory -- for 'there is no successful liberation without violence' (George Jackson, Soledad Brother). In Vietnam, in Cuba, in the Soviet Union, throughout the world, the struggle of the working class for power has been fought through bitter and bloody battles. It is a little late for socialists to be squeamish about revolution. Indeed, even after victory, the warning to 'hold on to your guns' remains imperative. 14 countries invaded the Soviet Union immediately after the revolution. Do Socialist Worker really think that the US would not walk into Havana tomorrow if the Cubans did not possess weapons?

As communists, then, we defend absolutely the right of the oppressed people of the world to take up arms against imperialism -- and not put them down until victory. Those who abandon this position, should indeed be 'ruthlessly dismissed from the ranks of the supporters of the revolution'. For as Lenin said of the renegade Kautsky,

'(he) has to resort to all these subterfuges, sophistries and falsiflcations only to excuse himself from violent revolution, and to conceal his renunciation of it, his desertion to the side of the liberal labour policy, the side of the bourgeoisie. That is the crux of the matter'.

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Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No.111, February/March 1993
Newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Group