Letters
Those keys
The deadline, we are told - again - for negotiations with Iran has been moved. Not scrapped, not softened, but strategically repositioned - like one of Trump’s golf balls, nudged ever so slightly out of the rough. This time, though, it’s different. This time the president is ‘serious’.
Throughout the ever-shifting deadlines, Trump has claimed that he is ‘winning’ in the negotiations, which the other side claims it has no idea they’re taking part in. Initially demanding total victory, Trump has found “major points of agreement”, while praising his own flexibility and deal-making genius.
The White House frames this as a masterstroke of negotiation. The ‘art of the deal’, we’re reminded, is not about rigid timelines, but about leverage, optics and the occasional tactical U-turn (whether the other side has turned up to talks or not). Markets wobble? Put out a social media post adjusting the tone. Oil prices spike? Quietly ease a sanction or two. Iran defies a deadline they didn’t agree to? Push is back.
Critics might call it reactive. Supporters call it genius. Either way, the pattern holds: maximal pressure until the markets gets nervous - then a gentle recalibration to keep just enough tankers moving and enough sycophants thinking you’re fully in control.
Iran, for its part, insists the delay in opening the Strait of Hormuz is purely administrative, reporting they have ‘misplaced the keys’. Like a stubborn garden shed, it simply cannot be opened without them. There’s talk of checking under sofa cushions, behind the fridge, perhaps even in that one drawer containing old mobile phone chargers, used batteries, foreign currency and takeaway menus that everyone has.
Still, at the time of writing, the message from Trump is clear and unshakable: the latest deadline stands; the resolve is firm; the seriousness is … serious. Iran must find those keys - and soon!
But Iran seems unmoved by the latest deadline. Tensions will undoubtedly continue to rise, because, after all, the thing you’re looking for is always in the last place you look.
Carl Collins
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Didn’t join
Because I’d bounced around Britain’s far-left groups over the last decade, many of my close friends assumed I would be all-in with Jeremy Corbyn’s and Zarah Sultana’s new left party when it was launched last year.
As the title of this letter indicates, I didn’t sign up to Your Party - I didn’t even bother with its 800,000-strong mailing list. When it launched, a good friend and comrade asked me whether I’d be joining and I said no. I didn’t give him a particularly clear reason as to why - I didn’t want to sound like a ‘doomer’. I still haven’t given him a proper reason; I didn’t want to sound like I was saying, ‘I told you so’. But I feel that, now many good and genuine socialists are reconsidering their affiliation, it is worth voicing my thoughts.
When Your Party was launched, predictions were made all over about how it would look in a year’s time - no-one knew exactly how it would go, but, of course, many made predictions based on analyses of the characters or political and social forces involved. Gramsci’s famous words of “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” were in vogue.
My principal issue with Your Party at that point could be described as this: it is inconceivably unlikely that career MPs, Corbyn and Sultana both, would voluntarily sign up to the kind of party discipline that is necessary to maintain a genuinely communist or socialist-republican party. In order to prevent the bureaucratisation that killed the Second International, a party worth anything would have to have a democratic-centralist whip, party democracy would have to be sovereign, and its staff and representatives would be forced to take pay at the level of average or skilled workers’ wages.
Without getting into each violation of party democracy and each betrayal from the Corbyn clique, I’m sure the readership of this paper will agree with me that the last year has proven that pretty mild prediction correct.
Jeremy Corbyn is a career MP and he is, politically speaking, a social-democratic liberal. He is, de facto, a monarchist who would like to see state welfare and the shape of British industry rearranged in a more benevolent manner - not a socialist republican and not a communist. Based on that understanding I thought then and I think now that he would not co-found a socialist-republican party or a communist party and he would not voluntarily submit to socialist-republican or communist discipline or wage levels.
It is a misuse of “optimism of the will” to invoke it with regards to the actions of careerist liberals like Jeremy Corbyn. It should be reserved for the creative and enduring spirit of the masses of the working class to resist exploitation and tyranny, over and over. Socialist republicans and communists must hold no hopes in the likes of Corbyn: instead we must unite among ourselves in order to bring about the kind of party the working class needs.
Liverpool
Thomas Donnelly
Liverpool
False premise
At our recent CPGB AGM I raised an objection to the catastrophist premise of the early sections of the perspectives document. The threat of impending catastrophe has generated bad politics which have haunted our movement long after events have proven the premise false.
I pointed to Trotsky’s Transitional programme - or, as it was originally titled, The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International, written on the eve of World War II. But after six long years and massive destruction, we saw the long boom, which only petered out some 30 years later.
Lenin, I argued, stated there were no hopeless scenarios for capitalism. This, I concede, is a slight mangling of his 1920 speech during the first session of the second congress of the Communist International. However, my argument remains: even were capitalism to approach some putative planetary limit, without the intervention of the organised working class, it would seek to resolve the resulting crisis via its usual, historically established mechanisms - the wholesale destruction of capital and people.
Where Lenin’s speech is relevant is in the continuing ability of the bourgeoisie to “beguile this or that minority of the exploited”. It is easy to foresee a situation where workers in the metropoles are convinced that those fleeing war, starvation and social collapse in Africa and Asian pose a threat to their living standards - no matter how meagre - and allow themselves to be mobilised around the protection of their ‘own’ national capitals.
I have previously argued that we could see a return to the more ‘physical’ imperialism seen during the rise of challengers to Britain in the latter half of the 1800s. Trump’s aggressive overtures towards Greenland, Canada and the Panama canal are suggestive of a desire to secure access to resources free from the vagaries of the market and the unknowns of a politically unstable world.
China, as we know, has been buying up agricultural land in Africa (this and its scheme to plough a canal through Nicaragua as an alternative shipping route connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific). Legal title means very little, if the land is invaded by peasants forced to abandon their farms, because they are no longer productive. In the end, such matters are settled by force, including boots on the ground - whether your own or those of a proxy.
All of which could draw the accusation that I am peddling my own line in catastrophist politics. I do not, and have not, sought to downplay the very grave challenges we face. My concern is to highlight the political dangers contained within the concept of a final crisis. Like Trotsky’s Transitional programme and the breakdown theories of the early 1900s, they have not served us well.
Andy Hannah
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Marxist demands
I offer the following as a list of current demands which I hope can unify Marxists in the present:
(1) Ceasefire now.
(2) Shut down all military bases.
(3) Lift all sanctions.
(4) End all arms production.
(5) Unite workers and students against nationalism, patriotism and war.
(6) Strengthen resistance to perpetual war, exploitation and species extinction.
(7) Overthrow all imperialist regimes and their reactionary proxies.
(8) Build a global awareness of the necessity for a planned, classless, moneyless, stateless alternative to capitalism under workers’ democratic control.
No doubt readers are capable of assessing whether or not these demands are transitional to socialism. Also whether they are already incorporated - one way or another - within the minimum/maximum programme of the CPGB,
Paul B Smith
Ormskirk
Formerly radical
The capitalist class really do have it sewn up. The ‘reissue, repackage, repackage’ (‘paint a vulgar picture’) vibe of late capitalism has formerly radical working class voices now reflecting their political outlook and commodifying our history.
A lively debate on the Weekly Worker Facebook page explored how Morrissey, the former front man of The Smiths, in many ways prefigured the decline of partisan working class identity crafted from his 60/70s upbringing. Johnny Lydon, Mark E Smith and Noel Gallagher spring to mind, as do others who once championed a similar aesthetic, bound up with kitchen-sink drama, post-war working class subjectivities and the political left. Today the psychological terrain is crawling with reactionary Uncle Tom feels and these individuals reflect this
Mark E Smith is, of course, dead and was a contrarian more than anything else, but still fits the pattern (add a sprinkling of Russell Brand, perhaps?). Johnny Marr, the guitar hero of The Smiths, clearly still holds onto much of the ‘pay no more than £3.99’ indie subculture of the 1980s, seeking to maintain some defence against creeping corporate rockism.
As relating to an article on the Creases Like Knives progressive skinhead platform, Morrissey’s pull towards skinhead culture was explored. Not being formally part of this subculture is relevant, as has been what he has drawn from this: namely the dressing up of racist , rightist bigotry with social democratic nostalgia. The messy consequence of working class alienation and subsequently indulged stardom led to a (probably unconscious) political collapse, mirroring that of the entire class with the defeat of the miners (this going into overdrive after the 1989/91 collapse of eastern-bloc bureaucratic socialism.) The inclusion of ‘Asian rut’ and ‘Bengali in platforms’ tracks from the first solo album spell this out, and the National Front disco featuring on the 1992 ‘Your arsenal’ release took this yet further. The not so subtle subtext from Mozza is that proles are rightwing and ‘we can’t say what we want [bigotry] any more’: ie, Life is hard enough when you belong here.’
There’s more to unpack of course, not least in terms of how we understand class, culture and solidarity. This is not the first time, however, that ex-working class ‘stars’ talk shite, as their conditions change and they cease meaningfully to be one of us. Morrissey’s methadone class-consciousness is, of course, a headache for those of us who loved The Smiths and/or the more revolutionary/reggae-infused elements of skinhead culture.
Paul Cooper
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Kanye ban
The decision to ban Kanye West from entering the UK and the subsequent cancellation of Wireless Festival, which he was due to headline, is, on the face of it, understandable. The rapper has been rightly criticised for making hideous anti-Semitic remarks. He recently released a song called ‘Heil Hitler’ and advertised a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.
Despite Kanye West apologising and attributing his actions to his bipolar disorder, there had been a media outcry to stop him performing at the festival. Sponsors had threatened to pull out and Jewish organisations added pressure on the government and festival organisers to act. Managing director Melvin Benn said the festival was “not giving him a platform to extol opinion of whatever nature - only to perform the songs that are currently played on the radio stations in our country and the streaming platforms in our country, and listened to and enjoyed by millions”.
I cannot defend West’s rhetoric or, personally, believe his excuses for making those remarks. If, however, we expand our view from this isolated case, we can see that the rise in anti-Semitism accompanies the crimes and genocide carried out by the Israeli state - which, after all, claims to be representative of the Jewish people worldwide. Similarly, if we widen our view from this case alone, we must also recognise this ban as an exercise of state power that extends beyond moral condemnation and into the regulation of culture itself. While West’s statements are undeniably reactionary and harmful, silencing him raises deeper concerns about how the state can regulate ideological expression.
The state is not a neutral arbiter, but an instrument that ultimately serves ruling class interests. In this context, the exclusion of a high-profile artist follows a precedent, whereby cultural figures are barred not simply for ‘inciting public harm’, but for expressing views deemed politically undesirable. It is inevitable that such censorship is used on leftwing or anti-capitalist artists, such as Irish rap group Kneecap, who have championed the Palestinian cause, and have been subjected to similar state repression, for example.
We must also keep in mind that the cancellation of a major cultural event like Wireless Festival disproportionately affects workers: there will be economic hardship experienced by lesser-known artists, dancers, performers, technicians, vendors, etc.
The wider view allows us to see the danger in selective enforcement, however we feel about this individual example. When the state arrogates to itself the power to decide which voices may be heard, it obviously gives itself the power of not only suppressing reactionary figures, but also those who seek to challenge the very system that grants the state its power.
Matthew Harper
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