23.07.2026

Polemic, not shibboleths

Overthrowing capitalism entails a culture of radical free speech, not least in the left and our own movement. Paul Demarty responds to the ‘N-word affair’

Our letters page is, not for the first time, dominated by attacks on the CPGB and this paper.

Our crime: our policy of using the word, ‘nigger’, in full when quoting people, and our criticism of other comrades who insist on this word’s omission or replacement by euphemisms like ‘the N-word’. (I should say that I happily used the full spelled-out version in an article on an ephemeral media controversy on this question some years ago, and stand by it.¹)

We do not generally use the word outside of quotation marks. Despite the insistent claims of some, this is not a racist organisation, at least in the old-fashioned sense that referred to favouring the political subordination of people of some ‘races’ to others (the exact definition of a ‘race’ is hardly uncontested, of course). We favour, as a matter of policy, strict equality of all people regardless of ethnic background, and furthermore oppose all immigration controls. We oppose racism in the workers’ movement, such as it may arise, and it has: unions have from time to time been in favour of colour bars and differential rates of pay, for example.

Nor are we trying to be ‘edgy’, and obtain some notoriety on the cheap. If we were doing that, we would pack up this paper and move into short-form video. Our intention is quite straightforward: we believe in quoting people precisely, as a matter of political and intellectual honesty, and this courtesy is something we do our best to extend to everyone, including racists. That is, in a nutshell, the whole problem. Many on the left believe, it seems, that it is acceptable to sacrifice clarity and honesty in favour of some other goods, at least in this case. We do not.

In any case, it clearly cannot be taken for granted, so I offer one more response to this controversy. Before responding directly to our correspondents, I will lay out an argument in favour of our position.

Objectives

To begin at the beginning (and, inevitably, to recapitulate some points made by Mike Macnair in his present series on leftwing political culture), the proximate objective of the communist movement is the replacement of capitalist society with the political domination of the proletariat. The proletariat can only achieve this domination collectively, as a democratic mass movement. Substantive political democracy requires, first of all, decision-making power on the part of political majorities, and on the other hand, the ability of minorities to make their case. Without the former, nothing can be done; without the latter, no failure can be corrected.

The rule of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is intrinsically undemocratic. It must represent the interests of capital-owners, and it does so through the operations of an intermediary stratum of lawyers, managers and bureaucrats. This rule, as Mike argues frequently, extends into the workers’ movement, in the form of the domination of the bureaucracy over the trade unions and (in this country) the Labour Party, but also, on a minuscule scale, in the small groups of the far left. If the communists are to fight the power of the bureaucracy, that is in part an internal fight against bureaucratic political tendencies within our own movement and the wider workers’ movement.

Secondly: therefore, small groups on the left, like ours and those who count our correspondents as members, must conduct their own affairs democratically, which - again - means majority rule and the unconditional right of minorities to organise as they see fit, so long as the practical decisions of the organisation are not compromised. It means, indeed, that majorities have a political obligation to protect the platforms of minorities. All are obliged to ensure maximum political clarity: to ensure that debates are about what they are about, and not conducted through vague accusations, conspiracy theories and innuendo.

In order to conduct polemic on such a basis, it is essential that opponents are quoted accurately and clearly. It is also essential that enemies are so quoted - that is, people who are not directly participating in the discussion, but are the object of it, as racists normally will be in leftwing discussion. Our objective is political clarity, which requires accuracy and precision in expression.

Thirdly: speech controls, including in the form of baroque codes of conduct and the old fad of ‘safe spaces’ policies, are in themselves a mechanism of bureaucratic rule. Some rules concerning conduct are clearly unavoidable (against sexual harassment, say, or spending party funds on expensive salt-shakers); and some of these will pertain to acts of speech, be they the proper conduct of meetings or, indeed, the prohibition of direct racist abuse. Intrusions on free speech within the organisation should be extremely minimal and justified in terms of securing the democratic rights of members. The more such rules exist, the more likely it is that political disagreements will be transformed unjustifiably into disciplinary questions, subject to the decisions of the disciplinary bodies: that is, the bureaucracy.

Fourthly: it is moreover clearly the case, on the basis of recent history, that aggressive policing of speech taboos of this sort has failed to fight racism in any meaningful way. Indeed, overt, Enoch Powell-grade racism is now perfectly acceptable in British politics, in a way that it was not in my own youth. Rupert Lowe was never going to abide by any ‘safe spaces’ policy; the only people who could be disciplined this way are our comrades on the left, and it is plain that the result of the ‘intersectional’ turn in left politics is merely grouplets even more fissile and prone to anarcho-bureaucratic chaos than the ‘old white male left’ that was supposed to be replaced; or, alternatively, doomed Bonapartist cults of particular personalities (Jeremy Corbyn, and now Zack Polanski …) who are rendered effectively exempt from such policing by their personal prestige.

The result is that we have failed to present a meaningful, politically effective alternative to the rise of the racist far right. That is certainly not only the fault, specifically, of recherché speech codes - far from it. It is the result, rather, of our general political choice in favour of bureaucratic and Bonapartist forms of politics, which do not, in fact, pose a viable challenge to the rule of capital. Turning taboos into unquestionable shibboleths is part of that choice. The CPGB exists to argue for taking a different path, and so we fight against all expressions of bureaucratism in the left, including this one.

Replies

To the correspondents on our letters pages, then.² First, a reminder of the context: a proposal by a participant in the Socialist Education and Debate Association (SEDA) for a debate on Marx and the race question; in motivating his proposal, this comrade quoted Marx’s grossly offensive diatribe against Ferdinand Lassalle in a letter to Engels, which included the suggestion that Lassalle may be descended from a “nigger”. This caused an enormous ruckus, which Jack Conrad of this parish later mocked, also quoting the forbidden word.

An anonymous writer, under the name “An Immigrant Communist”, denounces both the bureaucratic response of the core SEDA clique, and our own “absolutely idiotic, libertarian” response. (The substance of this response, remember, is that it is appropriate to quote this word in reported speech - nothing more.) They ask: “Comrade, do you really think the ‘N-word’ is just some word whose definition can just be changed, like ‘queer’? Have you gone postmodern?” To which one answer might be: why shouldn’t it be such a word? Hasn’t it already been partially recuperated (in its usage by rap musicians, comedians and so forth)? Has it been cursed by a god or something? (The word, ‘idiotic’, after all, was also once a slur against the mentally disabled. No doubt sensitive souls of the time argued that it should never be used, not even in quotation.)

But another, more relevant response: well, seeing as it is so offensive, isn’t it important when people use it? Shouldn’t we, therefore, quote them when they do so? Why do the racists favour softening their forms of expression for our consumption?

More substantially, the Immigrant Communist writes: “Comrades, yes we defend democratic rights and free speech, but are we libertarian bourgeois democrats? No, we defend free speech against the bourgeois state.” But this is inadequate, as I have already argued, because bourgeois rule extends into the workers’ movement. (Consider, in this context, the infamous “Unison monkey trial”, when several left members of that union were victimised for years because they used the famous image of the three wise monkeys in a leaflet, which was deemed to be racist.) Our correspondent insists that this is all irrelevant and we should talk about something else, but either we have such controls, hanging over all discussion about everything, or we do not. Which is it to be, comrade?

Comrade Brunhilda Olding attempts, like our Immigrant Communist, to split the difference. Yes, there is an “abstract” right to use the word, and others like it - she offers us an extensive menu of transphobic slurs, some of which seem restricted to her native Australia - but you should not: “After all, as far as I am concerned, if a cis man strolled up to me and called me a tranny, he has every right to say the word, and I in turn have every right to sledge him in the face for it.”

Brawling

I would prefer methods other than brawling for the settlement of such disputes, but the thrust is fine. But again it seems off the point. At issue is quoting racists (or, in the case of Marx, racist utterances from someone with an otherwise respectable record on the matter.) I repeat that doing so accurately is a duty, for the sake of clarity of political discussion even among anti-racists. But she concedes the ‘right’ in general, so perhaps this is a case of ‘violent agreement’ (the sort of phenomenon, I add, that a commitment to accuracy in quotation can help to avoid …).

Finally, comrade Dovah accepts that we are not racist for using the word in the way that we do, but chides us that we must “argue effectively”. No arguments deemed effective are presented for this, however: merely some pointers on what to avoid in “effective argument”. We “never seem to properly acknowledge the genuine reasons why people might want the word to not be said at all”. Surely that does not need to be said: people do not want to hear the word because it is grossly offensive in ordinary usage. Some more elaborate arguments may be put on this point, but I have never found one that does not amount in the end to an argument from perceived personal safety.

Certainly, that is the perspective put forward by comrade Dovah, who worries that new people from non-white backgrounds, unaware of the context, may be made to feel uncomfortable. “Of course, debate could make people politically uncomfortable and intellectually uncomfortable, but we shouldn’t be making people personally uncomfortable.”

The trouble here is that these things are not easily separable: I speak from two decades’ worth of experience in the polemical trenches. It is bad form to use psychological manipulation in debate, and such sensitivities certainly could be exploited this way. But, if we have the choice between infringing on the right to impose intellectual discomfort and accepting the risk of personal discomfort, we should choose the latter. After all, we need comrades - of all races - to be resilient to much, much worse than hearing the ill-tempered words of a broke Karl Marx a century and a half ago.

The very nature of our political project, to return to the beginning, depends on it.

‘Racism and jealous gods’ Weekly Worker August 13 2020: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1312/racism-and-jealous-gods.↩︎
Letters, July 16: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1594/letters.↩︎