Letters

DSA right wing

In response to my recent critiques of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Red Star caucus - a Marxist-Leninist faction that one of the DSA’s two co-chairs belongs to - some commentators have suggested my writing represents an attack by the organisation’s right flank on its left.

The DSA hosts a range of opinion, that could be plausibly divided into right and left. I’m not sure these are the most useful descriptions, but I understand them. I reject the notion, however, that my specific criticism of Red Star’s support of totalitarian regimes is somehow more rightwing, while their defence of nominally ‘socialist’ dictatorships is somehow more leftwing.

For instance, not long ago, I attended a meeting of the Hartford DSA branch, in which the DSA’s stance on a potential presidential run by Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was debated. The question arose of the organisation building a third party, which I was strongly against. I was very familiar with the pre-2016 left, before socialists started regularly using the Democratic ballot line, and had no desire to return to the self-marginalisation of that era. I’m open to the idea that this position puts me on the DSA right - personally I think it reflects a willingness to reckon with the reality of America’s two-party system, but if people want to describe that as a more conservative view than that of those seeking a break with the Democratic Party, I can accept the framing.

That said, when it comes to my criticism of Red Star, I fundamentally disagree with the way in which commentators are categorising the discussion. There’s nothing leftwing about defending dictatorship. In fact, I’d argue there’s not much that’s more conservative. China, and countries like it, have merely replaced private control of the means of production by an elite capitalist class with private control of the means of production by an elite bureaucratic class. On top of this, contrary to propaganda repeated by Red Star members about ‘whole process people’s democracy’, the Chinese government is a one-party state that severely restricts freedom of the press, as well as internet access.

I worry that DSA culture of ideological tolerance - some degree of which is necessary for a big-tent organisation to succeed - has reached the point at which members who should know better aren’t standing up for basic democratic principles or factual reality. As a result, a surprising number of young DSA activists seem to be absorbing totalitarian lies uncritically. This culture has created a dynamic in which those pushing back against these falsehoods are viewed as disruptive to unity. For instance, my posting ability on the organisation’s internal forums was limited, because I was confronting these authoritarian tendencies too much. The last comments of mine, which inspired moderator action, included one in which I referred to Red Star members as tankies and another in which I asked what the caucus’s position on North Korea was.

Apparently, the first was disrespectful and the second was believed to have been made in bad faith. I don’t deny the first accusation, but in terms of the second, I actually did want to know how far Red Star took their opposition to criticising regimes that called themselves socialist. It’s a strange stance, considering the caucus seemed to oppose supporting Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on ‘lesser evil’ grounds, even in the face of a fascist threat as dangerous as the MAGA movement. I guess opposition to ‘lesser evil’ thinking does not extend to the question of criticising North Korea, which, in my understanding, is essentially a hereditary monarchy masquerading as socialism.

Above all, I disagree with Red Star on the merits. I don’t believe there is such a thing as socialism without democracy. Still, I’d be remiss not to mention Red Star’s prominence is a public-relations disaster waiting to happen. A Newsweek article from earlier this year provided a potential sample of what’s to come. Didi Kirsten Tatlow, relying on a DSA insider, reported that members of the organisation’s international committee were trying to cultivate connections with the Chinese Communist Party and downplayed the country’s oppressive treatment of groups like the Uyghurs. Tatlow’s piece unfairly tried to tie New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani to all of this, but I have no reason to doubt her other reporting, based on my interactions with Red Star members online.

I’ve found DSA members who perhaps aren’t Marxist-Leninists themselves, but are sympathetic to them, trying to root the ideology in the American democratic socialist tradition by pointing out Eugene Debs’ praise for Soviet Russia in 1919. First of all, I think this conflates the views and actions of Vladimir Lenin with Marxist-Leninism. They are different things. The latter was formulated after Lenin’s death by Joseph Stalin and was subsequently expanded by dictators like Mao Zedong. Stalin hadn’t consolidated power by the time Debs died. Second, Debs’ view of Lenin was, at a minimum, quickly complicated. By 1922, he was cabling Lenin, pleading with the Russian leader not to execute socialist rivals.

The example of Norman Thomas, Debs’ successor in the Socialist Party of America, provides a better idea of what Debs’ perspective of Marxist-Leninism might have been, had he lived to see Stalin put it into practice. Thomas described the Soviet system as “red fascism”. I think that’s as good a description as any, and communicates the idea that defence of dictatorship is not meaningfully leftist. It’s tragic that the DSA must define itself as ‘democratic socialist’ - a label that should be redundant, however anti-democratic groups, including those within the organisation, like Red Star, help make the label necessary.

While I’m opposed to purging such groups from the DSA, because I fear it could create a self-destructive, sectarian spiral, I hope the membership will vote Red Star out of positions of power.

Jon Hochschartner
Connecticut

Labour camps

The imperialist enemy will be caught between the peoples of the west, who they have completely separated themselves from, and the rest of the world they polluted and looted for centuries, who will have now proudly taken control of their own destinies. The imperialists will be caught between a rock and a hard place.

Their Nazified media machine has collapsed in terms of audience size and sheer mental retardation. All it can do is scream and shriek, but to no avail - their horrible fate is assured: the mass deportation of the western colonial gangs - approximately 50 million sub-humans - to the furthest reaches of Russia’s Arctic wasteland, to be incarcerated in specially built labour camps for the rest of their miserable lives!

Nothing will ever be heard from these loud-mouths again - their generational breeding, inheritance of ill-gotten gains and perverted rule ended, to the immense cheering of the world’s population. Imagine the celebrations!

Elijah Traven
Hull

Fake partijïsme

Last week’s Online Communist Forum, discussing the ‘Re-establish Comintern’ article (September 24) by comrades Edith Fischer from Australia and Elise van der Doelen from my own country, raised the point of the international ‘partyist’ tendency. No, as Mike Macnair and other comrades in the discussion rightly argued, we should not form yet another international, next to all the Trotskyist and Stalinist, etc internationals, but this time of partyists. Instead, we should do what is fundamental to my strategic understanding of partyism: go through the existing Marxist left (nationally and internationally) to reforge communist parties that can organise themselves into an international.

It was a pity not to have the authors, or other comrades supporting the article, participate in the OCF discussion. Comrades, here is an invitation to start building these fraternal relations you propose we build - why aren’t you there? There may have been, certainly for the comrades from Australia with the time difference, logistical obstacles perhaps. These are the first to overcome when you want to build an international. But I suspect part of the problem is in fact political.

Indeed, I’d like to challenge the usefulness of the ‘partyism’ label and whether it is correct to speak of an international partyist tendency. In Britain, we see self-described partyists who don’t want to talk to the CPGB, despite the key role Mike Macnair’s book has played for the re-emergence of ‘orthodox Marxism’ and ‘partyism’ internationally. The Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Party has recently seen the emergence of two (!) new factions using ‘partyism’ in their points of unity. One of those, however, with their first point being that no meaningful engagement with the broader Dutch left is possible, and that focus should be only on building the RSP.

What then is ‘partyism’? For some comrades, this word must mean nothing more than recognising the necessity of a mass communist party. And sure, this aim already differentiates them from various parts of the left; but it does not meaningfully differentiate them strategically from most of the radical left. Indeed, just like all the other small groups, they say the focus should be on agitation: ie, going ‘directly to the working class’. This strategy has been tried and tested, and it does not suffice to build the party we need.

As far as I am concerned, you can use the label ‘partyism’ (although its direct Dutch translation - ‘partijïsme’ - is so hideous that it should not be put in print). But then let us discuss with all partyists the strategical questions that can bring about mass communist parties and a new international - also with those publishing this paper, to which you have sent your article.

Filip Spijkerman
Communist Platform, Netherlands

Real politics

We have in last week’s Weekly Worker (October 1) a letter from Stuart Leigh calling for the CPGB and especially Carla Roberts to, I guess, get their hands dirty and get stuck into some “real politics”. Leigh calls for “standing for election or taking up the grim, unglamorous burden of municipal representation” which currently “is recoiled from, as if it were a direct invitation to contract advanced tertiary syphilis”.

So the CPGB, especially comrade Roberts, should stand for election and if seats are won, even a minority, then we should take up “the grim, unglamorous burden of municipal representation”. I assume that this means that if we join a government, national or local, we should at least go along with arms for Ukraine and Israel; reductions in health care, pensions and housing assistance … These are just a price we have to pay, presumably, “to advance the class struggle”. But no. The CPGB has, instead, “cowardice of the professional critic, terrified that contact with the messy, friction-ridden apparatus of real politics might expose a total lack of traction”.

And finally, “Carla Roberts and her Weekly Worker comrades know how to call for the building of a mass communist party: you just don’t know how to build the mass communist party. And that’s really the most important part: the building. Anybody can just call for one!”

I must apologise here for the multiple repetitions from the original. I’ve tried to cut through the lengthy faux eloquence to see what he’s getting at: we should be prepared to get our hands dirty in a genuine struggle to build a communist party, even if this means acting as a junior partner to reformists.

One problem here is that he fails to give a single example of this effort bringing success - or even just a partial failure. The Greens’ support of the SPD in Germany? Militant support for Labour in Liverpool? The successes of Podemos in Spain? Nearer home, Corbynista support for Labour? Where are our lodestars?

The CPGB is obviously hankering after the Russian success of 1917, but what has happened since? I am reminded of an interview with Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22. It was pointed out to him that he had written nothing as good since. He replied: “Neither has anyone else.”

So we still need to build mass communist parties of the working class and apparently the CPGB is busy dreaming, not building. So come on, comrade: show us how it’s done.

Jim Nelson
email

Deep critique

I’m taking a second bite at comrade Lawrence Parker’s cherry, as it were, because my first reply to him last week (Letters, October 1) fell short by dwelling on the facile personal side rather than the substance he raised (Letters, September 24).

He states: “The fundamental issue is this: can we use older forms (such as Brecht’s learning plays) today without an accompanying deep critique of history and theory?” Well, rather than Parker’s accusation of us uncritically plucking at ‘favourite things’, that is precisely how this whole project first developed. I approached Esther Leslie to explore how Brecht’s learning play, The exception and the rule, had its world premiere in a kibbutz near Haifa on May Day 1938 and how Israeli cultural forces have recently been taking credit for this.

Of course, this demands a close study of the historical circumstances around the play and production. In particular how those in the kibbutz who considered themselves communists equated that with Zionism - a racist ideology that grew to consider itself to be the exception and the ruler.

We’ve gone further into this with the discovery that the International Brecht Society (IBS) held its 2022 international symposium in Tel Aviv University despite calls from IBS members and Palestinian theatre companies that this was breaking the BDS cultural boycott and excluded Palestinians.

In solidarity with such a call from IBS member and Norwegian playwright Finn Iunker, who fought the decision from within, we declared that the IBS had forsaken its claim to the mantle of Brecht’s aim to create a Diderot Gesellschaft Movement - an international society of artists, scientists, academics and others collectivising to counter prevailing fascist ideology. This was all something we learned from Iunker and took up that cause, with the beginnings of such a society already formulating. This is putting into practice what Parker says is needed: as “the road of critique at least gives the movement a chance to come together”.

The call for such a Diderot Gesellschaft movement has been issued at Communist University and will be extended with its own session at the Historical Materialism conference in London in November.

Tam Dean Burn
Glasgow

Defend juries

Although the government has shelved its plan to abolish most jury trials, it still intends to double the sentencing power of magistrates to two years, to introduce judge-only trials in “lengthy and technical” fraud cases and to abolish the right to elect trial by jury in ‘either way’ cases, thereby greatly restricting access to legal aid. It is not clear whether or not the government still intends to abolish the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates’ court to the crown court.

Every one of those measures must be resisted without compromise.

David Lindsay
Lanchester