WeeklyWorker

Letters

No understand

In ‘Principles and guidelines’ (July 16), Mike Macnair describes some good ways of conducting deliberative and decisive meetings, usefully highlighting the value of identifying counterposed motions, as opposed to misusing amendments.

He also rightly talks about allowing motions and amendments to be introduced when the debate reveals the need, and not just according to prior timetables, and allowing “friendly” drafting amendments without a lot of ritual.

While it is true that the chair has the right and the job of maximising the full expression of the actual views and differences across all participants, the author does not dwell enough on the most fundamental rights of democratic meetings: to challenge the chair’s actions through points of order or procedure (to be voted on) and the ultimate right to evict the chair - a proposal which must be discussed and voted on before any other discussion continues. The meeting belongs to the body of participants. (Pathological or vexatious challenges will get flushed away by social pressure, so that principle is vital.)

Macnair does not understand the United Secretariat of the Fourth International’s ‘no-vote’, saying: “The old International Marxist Group and its successors, while I was a member, had a fourth category: the ‘no-vote’. I was never clear what was the point of a ‘no-vote’ as distinct from an abstention, and I do not see any point to it now.”

If you see a vote recorded as ‘55-23-4-63’, it means 55 for, 23 against, 4 abstaining and 63 not voting. This tells you that something odd is happening. The no-voters might have turned up late and missed the discussion; they might not understand the motion, and don’t feel qualified to vote; they might think it’s being railroaded, and the vote should be postponed.

All of those things are different from abstention, which says, ‘I don’t care’, ‘It doesn’t matter which position we take’. With such a large not-voting count recorded, it is obvious that the vote concerned is suspect. Emphasising that, the number not voting in my example is not large enough to have compelled postponement. But, absent the right to record no-votes, all looks well.

Finally, there is a big difference between a vote where simply the numbers for, against, etc are recorded and a ‘roll call vote’, where the names of voters are recorded, possibly by calling them out from a roll of registered attendees.

The minutes of the founding convention of the US Socialist Workers Party in 1937-38 are helpful in thinking about how to run a democratic, politically purposeful and business-like meeting.

Alex Green
London

No tankies

One thing I find annoying about being a member of the Democratic Socialists of America is that, to follow national-level debates in the organisation, you have to monitor X (the social-media site formerly known as Twitter, owned by the fascist trillionaire, Elon Musk). I get the argument that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but X is a Nazi hellhole, algorithmically designed to aggressively boost the far right. Having these debates anywhere else would be an improvement.

Nevertheless, I thought a DSA member who goes by the X handle, ‘BrentInQueens’, made an interesting point about ideological boundaries within the ecumenical socialist organisation: “If the tent is big enough to include literal Stalinists, it should be big enough to include social democrats and even disaffected liberals.” While I’d like to avoid a potentially damaging split, I think some kind of reckoning within the DSA about what socialism means and what kind of organisation it wants to be is inevitable.

BrentInQueens’ statement was met with widespread derision. For those who aren’t familiar with leftwing subcultures, being accused of liberalism is just about the gravest insult imaginable. The responses came fast and furious. Of course, liberals would never be allowed in the DSA. Social democrats were reluctantly tolerated, and it was only a matter of time before political conditions advanced enough that they could be jettisoned in favour of a more ideologically rigid membership.

I’ll put my cards on the table and say I don’t view Stalinism as meaningfully socialist in any way. Marxist-Leninist regimes, past and present, have merely swapped private control of the means of production by elite capitalists with private control by elite bureaucrats. On top of this, they have implemented a crushing police state. Liberals and social democrats, using the terms as they are understood now, at least support basic democratic rights. Speaking purely on the merits, I’ll take them over tankies.

Thinking strategically, while Stalinists have amassed a significant amount of influence within the DSA, I believe the number of people sympathetic to Marxist-Leninism in the United States is essentially a rounding error and that’s not liable to change. Regular people don’t want to live in a dictatorship. In contrast, the number of people who identify as liberal is quite large. My guess is - based on the popularity of candidates like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani - many of these liberals are in effect social democrats.

Again, if forced to choose, I’m reaching out to liberals and social democrats, not tankies. I think many of the former are actually quite open to genuine democratic socialism. After all, most socialists, so far as I’m aware, are former liberals. But the deep divisions within the DSA are not purely ideological: they’re also strategic. The so-called DSA left is sceptical about (if not opposed to) electoralism, while what’s called the DSA right supports it. That’s why, on ‘the left,’ you have a Stalinist caucus allied with an anarchist-influenced one.

As many have pointed out, if such factions had their way, the DSA wouldn’t have supported Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani, and the organisation would just be another irrelevant leftist sect. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that members of these caucuses would be significantly happier on the pre-2016 left, where I came of age, where they could have presided over a tiny, ideologically-pure fiefdom with no risk of having to dirty their hands with the messy work of pursuing and wielding power in non-ideal circumstances.

At the risk of sounding like an old man, yelling at the youth to get off his lawn, my patience with teenage Soviet cosplayers is increasingly limited. Life is short and I have better things to do than entertain their absurd parsing about what democracy really means. It will be a genuine setback if tankies take greater control of the DSA than they already have, but, ultimately, if they do, I suspect members will vote with their feet and find an organisational home elsewhere. Given the chance, Marxist-Leninists will destroy what makes the DSA special.

Jon Hochschartner
Connecticut

Justified anger

As a regular French reader of the Weekly Worker, I was fully expecting to mostly agree with your take on the ongoing protests in France. Imagine my surprise when I read Jean Laurel’s despicable article in last week’s issue, which, since it is referred to in the main front-page headline, I must imagine is endorsed by the editors in full (‘Readying for the next stage’, October 29).

The paper aligns with the social-chauvinists and left Bonapartists of La France Insoumise against the evil casseurs - monstrous perpetrators of ‘criminal actions’. It ends up having a position to the right of both the mass-strikist, industrial-worker-fetishistic Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste-Révolutionnaires and Lutte Ouvrière and the fully opportunistic Révolution Permanente on the riots, who, while rightly pointing out that destroying small shops is counterproductive, correctly recognised street fighting with police and attacks on private property as an expression of fully justified anger against the government, price-gouging capitalists big and small, and police violence in general.

Obviously, looting and acts of violence against the police are not a reliable way to obtain any kind of lasting victory against the aforementioned actors, or to build working class political power. Nobody denies this, except perhaps a few confused insurrectionary anarchists (generally, those who overtheorise rioting have abandoned the class perspective altogether). But the feeling that peacefully demonstrating has little to no effect is widespread among angry protestors, with the line of argument in favour of looting and rioting being that the government doesn’t react at all to peaceful mass demonstrations, even when they clearly represent the will of the majority, as we have seen repeatedly since the early 2010s.

This perspective seems true to a lot of working class people, when both the ‘violent’ Gilets Jaunes and the ‘violent’ October 17 protests were followed by meagre emergency measures, whereas the mostly peaceful 2023 mass protests - supported by an overwhelming majority of the population - had basically no effect on the passing of the pension reform. Describing October 24 as a success in this regard is frankly ridiculous: hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in a relatively peaceful setting, but the police managed to ban protests in most urban centres, where there was rioting the week before, forcing the Paris demonstration onto the outskirts of the city and violently repressing the demonstration in Lyon. The government, feeling that it had returned ‘order’ to society, went back to ignoring the protestors’ demands, after having feigned some interest over the previous week.

Perhaps comrade Laurel and the Weekly Worker crew would have joined the French Communist Party in railing against ‘irresponsible’ street-fighting students in early May 68. Not me. Class-conscious workers and communists should critically support spontaneous revolt, even when it is violent. As for guarding “shops, bars, cafes, offices and other workplaces” against “criminal actions”, I say it depends: bourgeois law defines what ‘criminality’ is, and both strikes and expropriations can be cast as “criminal actions” in many contexts. Price-gouging is criminal, from the point of view of the working class, and reducing the price of commodities in supermarkets to zero by looting them cannot be dismissed as simple criminality without implicitly accepting bourgeois notions of law and order. Was Richard Oastler advocating industrial sabotage in 1836, in order to “teach these law-defying magistrates to have respect for ... the factory law”, inciting criminality? Is the Weekly Worker opposed to criminal acts in principle?

To be clear, the fact that riotous violence is seen as the only option by thousands of protestors is certainly a sign of working class political disorganisation, but one cannot simply wave away the large number of folk who took part in these actions (30,000 looters in Marseille alone, according to the prefecture) as an “irresponsible minority”. The ongoing trials, which usually end in very heavy sentences for the people arrested, underline the point that they are part and parcel of the broader working class: among the accused are Fedex workers, Uber drivers, people moving from one precarious job to another, as inflation gnaws at their living standards.

Finger-wagging will not convince these workers that they were wrong. It is more likely to convince them that communists are disconnected from working class realities in France. These people fought cops because they felt that doing so may help change things. It is certainly true that organising in a Communist Party would be more efficient, but one needs to talk to these courageous workers and support them against police and judicial repression in order to show that communists are aligned with the most combative elements of the class. This, not pointless moralising, is the first, though not the only, step in “building mass support” - a task which is indeed incomplete.

Comrade Laurel verges into conspiracism when explaining the “police’s rout” on October 17. He claims that it is “at best, a symptom of the intelligence services’ incompetence (which is unlikely), or, at worst, a deliberate strategy to obtain images of vandalism and looting for the media”. He should explain to us how he evaluates the likelihood of either of those options in order to declare the first one unlikely. It is possible that the government willingly allowed looters to operate, although it would then probably have to explain itself to the businesses which suffered over a billion euros of damage, and to the insurers who are going to have to pay for a large part of it (two constituencies that the government usually tries to appease, not incense), but the heavy-handed police and judiciary response does not seem to have been calculated to make looting and rioting easy.

As for why the government didn’t deploy more riot police, I would like to remind the author that riot squads had been spending the previous weeks repressing student protestors under the guise of fighting “urban violence”, and that the government cannot continuously mobilise large numbers of riot police over weeks and weeks, seeing as even these brave Robocops have to take breaks between ‘law enforcement’ operations.

There are then many possible explanations for the police’s inability to keep control of the streets on October 17, and the idea that it was a deliberate plot on the part of the government is not any more likely than the others.

Nicolas Girard
email

Balfour anniversary

In 1917, Britain made a declaration; over a century later, its consequences are still written into the lives of Palestinian refugees. As the Balfour Declaration marks its 109th anniversary, the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) calls on the British government to acknowledge its historical responsibility for the dispossession of the Palestinian people and issue an unequivocal apology for its role in the historical processes that enabled this injustice.

Issued on November 2 1917 by then foreign secretary Arthur Balfour and incorporated into the framework of the British Mandate for Palestine, the declaration became a cornerstone of British policy, forming part of the historical context in which the Nakba of 1948 unfolded, with the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.

These consequences are not only visible in the unresolved plight of Palestinian refugees, but also in the continuing loss of homes and the erosion of conditions necessary for Palestinians to remain on their homeland. In 2026, these violations are reflected in stark figures: approximately 5.9 million Palestine refugees are still registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and shattered in the diaspora; more than 4,300 Palestinians were displaced in the occupied West Bank during the first nine months of 2026 alone; and, since the beginning of 2026, approximately 1,790 Palestinians have been displaced after Israeli authorities demolished their family homes across the occupied West Bank.

The Balfour legacy finds its most devastating contemporary expression in Gaza, where Israel’s genocidal war has compounded the historical realities of Palestinian dispossession with mass killing and repeated forced displacement. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, while approximately 1.9 million people have been displaced at least once amid relentless Israeli bombardment.

Though in September 2025 Britain formally recognised the State of Palestine, affirming the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination, the PRC stresses that, if Britain’s evolving position is to carry meaning beyond diplomatic recognition, it must also address the rights and historical injustices that statehood alone cannot remedy.

The PRC, therefore, calls on the British government to:

Palestine Return Centre
London

Reparations

The transatlantic slave trade is so fundamental to capitalism that at least five of the seven men whose faces appear on United States banknotes were slaveholders.

Meanwhile, there are two arguments against reparations - one execrable and the other unanswerable. The execrable one is that Britain was barely in the slave trade, made little or nothing out of it, retains no benefit of it, pretty much took it up in order to stamp it out, was successful in doing so. It therefore should not even apologise for it, not least because the slaves were better off than they would have been if they had been kept in Africa.

But the unanswerable one is that the slave trade funded enclosure, so that there has always been one struggle both before and after that period, with most white British people descended from slaves’ contemporaries, who were themselves little more than slaves even in law, and less so again in practice.

There are never going to be reparations and no-one seriously expects them; anyone who has ever negotiated anything knows it is best to ask for too much at the start in order to have enough at the end. But there should obviously be an apology. If we had not been wrong before, then why did we change tack? A change of behaviour does not meet the need to apologise as well. Nor does the bad behaviour of other people.

While Tony Blair did say something, in a monarchy the words of a politician are not sufficient. This needs to come from the top - as the king of the Netherlands, on the advice of his ministers (as would be the case here), accepted three years ago.

David Lindsay
Lanchester

History anathema

The liberal, left-hating Guardian has run an article on communists who were ‘traitors’ during the series of post-war governments in Hungary (November 2). No mention is made of the vile fascist regime that existed in the 1930s and was a staunch ally of Hitler throughout World War II.

Hungary went through a series of fascist governments from 1939-45, culminating in the despicable regime of 1944, which deported much of Hungarian Jewry to the death camps. Hungarian troops committed many war crimes alongside the German Nazis on the eastern front. After the crash of 1929, east of the Rhine many of the smaller European states had adopted fascism, mimicking Italy or Germany. Similar regimes arose in Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. Of these only Greece fought against the Axis.

Soviet communism was scant reward for Hungarian communists who survived the war. Initial positive developments were overtaken in later decades by decline, as failure to provide a decent life led to discontent. The structures built by communists to stop western interference, and prevent pre-war elites returning to continue their exploitation of the poor and workers, eventually became repressive organisations such as the Stasi in Eastern Germany.

Such nuanced history is an anathema to western writers of frankly fallacious descriptions of the past. Fortunately the working classes, the poor and the militant youth of Europe can look elsewhere for an explanation of their lives and the lives of those who were their predecessors. And leave the liberal press to their meandering confusions.

K Sean
Kent

Ferdori solidarity

Donato Ferdori, a 56‑year‑old Italian solidarity activist, remains imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces at Givon prison after he decided to resist deportation. He was among 14 international activists detained on October 29 in al-Lubban al-Gharbi, north-west of Ramallah, while accompanying Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest. The other 13 activists - from Italy, the United States, the UK, Australia, Germany, Ireland and Sweden - have either been placed on deportation flights or are awaiting departure.

During the detention, the activists identified as men were handcuffed and shackled at the ankles, with some chained together in pairs. They were forced to strip to their underwear and searched, had their shoelaces confiscated and were held in a high-security cell. They were subsequently transported to Yahalom Detention Centre in chains.

Ferdori was born in Bologna and currently lives in Rome. He holds a PhD, teaches philosophy, history and the humanities in secondary schools, and is a published author of essays, poetry, a novel and articles on literature, music and cinema. Explaining his decision to join international solidarity efforts in Palestine, he said:

“I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are viewed by the majority of Israelis and their government as an inferior people - to be used, subjugated, tortured and even exterminated. I can’t go on living normally as if this wasn’t happening, limiting myself to some statements on social media or participation in demonstrations. For those that can do it, it is necessary to directly oppose - without violence, yet with firm resolve - such crimes against human life and dignity, even confronting the risks that this opposition involves. As common persons, we try to do what the ‘international community’ should do and, shamefully, does not do.”

At the visa revocation hearings, Israeli officials mentioned “public security considerations” as a reason for deportation (likely referring to the false accusation of violating a closed military zone order). The activists were also questioned on supporting so-called “anti-Israel organisations”. During the hearings, photographs taken by the settlers while they were attacking Palestinians in the olive groves were laid out on the immigration officer’s desk. Given that soldiers joined the settlers only when people were already forced out of the olive groves, the presence of those pictures highlights coordination between the settlers and occupation soldiers.

On October 29, Israeli settlers from the Avichai Farm outpost forced Palestinian farmers and international solidarity activists to abandon the olive harvest in the Artada area of Al-Lubban al-Gharbi. The settlers followed the group into the residential area of the village, where Israeli occupation forces joined them and besieged a house, where the activists had gathered. The occupation soldiers detained all 14, accusing them of violating a closed military zone order, although no such order had been presented to them on the agricultural land. Settlers reportedly remained beside the soldiers throughout. The activists were taken to the police station at the Ni’ilin checkpoint and questioned before visa revocation and deportation proceedings began.

Israeli occupation soldiers also detained and severely beat the mayor of Al-Lubban al-Gharbi. Soldiers damaged property at his carpentry workshop and threatened him, warning him not to return to the agricultural land or bring international activists to the village again.

While 13 activists have either been placed on deportation flights or are awaiting departure, the Italian activist remains in Israeli custody after resisting deportation.

The detentions come amid repeated settler attacks on farmers in al-Lubban al-Gharbi, where the expansion of the Avichai Farm outpost has brought land seizures, restricted access to farmland and displacement. The deportation of international volunteers further weakens the solidarity presence Palestinian farmers have asked for during the harvest.

International Solidarity Movement
email