From Martin Shaw
Comrade,
It is surprising that Dave Windsor (letters, August), who sets so much store on recalling the positions allegedly adopted by writers in International Socialism, should have forgotten the very apt comments of Pat Jordan, on the subject of "sectarian mud-slinging", in IS 19. It is even more surprising that the editor of International should seem to endorse this oversight, as I gather that cde Jordan is now a leading member of your International Marxist Group.
Cde Jordan then proposed that discussion between socialists of different tendencies should "(1)... be concrete and related to the living movement... (2) it must not challenge the socialist credentials of the participants unless there is [illegible] each side should not misrepresent the ideas of anyone concerned?)". Otherwise polemic degenerates into hair-splitting and/or exchange of abuse.
[illegible] namely Kidron's support for the LSSP, [I] must state that it is he (Windsor) who is drawing the [illegible] Socialist Worker (8.3.69), stating that Harris [called] for the Pakistan left to support Bhutto. [illegible] Ayub Khan's [illegible] type figure, at worst (and more likely) a Kerensky, who would seek to bring Pakistan back into the western camp." In fact, Harris's article was very largely given over to a call to expose Bhutto as an opportunist, chauvinist politician whose apparent move to the left would prepare the movement for betrayal. It concluded:
"For the Pakistan left, the task must be to force Bhutto and the movement further and further left, to push the demand for civil rights into a demand for popular power, to build a movement which Bhutto cannot sell out. A peasant and worker alliance to begin the permanent revolution in Pakistan can transform the whole perspective for socialism in Asia."
Why the direct misrepresentation? Cde Windsor cannot bear facts which do not fit into his picture of IS as opposed to social revolution in the third world. This is achieved as much by omission as by direct misrepresentation. For a more authoritative statement of the IS position on Ceylon, I would refer readers to the editorial in IS 18, which attacked the LSSP participation in a bourgeois coalition. This is much more consistent with IS's general line, which is the strongest possible advocacy of social revolution. [illegible] from the standpoint of denial, IS has been forced to develop a theory of state capitalism to account for and characterise the [illegible] Unlike those "orthodox" Trotskyists who have seen these regimes [illegible] despite the obviously non-proletarian social content of the changes, IS has insisted on the need to carry out the [illegible] opposition to these regimes as well as to imperialism, etc. To characterise petty-bourgeois nationalist regimes as in some cases "state capitalist" is precisely the theoretical means of [illegible] capitalist status to them. This is the [illegible] cde Windsor seeks to distort.
And it must be said that he is not above violating cde Jordan's second criterion, by challenging the socialist credentials of cdes Kidron and Harris. This he does by a smear tactic, rather than directly. Burnham and Shachtman "challenged the Trotskyist concepts of the Soviet Union and ended up on the extreme right wing". Kidron and Harris also challenge [it], so they are [illegible] - [this is not] conclusive, as (1) they do not challenge it on the same grounds as did Burnham and Shachtman, (2) others have [questioned] it without ending up on the right, and (3) "orthodox" Trotskyists have also been known to sell out.
The smear tactic is also used to link IS with the Ceylon LSSP's sell-out. Anil Moonesinghe, a member of the Socialist Review group in the early '50s in Britain, later joined the bourgeois coalition as one of the LSSP leaders. But why should IS be responsible for the actions of an individual who had no political links with them at the time, and was in fact a member of a party which was under the international discipline of another tendency, namely the Fourth International (Unified Secretariat)? Surely it is that tendency which bears responsibility, linked as it was to the LSSP not by the past affiliations of one individual but by common discipline with the whole party. After all (cde Windsor omits to mention this) it was not until after the LSSP voted to join the Government in June 1964 that the F.I. acted to assert its discipline against any of the leaders who had for some time previously been preparing this step. (Even then only 3 were expelled, the rest merely suspended, and no action at all taken against a group which did not leave to join the LSSP (!), although it disapproved of the coalition.)
These "criticisms" of the F.I. are, I feel, "concrete", and also "relevant to the living movement" because they relate to the functioning of the International to which the IMG has just affiliated, and which other socialist groups must evaluate if they are to take their international responsibilities seriously. Cde Windsor's points, on the other hand, are for the most part a compound of smears and misrepresentation. There is a valid criticism of cde Kidron's article - that the problem of the isolation of the revolution in Ceylon should not lead one to support entry into a bourgeois government. But cde Windsor has not established the case that this indicates a general criticism of IS theory. On the contrary, his methods of argument have discredited it. Let us hope that the editor of International will not help to reintroduce such methods, in defiance of the excellent standards proposed by cde Jordan in the past.
From Nigel Harris
Dear Comrade,
I am surprised that your journal chose to publish the letter of a certain Dave Windsor in your last issue. There are important theoretical differences between International Socialism and your journal, but they have little or nothing to do with the comical antics of Mr. Windsor. Apart from Windsor's childish distortion of Kidron's [illegible], Socialist Worker ([illegible] 3rd, 1969), and his choice of publishing his letter in your journal rather than sending it to Socialist Worker, his astonishing ignorance both of the viewpoints of Trotskyism and of International Socialism would ordinarily mean his contribution was not worth answering. I will not weary your readers by listing Windsor's silliness, but there is one deliberate and bald lie which concerns myself and cannot unfortunately be allowed to pass.
Windsor writes: "In an article on Pakistan, published around the time of the upheaval in that country last year, Nigel Harris called for the Pakistan left to support Bhutto". It is not clear what article Windsor refers to, but whatever it is, his statement is the exact reverse of the truth. I wrote two articles on Pakistan, one in Socialist Worker (112, March 5th, 1969), and one in International Socialism (36, April/May, p.5). In neither did I advocate support for Bhutto; on the contrary, both pieces contained the same details mentioned by Windsor as reasons for not supporting Bhutto, and were designed to prevent socialists thinking any solution lay with Bhutto. Poor Windsor, I fear, fell over his feet in his eagerness to be malicious, to avoid the serious issues in the trivialities of his shallow spite. Why he should want to be malicious, rather than debate seriously, I fear I do not know.
I can do no better, by way of reply, than rephrase a recent statement by Comrade Pat Jordan: "If Windsor wants to discuss these things fruitfully he should elevate the discussion to a political one, dispense with sneers and misrepresentations (such as claiming that IS's perspective is that of the Mensheviks) and argue intelligently. A first prerequisite to all this would be for him to state where he stands in clear political terms" (Black Dwarf, Aug. 30th, 1969, p.5)
A REJOINDER by Dave Windsor
Both Martin Shaw and Nigel Harris seek to divert attention from a political criticism of Mike Kidron's "defence" (or "explanation" as he now calls it - see SOCIALIST WORKER, 14/9/69) of the reformist policies of the LSSP.
They seek to do this by making a song and dance about me telling "lies" about Nigel Harris' article on Pakistan. This, of course, is a classic debating trick. The most monstrous lie appearing in INTERNATIONAL would not change the reality - in a paper which claims to be revolutionary socialist an article appeared which was a rationalisation of the betrayal of the Ceylon working class. The motives of the writer are irrelevant. The fact that it could appear without comment and without any criticism from IS members is a very significant fact. When a Ceylonese Trotskyist wrote an angry reply, he was told it could not be published because it was too long. Perhaps it was - but no attempt was made to arrive at some method of publishing his views, say, by printing part of the letter. Despite all this we know there is considerable opposition inside IS to the article and not just from the numerous opposition factions.
However, seeing that a charge of lying has been levelled at me, let me deal with that first.
It is true that Nigel Harris does not use the expression "the left in Pakistan should support Bhutto". It is also true that his article contains many criticisms of Bhutto. It is not true to say that the article was "very largely given over to a call to expose Bhutto as an opportunist, chauvinist politician whose apparent move to the left would prepare the movement for betrayal."
In fact, the very passage Martin Shaw quotes confirms my POLITICAL ASSESSMENT of Nigel Harris' position.
This passage is the crucial one in the article because it deals with the "task" of the Pakistan left. According to Nigel Harris this is two-fold: (1) force Bhutto and the movement further and further left, and (2) build a movement that Bhutto cannot sell out.
I put it to readers of INTERNATIONAL: is there any other interpretation that one can put on this two-fold task than that of the left joining with Bhutto in the fight against Pakistan's rulers? A revolutionary would say that the task is to push Bhutto to the wall, not to the left. Furthermore how can one even pose the question of Bhutto selling out a movement unless he is part of it? It would be a logical absurdity to talk of him betraying a movement which is fighting him.
Nigel Harris' formulation is diametrically opposed to the task set by the theory of the permanent revolution: that of building a movement completely independent of the national bourgeoisie and in conflict with its representatives. Mere talk of pushing Bhutto to the left implies some illusions that he can be pushed to the left (and that it is possible to prevent him selling out). The whole formulation is similar to that of the Indonesian CP's attitude to Sukarno. After all, they sought to push him to the left while they were building a "movement he could not sell out."
In case Martin Shaw is thinking of making the charge that I am basing all this on one short passage, let me quote other references to Bhutto in the article:
"Behind the politicians is the opportunist Bhutto. But behind Bhutto are the millions for whom Pakistan's much lauded 6% economic growth rate... over the past decade, has meant only increasing hardship and deprivation...."
"To keep the pot boiling, he (Bhutto) has recently talked vaguely about land to the tillers' and will probably get away with it since he has no peasant support. He has won some industrial worker support, but he has not raised the issue of nationalisation or workers' control." (Fancy that - maybe if pushed further and further left he will go the whole hog and come out in favour of nationalisation with workers control over his own huge estates!)
It seems fairly clear that in Nigel Harris' opinion, Bhutto was a figure capable, if pushed further and further left, of assisting the building of a movement (which of course the left would ensure Bhutto did not sell out) which would "raise for the first time on a massive scale an authentic alternative to the Indian Congress. It is interesting to note that Martin Shaw left this out in his version of the "conclusion" of the article.
Throwing in the odd phrase about "a peasant and worker alliance to begin the permanent revolution in Pakistan" is mere rhetoric. The old revisionist leaders of the social democrat parties used to talk quite often about revolution in their Sunday sermons on May Day. The essence of a revolutionary approach is what one says people should do here and now. Nigel Harris says that the Left should push Bhutto further and further left and build a movement he cannot sell out - there is nothing revolutionary in that.
It is somewhat presumptuous for writers in Britain to tell the left in Pakistan what its task is. However, according to the theory of the permanent revolution one would expect it to construct a revolutionary party which would aim via a worker and peasant alliance, under the leadership of the former, to carry out a proletarian revolution.
Talk of, at this stage when there is no revolutionary organisation, raising "on a massive scale an authentic alternative to the Indian Congress" is, in reality, the talk of building a bourgeois organisation. Such an organisation would [back] Bhutto, with "his industrial worker support", because Pakistan's millions are "behind" him.
Martin Shaw and Nigel Harris may seek to make a debating point about my use of the word "support" but that is running away from the "politics" of what he said. And it is his political assessment I was opposing not the words he used to describe [it].
Both writers accuse me of transgressing the apt and excellent arguments and standards of Pat Jordan in an early edition of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM (number 1[9] by the current numbering). First let me say that I agree with the main line of that article; apart from some criticism I would have of it as underestimating the value of polemic as a method of clarifying ideas.
It will be interesting for readers of INTERNATIONAL to learn of the circumstances which led to Pat Jordan writing the article. In issue number 1[9] (new enumeration) of IS, edited by Mike Kidron, an editorial had appeared criticising INTERNATIONAL's predecessor, THE WEEK. Among the charges it made were:
(a) "VOICE OF THE UNIONS and THE WEEK, normally more critical than TRIBUNE, have tied themselves [to] a policy scarcely different..."
(b) (Crime of crimes) "THE WEEK wants us [to ask] workers [for] transitional demands!... to prevent (the) government falling back on its commitments..."
The bone of the IS argument was that THE WEEK by linking the fight against the wage freeze and incomes policy with offensive slogans, such as "open the books" was "giving qualified support for wage freeze" and "unqualified support for leftish trade union leaders".
Less than a year later, one of the editors of THE WEEK and main target for IS abuse, Ken Coates, was expelled from the Labour Party for opposition to the Wilson government.
Whatever subsequent differences may have emerged, the comrades around THE WEEK were outraged by this attack which "did challenge the socialist credentials" of Ken Coates. They, therefore, commissioned Pat Jordan to write a letter in reply.
Pat Jordan could have found other targets in that issue of IS. Thus we have Nigel Harris again writing on the Indian sub-continent. In an article entitled "India: A First Approximation", he concluded:
"The aim for socialists is less trying to annihilate their strained and spare resources to competing for urban middle class support.... but, rather seeking to conserve and garner their cadres against the coming storm...
"In the interstices of the political federations of the trade unions, in the work of the smaller parties, like the Revolutionary Socialist Party," (now participating in two state coalition governments) - [illegible] small but responsible (sic), is the seedbed for future action. The ideological consciousness involved is not and cannot be high, and the formal policy decisions often wrong - the RSP is no more preserved from the prevailing atmosphere of middle class chauvinism than any other Indian party - but it is here that a start can be made in the immense task of building the sort of organisation that can both protect workers during the violent clash between capital, state and the land, and provide a context in which workers can develop consciousness.
"For Indian socialist aspirations, these are bleak, Economist words, but for responsible (sic) socialists, THE FUTURE IN INDIA WHEN THERE IS AN INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT WHICH CAN BE A SIGNIFICANT NATIONAL FORCE and assert a decisive role is of more importance than the immediate middle class gains of riding the current factions in the hope that if only power can be seized, socialism can be forced on society by a small clique. At the outside, within a national context, Nasser and Mao might be possible, but socialism is not."
[my emphasis throughout - DW.]
I should explain before going further that Nigel Harris, like the Stalinists and Kautsky, seems to equate a successful proletarian revolution with the establishment of socialism - whereas I follow the traditional Marxist practice of calling the period following such a revolution the dictatorship of the proletariat. The latter is a society of a transitional nature where capitalism has been overthrown but socialism has not yet been established because classes (and therefore the state machine) still exist.
Returning to Nigel Harris' article on India, it is clear that, for him socialists have to bide their time concentrating on economist demands until the future when the working class is much stronger. This is pure Menshevism. Nigel Harris seems almost to be aware of this with his use of the term Economist (with a capital E) to describe his assessment. The Economists represented the extreme right of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and were the original opponents of Lenin in his endeavours to "bolshevise" that party.
Just like the Mensheviks, Nigel Harris says that it is useless for revolutionaries to do anything but "build a movement that can both protect workers... and provide a context in which workers can develop consciousness" because they have to wait for the time when the "industrial proletariat... can be a significant national force..."
This means telling the revolutionaries of India (and all other countries with a similar socio-economic structure, i.e., the overwhelming majority of mankind): we are very sorry, despite all the misery and suffering, time is not ripe for you to make a proletarian revolution. You will have to wait until we "advanced" and "responsible" socialists, coming from a country where the working class is a significant national force, make revolution. This argument is not merely reformist it is chauvinistic as well. Fortunately, for mankind's social advance, the Bolsheviks, the Chinese, the Cubans, and the Vietnamese have all rejected this type of advice and made revolutions which have destroyed capitalism over one-third of the world.
In the second half of my reply I will deal with the arguments about the social nature of these revolutions and will demonstrate that the positions of Mike Kidron and Nigel Harris are directly and organically descended from those of Burnham and Shachtman.
Note: All my quotations from Nigel Harris' article on Pakistan are based on a version appearing in the April, 1969, edition of INDEPENDENT SOCIALIST, the journal of the ISC. This is because I was unable to obtain the copy of SOCIALIST WORKER from which it was reproduced - I hope, for the sake of good relations between IS and the former ISC (now also IS) that the reproduction was accurate. before Martin Shaw starts to scream about lies and making explicit what is only implicit, let him consider what E.H. Carr (who is not a member of the IMG) said about the differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks:
"...the Mensheviks followed the legal Marxists in their emphasis on revolutionary theory and in their postponement of revolutionary action to some still remote future; they followed the Economists in preferring the economic concept of class to the political concept of party and believing that the only concrete aim that could be offered to the workers at the present stage was the improvement of their economic lot....." ("The Bolshevik Revolution", Penguin edition, volume 1, page 51)