Re: Unity as organizational fetishism

[m-14970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Hugh Rodwell)]

Ryan D got very heated over my remarks on the International Viewpoint
article on a cold fusion party project in Turkey. I'll look at a couple of
his comments.

H>> In the whole article there is not a single concrete policy position
 >> presented. Policy documents are mentioned, as is the 'Kurdish question',
 >> but no indication is given as to the content involved or any stands taken.
 >
R>Given a) the article is an overview document of the creation of a new
 >party, not a detailed summary of the party's programme or orientations

I didn't ask for a detailed summary, not even for a programme or
orientation. It was concrete policy positions.

R >b) it is entirely possible for a multi-tendencied organization to manage
  >several programmatic positions within one organization while maintaining
  >unity in action, it would be inappropriate for a brief newsy article like
  >this to hold up one programmatic position as superior or dominant,
  >especially given the history of the Turkish left.

Just tell us some of the significant positions, then, maybe one or two of
the differences. Tell us some of the goals for action that were agreed on.
Tell us something with *political content*. There's room in this article
for lots of policy indications. I didn't ask for any positions to be
presented as superior. Dominant may have been interesting - it indicates
how a party might move - but I didn't ask for this specifically either. We
are told nothing of any substance about the Turkish left except that it's
been sectarian. Very helpful.

 >c) There is obviously no programmatic position which the group could
choose that
 >could satisfy you anyways -- unless of course the group happened to be
_your
 >group._

Now this is a wonderful bit of polemical logic. A third given? Or the
conclusion following on the first two givens? But it's the 'obviously' I
like. I ask for a policy position, as there were none in the article. What
do I get? A defence of a politically empty article and violent abuse about
- sectarianism! Try me on a few programmatic positions. Or tell me first
(by thought-reading?) just why you're so certain I won't be satisfied.

H>> This is pure opportunism. The kind of unity aimed for is cliquish and
  >> feel-good, the worst kind of Broad Left cop-out. 'He's a Kemalist
  >> Social-Democrat, but he's *our* Kemalist Social-Democrat, so that's all
  >> right. Kurdish question? That's *hard* , so we don't talk about it too
  >> much, I guess.'

R >a) It was explicitly stated that the party was founded as an independent
  >worker's party, separate from the Social Democrats.  b) The Kurdish
  >question was also addressed in the article, if you chose to read with
  >your Sectarian Reading Glasses off.  c) The fact that you consider
  >efforts at Broad-Left to be "pure opportunism" just indicates how out of
  >touch with actual struggles and movements of the working class and
  >oppressed you _are._

a) The article specifically states that there is a 'risk of dilution': 'These
new militants are politically to the right of the organisations which founded
the VDP. This revolutionary socialist core could find itself "diluted" by the
newcomers, many of whom have the traditional, Kemalist [secular, modernist,
nationalist] ideology of Turkish social democracy, which is reformist to the
core.' I practically quoted the article in my remark.

b) If you think referring to a 'Peace Festival, centred on the Kurdish
question' is somehow addressing the Kurdish question, you're deluding
yourself. In fact I'd say you need 'Sectarian Reading Glasses' to even
dream that the Kurdish question was addressed in the article. What I'd like
to know is what the new party or significant groups in it, or even less
significant groups ('smaller groups, like Yeniyol') such as your
correspondent's, actually think about the Kurdish question, where they
stand on the Kurdistan issue, for instance, or on the military question, or
the role of imperialism in relation to the Kurds (both the EU and the US).

c) The fact that you consider the Broad Left to offer any sort of
alternative for the workers and oppressed is very revealing. What the class
needs is solutions to the problems it faces. Neither the correspondent or
yourself make any mention of recent international experience with
broadly-based non-revolutionary parties. You do not refer to your efforts
as being different from those of the Broad Left. The Broad Left in Britain
is a joke. Why not deal with the PT in Brazil and ANC in South Africa? What
do Popular Front policies have to offer the working class except sell-outs
to the bourgeoisie and preparation for defeat? Popular Front governments
are strike-breakers, not revolutionary forces. Reread (sorry, read)
Left-Wing Communism by Lenin to get a few hints about how revolutionary
Marxists should deal with radicalizing workers attracted to reformist
movements. How to work within and criticize reformist parties without
losing the distinctness of your revolutionary standpoint. The support you
should give reformist leaders is like the support a rope gives a hanging
man, Lenin says. In the article and in your response I see none of this
independent class spirit, nothing of spitting in the eye of bourgeois
forces within the class.

R >Maybe you should contact the FI to _find out_ what those "fundamental
  >themes" are -- the article is obviously not designed with that in mind.

Articles in the USec press rarely are. In Sweden we're treated to week
after week of recipes for the state to make capitalism work. Their
principal writer on economics, while providing handy figures and the
exposure of some government and bourgeois lies on such things as inflation
etc (helpful stuff), is unwilling to call himself a marxist or a
revolutionary.

>your dismissal
>outright of any kind of left project other than your own

This 'any kind of' is rich! What you are defending and I am criticizing is
a very specific attitude to a left project. As I've pointed out, there are
no grounds in the article for taking much of a position on the project
itself, as no positions are formulated. For a group such as Yeniyol it's
either the prelude to liquidation or to a demoralizing and painful return
to sectarian existence. In the battle for working class leadership,
revolutionaries have to meet and discuss with and fight against many
projects of the left and right not their own. Good left projects are ones
that develop the class - British examples are the miners' support
committees during the miners' strike of 1984-85 and the anti-Poll-Tax
movement, a good Swedish one that fizzled out was the Workers' List, a good
European one is Workers' Aid to Bosnia (non-Usec). All political projects
must be analysed for their positions, and their organizational dynamics
taken into account. Assessment is not dismissal.

Your arguments concerning 'no upturn and growth in the class struggle' are
just evasive. You don't explicitly say whether you agree or not. I would
argue that the growth of a workers' party expresses an upturn in class
struggle. It might be limited to the political aspect. It might turn out to
be a lousy party. Then the struggle will either widen, carry on and ditch
the party, or subside again.

You round off by saying:

R >First, it is quite clear that these people have principles -- it is you
  >who is being unprincipled in your obvious refusal to work with people
  >without the same line as yourself.

Tell me Ryan, how is it clear that these people have principles? How could
I or anyone not a thought-reader or a blind sectarian supporter possibly
know? There's no information in the article to draw any such conclusion. To
judge principles you need to know positions and actions over a period of
time. Let us in on your secrets!

R > Secondly, your comment about getting
  >a hundred new members simply reveals how small and isolated your own
  >group is.

I don't belong to a group. I belong to a party. An international one. Tell
me what you know about it that justifies your concluding remarks. And make
sure you mention at least one policy position.

I wonder what you would have said in the late 1840s about Marx and Engels
and their decision to join the League of the Just? And do you think they
wrote from a position of 'my group right or wrong'?

The venom of your response to my remarks, the fanatical attempts to smear
me as an insignificant sectarian, the total lack of understanding in
relation to the need for being explicit on political positions, and the
organizational cretinism of your attitude would all make me think twice
before getting into any kind of relationship with you and your party.
Assuming you are representative of it.

I'm perfectly willing to alter this critical stand, however, if you come up
with something substantive on, say, Turkey. You have organizational
contacts, you claim programmatic positions, you say you address the Kurdish
question. Give us some idea of the political situation in relation to this,
and what the USec proposes to do about it.

Cheers,

Hugh




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