Ben Reid goes ballistic

["Gould's Book Arcade" <ggouldsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Positive "critical reflection" and OzLeft

Ben Reid goes ballistic and triggers off David Murray. Blimey!

By Bob Gould
There must be some special additive in the Newcastle water supply that is
incompatible with the Ozleft website. Our modest but energetic literary
activities seem to have driven Ben Reid in the DSP, and Dave Murray in the
Socialist Party, into a real frenzy.
It's worth examining the nasty, petulant tone of Ben Reid's comments, which
so appeals to Dave Murray and feeds his delusion that in some way the
smallish Socialist Party is a powerful proletarian vanguard.
Reid disagrees with Bob Gould's united front orientation towards Laborism,
and on another plane considers Gould a sentimental windbag. Well, the first
point is a political disagreement that can be discussed, and the second is
clearly a matter of taste. If Ben Reid doesn't like Gould's writings he
doesn't have to read them.
As to the question of gossip. One person's gossip is another person's
information, and we've been at some pains to construct a serious website
with significant theoretical material and pointers to a great deal more
useful material on other sites. Reid's scathing comments about Gould's
writings is revealing in one way: a number of Gould's writings on the site
are on general socialist questions that don't directly relate to differences
between left groups, and one of the reasons we put them up is that there's a
dearth of serious public consideration of a number of general questions from
a Marxist point of view in Australia. You certainly don't get much in the
way of reflective Marxist material in Green Left Weekly.
The aim of Ozleft is to help develop a serious discussion on many questions
between the members of the various socialist groups and a number of
individual socialists, in a way that's not catered for by other sites, and
to make connections with useful material on a number of other sites.
What Reid calls gossip is in fact significant material about developments in
the internal life of various Marxist groups. That kind of information, which
Reid calls gossip, is of considerable interest to many socialists because
they want to get some insight into why the various groups, in this case the
DSP, act as they do.
For my sins, I've been active in Marxist politics for roughly 50 years, and
I started off in the orbit of the Communist Party, from which I broke after
1956. Ben Reid's vituperative tone is powerfully remeniscent to me of the
attitude of loyalist members of the Stalinist Communist Party of my youth
towards anyone who broke away.
This memory was brought back fairly sharply by an event a month or so ago,
when 40 of us who had been in the orbit of the CPA in 1956 reminisced about
our experiences at a Labor History Society meeting on 1956 and Khrushchev's
Secret Speech.
John Percy's tone, Ben Reid's tone and Dave Murray's tone are frighteningly
similar to that of the CPA leadership and loyalists towards people who left
the CPA. The same psychological analysis: anyone who leaves and makes any
kind of balance sheet of their experiences in the organisation is dishonest,
hiding something (in this case "anti-Leninism"), and poor Zanny and Sean are
"eastern suburbs Melbourne brats" who were "treated with kid gloves", with
the other assertion common in Stalinist circles that the denouncer "agreed"
with some of what they said until they turned out to be such disloyalists.
Ben Reid, who I don't believe I've ever met, is just a bit on the pompous
side. I've seen several letters by him to the bourgeois press in which he
reinforces his claim to status by calling himself Dr Ben Reid to stress his
academic significance. Maybe his objection to "Gould's meanderings" is that
they're not in an approved academic style that appeals to him.
Politically speaking, the thing that unites Ben Reid, John Percy and Dave
Murray is the eccentric focus they constantly place on the absolutely
central role in the workers' movement they claim for their relatively small
Marxist organisations.
The political line of both groups embodies the implicit notion, that the
workers' movement revolves around them. Both organisations are of some
modest significance, particularly among the small number of Marxist cadres
in this difficult period, which is why, despite their obsessive,
self-centred demeanour it's important to try to conduct a political
discussion with them regardless of their prickly response to such attempts.
Those two groups are not, however, the gravitational centre of the workers'
movement, despite their view of themselves and their role.
A point about the ex-members who are alleged by Reid and Murray to be
"eastern suburbs brats": it is a fact that these people and several others
in their group were talented children of the middle class who joined the
DSP, swimming against the stream in the bleak environment for Marxists of
the 1990s.
Without knowing the details, I'd bet London to the proverbial brick that
they were squeezed in the usual DSP way for substantial contributions to the
organisation. There's nothing wrong with that either, but it's gratuitously
offensive and straight out of the school of Stalinism to pour shit over them
after they've left the organisation on the basis of clearly stated political
disagreements.(The social composition of the DSP as a whole, is
predominantly made up of people similar to Sean and Zanny, of middle class
background, recruited to the DSP when they were students. This social
composition is an inevitable part of the current social circumstances, the
weakness of the DSP's approach is that the DSP adapt to the remoteness from
the workers movement of many of it's student recruits. It's offensive,
insulting and cynical, however for Ben reid to throw their class background
at Sean and Zanny in the way that he does. What's Dr Ben Reid's class
background: where did he get his certificate of Proletarian class
authenticity?)
Reid's, Percy's and Murray's abusive tone tells you far more about the
political approach of the people doing the abusing than about the politics
of the people being abused.
It's a superb piece of political irony that at the same time as the DSP
leadership is proclaiming its ecumenical attitude to others in the Socialist
Alliance that they pour such gratuitous abuse on former members of their own
organisation.
THE QUESTION OF ZINOVIEVISM
John Percy, in particular, is supremely sensitive to discussions on this
question, and the way this discussion has evolved makes it necessary for
participants in the discussion to construct a balance sheet on what kind of
Marxist organisation they favour.
For my part, I favour Marxist organistion in the Leninist tradition, but the
tradition of the early Lenin, which allowed serious and open discussion.
Over the next couple of weeks I will discuss this question of Zinovievism as
opposed to what a more democratic Marxist organisation might look like. It's
time for some plain speaking about these questions.
Yesterdays contribution on Marxmail by Louis Proyect is of very considerable
value in this regard, though I disagree with the last part of it which seem
imply that the arrangements in the Cuban CP are a model for socialist
organisation, but I will take this matter up in my own further contribution
As far as Ozleft is concerned, Ed, myself and a number of others are
associated in this project. We belong to different mass organisations and we
have a number of political differences among ourselves, which we discuss in
a serious and comradely way.
Our compact in Ozleft is to construct a useful resource for the whole
socialist movement, helping to promote serious political discussion,
supplemented by up-to-the-minute information (which Reid calls gossip) on
the life of Marxist organisations, which bears on the discussion amongst
socialists.
We intend to continue with this project with the energy, sense of proportion
and good humour that we have tried to adopt so far. The paroxysms of
irritation of John Percy, Ben Reid and Dave Murray with us, appear to be
contributing to the popularity of the site. The hit rate has been high in
the past 24 hours. Maybe we should retain Ben Reid as our publicity agent!

Bob gould