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4 Warneford Road, Oxford OX4 1LT. 5th Jan 1970.
TO: Comrade Mair Davies and the Oxford Branch of the SLL.
Dear Comrades,
I am writing in response to Cd. Mair's invitation to do so made on the last occasion we discussed (20th Nov '69).
Let me begin by making one point: Cd. Mair saw fit, during that conversation, to refer to serious mistakes made by me in the past. I found this surprising for several reasons: firstly, since I believed on the basis both of previous discussions and of letters and documents which I possess, that all concerned understood that those mistakes had been corrected and would not be repeated; secondly, since Ihad during the subsequent period supported and helped the League in many ways (as my bank statement, for example, would reveal), and this assistance had been accepted without ever any reference to those mistakes. Nevertheless, if anyone imagines that something could be learned, by someone who does not already know it, from a further discussion of them, I would be perfectly willing to go over them in private or in public; in the event of a public discussion, I would suggest that the process - which I found singularly unedifying - of my exclusion from the YS last November on grounds of 'trying to demoralise' people and 'disagreeing with the leadership of the Socialist Labour League' be simultaneously examined.
But I was most surprised because mistakes of over a quarter of my life ago - while indicating whatever one cares to deduce about me - are utterly irrelevant to answering the scientific questions which I had tried to raise: Is the analysis made by the SLL of social, economic and political conditions in Britain today correct? Are the policies which it advances to meet those conditions correct? Has it made serious errors in the past? If so, has it understood, corrected and accounted for them?
For my attitude to mistakes, both of individuals and, especially, of revolutionary socialist organisations is that taken by Lenin in Left-Wing' Communism:
"A political party's attitude towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it fulfills in practice its obligations towards its class and the working people. Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions that have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification - that is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and train its class, and then the masses."(V.I.Lenin, Selected Works Vol 3, Moscow, 1967, p368, original emphasis.)
And it is to the scientific questions which were raised when last we talked that I will refer here. You will recall that, apart from unimportant tactical issues, the main questions on which we were in disagreement were those I have mentioned above. In particular, I criticised the Statement of the PC of the SLL, "A Political Challenge" (Workers Press 25th Oct. '69) along the following lines:
1. I suggested that it suffered from various literary defects. While the question is hardly vital, you must surely - unless you believe there exists such a thing as the "rate of profit on return from international trading", or that Wilson's purpose in reducing imports is "to cut consumption of the workers" - accept that criticism.
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2. I argued that it minimised the important obstacle to the leadership of of the masses by the SLL which is presented by the trade union bureaucracy; for example, I disagreed with the assertion that "the NUM executive ... have lost the confidence of miners everywhere", arguing that, if that were true, a greater proportion of miners would have struck than in fact did, and the NUM executive would have found it more difficult to strangle the strike in the way that it did. I still feel that those criticisms were also justified.
3. I criticised the statement for failing to mention nationalisation, or trade union democracy, for containing not a single transitional demand, for discussing the Common Market without advancing the slogan of a United Socialist States of Europe, and in general for asserting (3 times, in fact) that it is necessary to build the alternative socialist leadership without explaining how that essential task should be undertaken.
4. I also disagreed with it when it stated that: "The road now opens for the building of the revolutionary working-class party which every worker is beginning to recognise is needed" (my emphasis); I confess I still feel that such an assessment is overoptimistic.
You may recall that I had doubts about the Swindon By-election. I have thought about the question further, and I feel obliged to state that I disagree with the correspondent in last November's Keep Left who observed "the YS and ... SLL have achieved a great victory in putting up a candidate in the Swindon by-election. This is a blow to the capitalist employers." Indeed, if anything, the comment of The Newsletter (14th June '69) on the presidential candidature of Alain Krivine seems to me to be more appropriate: "(Frank Willis) was only able to obtain a fraction over 1 per cent of the votes. On this showing his impact was practically negligible."
I have also studied and thought over the perspectives and the political positions of the SLL in the past and present, in particular to the differences between the League and the SWP. I must state that, so far as the Cuban Revolution, the nature of Soviet society, and the United Front tactic are concerned, the positions expounded by Germain in his pamphlet "Marxism versus Ultraleftism" seem, on the whole, to be sound.
So far as the past mistakes of the SLL are concerned - and this is closely related to the question of the SWP - it seems to me that there were made a number of errors which have not yet been recognised. For example, the last (XIth) Congress of the SLL passed a resolution which explicitly pointed to the relation between the SLL's perspectives and its fight against revisionism, asserting:
"In the whole struggle against revisionism, however, there was involved a defence of Trotskyism in its basic view of the present revolutionary epoch." (The Newsletter, 24th June 1969).
It referred to the perspectives of the SLL during and since "the split with the Socialist Workers' Party (USA) in 1963" and explained that:
"These perspectives have been richly confirmed, particularly since our last Congress. The revisionists, on the contrary, are thrown into confusion and split by the resurgence of the international working class. We were proved right in answering the revisionist theories of neo-capitalism... Such correctness in perspective has a great danger" (ibid.)
Just what were these perspectives which have been so "richly confirmed"?
Cde. Peter Jeffries explained the SLL's "Economic forecast for 1965":
"The outlook for 1965 must, therefore, be one of severe deflation and rising unemployed... In other words, the winter of 1965-66 must see unemployment rise to at least the million mark, assuming that there is no major break in world trade and that the decline of British capitalism [p. 6] does not speed up. Should either of these occur, then the position would be even more serious " (The Newsletter, 15th Jan. 1965, P.J.'s emphasis),
and Cde. Healy explained the SLL's political perspective to its congress in the middle of that year:
"'We have had seven months of a right-wing Labour government in power," he said. 'It is no secret that the Tory Party is on the way back.'" (The Newsletter, 12th June 1965, original emphasis).
The perspectives which were "particularly" confirmed between the Xth and XIth Congresses of the SLL were outlined in the Xth Congress resolution, adopted on 1st - 3rd June, and published in the League's paper soon after:
"We work now in a situation where major political breaks are possible because of the depth of the economic crisis. The experiences of the working class under the Labour government will now provide large numbers of recruits for the League, and there will arise a danger of our cadres being swamped by the influx of politically-untrained and inexperienced members." (The Newsletter, 18th June 1968)
In the same issue Cde. Jeffries discussed economic prospects in the light of the latest Annual Report of the Bank of International Settlements:
"One fact stands out from its report: nobody believes that the present two-tier system can last. Its continuation would only be "feasible", it comments, if "free" and "official" gold prices remained roughly in line.
"Given a continued rise in gold on the open market the pressures towards a dollar devaluation are inevitable..."
"Devaluation of the franc is near and this alone, in the present world situation, would be enough to spark off a European financial and economic crisis," (ibid., my emphasis)
and, also in that issue, a report appeared of a speech by "SLL Central Committee member Cyril Smith", in which that comrade explained that
"In Britain we had perhaps 18 months in which to prepare for a struggle similar to that in France (in May-June 1968)" (ibid.)
The confirmation of perspectives such as these is truly dangerous!
It is in the face of that danger that I must answer Cde. Mair's question as to whether I believe the SLL has degenerated. I am afraid that, unfortunately, the SLL seems to me sometimes to fail to fulfil in practice its obligations towards its class and the working people; if such a belief is correct, then undoubtedly it has degenerated.
I am also worried by the way in which the SLL tends to conduct its discussions and polemics. I would like to illustrate that by reference to an article by Cde. Robert Black polemicising against the late Isaac Deutscher. Discussing the latter's pamphlet "On the Chinese Cultural Revolution", Cde. Black wrote:
"Deutscher tries to prove that 'today Mao Tse-tung has, as it were, his own version of the theory of "social fascism" which he has applied to Krushchev and his successors, treating them as sheer accomplices of American imperialism'. Oh dear! How could Mao Tse-tung be so tactless, so sectarian as to utter ... the truth.
"Deutscher obviously resents the denunciation of the Soviet government as accomplices of imperialism. This he equates with Stalin's identification of social democracy with fascism - the ill-starred theory of'social fascism' that Deutscher is now seeking to foister on Mao.
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"Stalin denied the working-class basis to the reformist parties and trade unions... But where do the Chinese leaders make a similar blunder on the class nature of the Soviet Union? ...The only theoretical confusion here appears to belong to Deutscher." (The Newsletter, 4th Feb. 1967. I expressed sharp disagreement with this article to Cde. George Myers at the time it appeared.)
Now Cde. Black is Foreign Editor of, and a frequent contributor to, Workers Press, and undoubtedly exercises in many other ways also an important influence on the education of members and sympathisers of the YS and the SLL; I therefore find it disturbing that he should apparently be unaware of - and certainly fail to mention - the following documents:
1. the Statement of the NEC of the SLL, "The Sino-Soviet Conflict", adopted on 28th Feb. 1963, in which we read:
"The remarks of the Chinese about 'bourgeois restoration' in Yugoslavia (and thus, presumably in Russia also) are an example of the theoretical dangers inherent in their method ... The Chinese approach to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia betrays an astonishing ignorance of elementary political economy and Marxist sociology. It is not only specious; it is dangerous and opens the door wide to another form of revisionism - 'state capitalism'". (Labour Review, V7/N4 Winter '62/63)
2. An editorial of the Peking People's Daily -"On the Phoney Communism of Krushchev and its Lessons for the World" - which explicitly alleged the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, and was circulated throughout the world, in appropriate translations, by the Chinese Communists following its publication in 1964.
I could, unfortunately, list a number of other things which already bothered me last November, but the general nature of the points I would make should be clear: politically, there is a tendency to believe that the crisis of capitalism is now, this minute, sharper than in fact it is, that things are developing faster than they really are; organisationally-polemically, there is a tendency to over-simplify, to miss out vital points, and to fail to recognise (admit) errors.
One thing has occurred since then which also bothers me. For the Workers Press is absolutely correct to headline (27th Dec. '69) the fact that "Vietnam is the touchstone" and to say (30th Dec. '69):
"A powerful movement in Britain against the war will give new strength and confidence to many others to speak out and act as these heroic soldiers and Vietnamese have done."
But almost 3,000 Vietnamese workers and peasants have been dying every day in that country for over five years, and it seems to me that the SLL has almost certainly failed to campaign enough on that specific issue: perhaps, "Vietnam was the Touchstone" on the 27th of October 1968.
I would be very pleased to discuss all the points I have made under any circumstances, and would be grateful if you could arrange a discussion. If it were to prove impossible for us even to talk over these questions, then I might be forced to conclude that, justifying my worst fears, the SLL had indeed undergone serious degeneration; if that were the case, it would be my duty, whatever the personal consequences, to take suitable steps.
With communist greetings.
Yours fraternally,
Tony Whelan.
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P.S. I have just come across another example of methods of polemic which can only, in my opinion, do regrettable and unnecessary harm to the SLL itself. In Workers Press of 3rd Jan. '70, under the by-line of Cde. N. Makanda, we read the following immortal lines:
"So much for those who, like Ernest Mandel talk of a 'rise' in capitalism. They forget trivia like two world wars, which are an essential feature of imperialism, as the epoch of decline of capitalism." (my emphasis)
Mandel forgets two world wars? Seriously?
T.W.