Constant Reader A Revealing Burp!

To those of us who know the Communist Party from the inside, old Walter Holmes’ hiccup of joy in the Daily Worker over Peter Fryer’s defection from the Socialist Labour League has a rather pleasing significance It shows that we are really making ourselves felt in that quarter.

So far as the ‘mass media’ are concerned, the Stalinist line has been for many years never even to mention the Trotskyist organizations except in such (so to speak) abstract terms as ‘fiends and mad dogs.’ The formula is: ‘not to give these people the pleasure they derive from seeing themselves in print.’ The real point is, of course, not to offer any not-completely-monolithic reader the opportunity of getting to know of a truly Marxist movement. Therefore, when Holmes breaks the rule it may well mean that he and his pals recognize that “we have developed beyond the stage where the ‘conspiracy of silence’ can be effective.

I specify ‘mass media’, by the way, because those Stalinist journals which are not widely read by the masses, such as World News, have been used from time to time to hit at our movement. In 1954, for example, a couple of articles there cn ‘the people behind Socialist Outlook’ were gratefully received and used by Transport House in connexion with its moves to ban that paper.

Pressure Politics—or Independent Class Action The brief discussion which we had at the National Assembly of Labour about the terms of the resolution on the French nuclear weapon tests epitomized a dispute which has gone en in the working-class movement for many years and which is of deep significance, both theoretical and practical.

Should the resolution call on the capitalist Government to take action, or should it call on the working-class movement to take action? It was finally agreed that the latter line should be followed and that the resolution should be sent not to Downing Street but to the two great world groupings of trade unions, the I.C.F.T.U. and the W.F.T.U.

Trotskyists have always opposed resolutions and declarations which foster confidence in capitalist governments and concentrate popular attention on what capitalist politicians and diplomats will or will not do. They have always striven to get action by the workers themselves, and wherever possible through their mass organizations—to concentrate attention on developing and using the workers’ own power.

A classical example of a clash between these different approaches was the debate in the British Labour movement 9-er ‘sanctions’ in 1935-1936. Fascist Italy had attacked semi-colonial Abyssinia. The leaders of the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist League, the two main centrist organizations of that time, adopted a do-nothing, semi-pacifist attitude. Some of them even excused themselves by talking of ‘a clash between two dictators’ (i.e., Mussolini and the Emperor of Abyssinia) and the main need of the movement being for ‘the Abyssinian workers’ to ‘seize power’! .Many of the rank «nd file, however, wanted something to be done to defend Abyssinia

and hit at Fascism.

The Stalinists called for pressure on the Government to ' apply ‘sanctions,’ i.e., to take economic and military measures against Italy. The Trotskyists pointed out that this would mean either an imperialistic conflict or, as actually happened, a sell-out, and they pressed for ‘workers’ sanctions,’ i.e., for independeni action by the workers’ organizations to stop war material going to Italy. For this they were, of course, called ‘Fascist agents’ by the Stalinists and ‘crypto-Stalinists’ by the lunatic fringe.

VES and Bashing the Trots What a pity Victory for Socialism did not see fit to include in its statement on the election results a declaration for raising Transport House’s ban on the Socialist Labour League. This is hardly surprising, however, when one realizes that some of its leaders—not all, of course—have carried over from their Communist Party and fellow-travelling days that attitude towards Trotskyists which is, after all, of the very essence of Take, for instance, Stephen Swingler. So far as I know, he has never withdrawn or apologized for the following (in which the nonsensical first paragraph leads to the nasty second one), from his ‘Outline of Political Thought since the French Revolution’ (1939).

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‘The whole task of the Soviet Government [said Trotsky, according to Swingler,] must be to stir up insurrections abroad whilst pursuing a standstill policy at home. [his issue was fully discussed in the USSR, and after a period of suspense and discussions it was decided to adopt the course of trying to establish a socialist system in Russia as the primary aim, whilst pursuing naturally an internationalist ‘The idea that socialism could be built in one country has been proved correct in practice and has thus shown Trotsky’s theoretical diagnosis to be wrong. Thus, to demand freedom for Trotskyism in the USSR, or further discussion of the issue, is merely stupid if we regard political ideas as a guide to action, as a means to practical achievement. The controversy over theory has been settled in practice and further discussion can in no way aid action; therefore, to demand the right to “free discussion” of the issues [here a footnote: As people have done over the Moscow trials] is to demand the right to obstruct and to constrain, the right to negate freedom.’ , I am not in a position to say whether this particular passage helped to inspire George Orwell’s conception of Doublethink, in ‘1984’ (‘Freedom is Slavery’, etc.), but it may well have done.

Unpublished M.s.

To the Editor of Tribune, October 31.

Dear Comrade: Your readers should not be left in ignorance of the fact that Comrade Foskett, who writes to Tribune ‘to jeer at Aldermaston marchers as persons ‘dedicated to the

proposition: “Anything for a giggle”, is himself dedicated to the proposition: ‘Get the Reds out of the Labour Party at all costs.’

He was one of the foremost promoters of my expulsion from Finchley Labour Party on account of my association with May I suggest that it is to no small extent the purging activities of such as Comrade Foskett, which create the image of a party increasingly strait-jacketed by Right-wingers who want to keep the H-bomb, that drive young people of the Aldermaston generation away from Labour.

Banned Book Soviet Prose: A Reader, edited by Ronald Hingley (Allen and Unwin, 12s. 6d.) has received publicity, soon after publication, in an unexpected way. It is one of the 30 books which the Soviet authorities have insisted on removing from the British book exhibition in Moscow. Mr Hingley, lecturer in Russian at Oxford, and now well known through the BBC’s Russian classes, will not sell any fewer copies of his book because of that, one may be sure.

What is interesting, though, is to consider why Soviet officialdom does not want the book placed where it can be looked I believe that Comrades Cliff Slaughter, D. Prynn and D. Gilligan mistook the task that my article, printed in The Newsletter, October3, was supposed to perform. Perhaps I should have made my purpose clear by a few prefacing remarks. At any rate, I did not and do not consider that the job of my article was to give a rounded analysis of the Khrushchev-Eisenhower diplomacy. Khrushchev’s visit was a minor international event involving basic programmatic positions of the socialist movement. The Newsletter is a tendency journal— voicing the opinions of the Socialist Labour League. The full assessment of such an event as the KhrushchevEisenhower talks, therefore, is the responsibility not of a foreign contributor but of The Newsletter’s editorial board—who, it should be added, ably discharged their responsibility in editorials from August 15 to September 26.

I am a member of the editorial staff of the U.S. revolutionary -socialist weekly, The Militant, and as such helped prepare a rounded analysis of the' Khrushchev visit for American readers —essentially along the lines pursued by The Newsletter in its editorials. In writing for The Newsletter, however, I deliberately limited myself to a special aspect of the Khrushchev tour —namely its impact on the political thinking of the American people—since this aspect was not one that The Newsletter’s editorial board could analyse as accurately as an American contributor.

Just the same, American public reaction to the visit was no mere sidelight, but an aspect of Khrushchev’s trip which in the long run may turn out to be the most consequential of all. For the tour helped sharpen the American people’s hopes for achieving peace and also helped undermine their anti-Sovietism, preparing the ground for a better appraisal on their part of the Soviet Union. Of course, this is still a far cry from their accepting a revolutionary viewpoint. But it is a development in working-class political thinking that gives socialists wider scope for promoting revolutionary ideas. That this includes exposing the reactionary role of Eisenhower—and of Khrushchev as well—goes without saying.

In their criticism of my article, Comrades Prynn and Gilligan take me to task for reporting that the American people’s hopes of attaining peace were aroused by the Khrushchev-Eisenhower programme te exchange visits. “While on Published by The Newsletter, 186 Clapham Migh St., London, Sw4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper through by Moscow citizens. After all, it consists merely of a number of extracts, in the original Russian, from works by well-known Soviet writers of fiction, with Mr Hingley’s explanatory notes. My guess is that they object most of all to the second extract given from Boris Pilnyak’s novel ‘Mahogany’ which got the writer into serious trouble when it appeared in 1929 and is presumably quite unavailable in Russia now.

In this passage some old Bolsheviks who fought in the civil war reminisce bitterly over the changes in the party which iook place in the early 1920s.

For English readers who are learning Russian perhaps the extract of greatest interest, from the standpoint of content, is the one taken from a fairly recent novel, ‘Battle on the Way’, the crowd scenes in Moscow when. Stalin’s death became known, and depicts very subtly the different reactions to tris event by different sections of the people. When I was on ihe selecting committee of the ‘Russia Today Book Club’, which advises Moscow’s Foreign Languages Publishing House on what Russian novels to translate into English, I repeatedly urged that ‘Battle on the Way’ be included in the list, but came up against an immovable though unexplained resistance.

BRIAN PEARCE. this is probably true,’ they write in The Newsletter, October 17, ‘he [Roberts] fails to point out that this is precisely -vhat Khrushchev and Eisenhower want.’

In the first place, I did indicate that this is what Eisenhower wanted. I said he was manoevring with the peace issue to mask big business’ long-term preparations for war. ‘his obviously means that he wants the American people to be fooled by these manoeuvres. :

In the second place, it is one-sided to attach significaace only to what Khrushchev and Eisenhower want. The hopes of the masses often do lead to illusions that the Khrushchevs and Ejisenhowers all too eagerly exploit for their own reactionary purposes. But the hopes of the masses have indepen-, dent weight as well. They can lead to aspirations, then to demands, and then to mass struggles for the realization of these demands. On the other hand, the masses do not generally Struggle when they lack hope. The task of the socialists is to recognise the progressive potential of the working people’s hopes for peace, remain ideologically firm themselves as to how peace will be won and go through the experiences with the masses while patiently explaining that only independent working-class struggles can defeat the imperialist warmakers. [hat is what I indicated in my article.

Finally, lest some of your readers might have got the impression from my article that we socialists in the U.S. propose to let the Stalinists go scot free on their ‘peaceful coexistence’ line while we concentrate on the Republicans and Democrats, allow me to elaborate the last paragraph of my article. When I wrote that ‘Revolutionary socialists will explain ... the necessity for working people to develop their own independent struggle in opposition to the Republican and Democratic Parties,’ I implied a polemic against the Communist Party as well...To the.CP in this country, ‘peaceful coexistence’ means in the first place keeping the radical movement tied to the tig business parties—especially to the Democrats. The CP leaders have sought to prove that now, more than ever, socialistminded workers must act within the Democratic Party to bring about the nomination of a ‘peaceful coexistence’ presidential ticket in 1960.

Revolutionary socialists on the other hand insist on the necessity for independent socialist electoral action in 1960 and denounce the Stalinist scheme as the most treacherous sort of class collaboration.

Dan Roberts Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (¥.U.), r.o. 180 Clapham High St., S.W.4