CADOGAN EXPLAINS

LETTERS I have never said ‘that the world should unite in “a front that cuts across class boundaries” in the struggle against the H-bomb’. In ‘The 1959 Situation in the Socialist Labour League’ I wrote that ‘the workers of the world should unite for peace—a front that cuts across class boundaries because of the inclusive annihilation threatened by atomic warfare’.

There is all the difference in the world between these two statements! It is clear in the first place that the physical effect of an exploding H-bomb cuts across all class boundaries.

It is also clear from experience and more explicitly from the Marxist theory of allies and the united front (compare the cross-class unity of peasants, soldiers and workers in 1917), that the nuclear war prospect is calculated to bring to the side of the working class all sorts of people who are not workers but who will recognise working-class leadership in the struggle for peace. Some people in CND see this quite clearly.

Further, I did not open my article in The Socialist Leader with the statement that ‘the October Revolution of Lenin and Trotsky was the most successful failure’. This came at the end of the second paragraph and is unintelligible when torn from its context.

That paragraph read: ‘No political party or organization has ever succeeded in comprehending the nature and scale of the overall development (i.e. in politics, industry, science and trade unionism—P.C.) in terms of international relations and the State. The October Revolution of Lenin and Trotsky was the most successful failure’.

Is this not what Trotsky said, not only in the substance, but even in the very title of his book The Revolution Betrayed?

I have no connection with the Independent. Labour. Party. So far as I am aware, I don’t know a single member. That may well be a sectarian fault on my part!

I’m afraid that Healy’s well-known pre-disposition towards finding a dark secret, if not a positive conspiracy, in every situaton has led him up the garden. ... So much for revealing my ‘intention of snuggling up more closely to the Right Wing’.

It may interest readers to know that the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party considered my appeal against expulsion at its meeting on the 27th January. My appeal was rejected because of my association with the Socialist Labour League, the organization which the Executive knew very well had just suspended me once, and expelled me twice! So much for my ‘snuggle’.

Healy asks ‘What is this “Left” that Cadogan speaks of?’ That is easily answered. It consists of the people amongst whom the future recruits of the democratic revolutionary party are to be found.

Finally, so far as I’m concerned, what is ‘under fire’ is not Marxism but the original, time-honoured and permanent constitutional weakness of the revolutionary movement—sectarianism. This is something we have to fight against and live with, without cease.

EDITORIAL COMMENT The struggle for Socialism remains the only answer to the H-bomb. Socialism will be achieved when the working class led by the Marxist party seizes power and institutes the dictatorship of the working class All sorts of people may follow this action, but only the working class led by the Marxist party can carry it The Marxist party does not propose cutting across class boundaries. It stands for waging the class struggle and widening the gulf between the two main classes, workers and capitalists.

Published by The Newsletter, 186 Clapham High St., London, SW4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper class barriers on the grounds that a lot of people in all classes will be killed by the H-bomb ‘In the last two world wars a lot of people from Ml classes: Se were killed but this did not mean that the gulf between the classes was bridged. On the contrary both these wars provided an impetus to the class struggle which led to revolutionary offensives in various parts of the world.

How can Cadogan argue that Trotsky’s ‘The Revolution Betrayed’ confirms his view that the October Revolution was a successful failure? That revolution succeeded, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky; later, in definite historical circumstances, it was betrayed, by a social group at whose head stood Stalin. One had supposed that this was A, B, C to Cadogan by now.

The fact that Cadogan was expelled from the Labour Party is not decisive for his political evolution. All sorts of people have been expelled from the Labour Party at one time or other. Mere membership of the Labour Party does not automatically place one in the camp of reformism any more than expulsion from the Labour Party places one in the camp of Marxism. What we are concerned with is the direction of Cadogan’s political evolution, which in our opinion is towards the politics of reformism.

We note how he has deliberately avoided taking up our points in relation to his theory of transforming the State. This is because Cadogan does not call for the overthrow of the capitalist property relations in Britain but for ‘a political revolution in the fullest sense of the word’.

(See ‘Politics 1960’ by P. Cadogan, Socialist Review, February 1960.) A political revolution is correct in the Soviet Union where the property relations remain basically those established by the revolution in 1917. What is needed in Britain is a social revolution, precisely to destroy the property relations of capitalism. Cadogan’s ‘transformation of the State’ leads him to see the problem merely as one of rearranging the State instead of overthrowing it together with the property relations which it protects.

-Even the Caption Just a footnote to the discussion between Peter Cadogan Gerry Healy. Even the caption to the picture illustrating Cadogan’s article in the Socialist Leader was wrong! picture shows Healy addressing the National Assembly of Labour, while the caption says he was addressing ‘last year’s conference of the Socialist Tabour League’, a quite different occasion.

BRIAN PEARCE ALGERIA The article by Tom Kemp ‘Behind the Algiers Insurrection’ left out the most important point. Just what exactly is behind the insurrection?

Why has de Gaulle spoken out for ‘self-determination’? It isn’t because of any conversion to ‘liberalism’ or due to fear of peace petitions. Two factors have made the new course for French imperialism necessary, and it might be said that de Gaulle is supported in his new line by French big business. The first is the immense cost of the war on the French economy thus weakening de Gaulle’s bargaining power in Europe. The second is the discovery of oil in the Sahara. A pipe-line 450 miles long is a vulnerable weakness if there is a war going on around it. This is serious if, as de Gaulle is, an imperialist government is bidding for the oil monopoly of the European market. The cost of maintaining roops along the pipe-line would push the price of oil skyigh.

De Gaulle’s real ‘liberalism’ is to make peace with the: right wing of the revolution (FLN provisional government) at the same time as he calls upon loyal French soldiers to. hunt down the Moslem rebels.

The policy of ‘self-determination’ is followed up by an increase in dictatorial powers at home. The apparent shift. to the ‘left’ is only an accommodation for a shift to the right. to deal with the French workers.

Edgware, Middlesex. GEOFF KENNEDY‘Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r.o. 180 Clapham High St., $.W.4