Anti-Semitism in Easter Europe 1948-53

The issue of whether the Stalinist purges in Communist controlled Europe 1948 to 1953 were linked to Stalin's antisemitism is indeed much debated.

Antisemitism would seem to be an element in the purge of the General Secretary of Czechoslovak Communist Party, Rudolf Slansky, as he and several of his co-defendants were Jewish. Yet in the parallel trial in Hungary the non-Jewish Rajk was purged and executed by a party leadership that was itself mainly Jewish.

Far more important for Stalin was the elimination of communists who were not wholly obedient to him, who had independent support or who had links outside the bloc; e.g. those obtained through fighting in the international brigades in Spain.

For Stalin antisemitism was not an article of faith, but merely a tool to be used whenever it suited his purposes.


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Moving Blair's Autobiography

Surreptitiously moving copies Blair's memoir to the crime section of bookshops is a wholly appropriate thing to do. It is simple, nobody gets hurt and it makes a point.

To the commentator above who worries about customers not being able to locate the book, don't worry. Customers now know where to find it.

And don't worry about inconvenience to shop assistants either. They simply need to direct customers to the crime section.

War against Belgrade 1999

I believe that the war against Belgrade in 1999 should not have been supported by the left for two reasons.

First, the war provided the time, space and setting for the intensified slaughter of the Albanians of Kosovo.

Second, it was only on account of good fortune that after two months of aerial bombardment Milosovic capitulated and agreed to withdraw from Kosovo on condition that his Belgrade regime was left alone. In the absence of a ground invasion it was always possible for the regime to have remained defiant.

Had Milosovic been threatened at the outset with a clear ultimatum: hand Kosovo over to the EU (not NATO) or face a ground invasion, then the war would have been worthy of support: except of course it would never have happened.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories often engender two pathologies. One is that of the deferential who accepts the official version of everything from 9/11 to the deaths of Dinah and Dr Kelly; the other is perennial paranoiac who never fails to sees the hand of omnipotent shadowy agents pulling the strings behind courts, the media and so on. (In fact the paranoia narrative is most common in the most deferential of countries the US where a regular film scenario is of trusting patriotic Joe stumbling on a web of government mis-doings and then being called on to put matters to right).

There are times when the conspiracy theorists are absolutely right (e.g. the Zinoviev Letter, 1924) but more often the unexplained and unexplainable would, if explained, show hitherto unknown details which at best would add a new dimension to the accepted master explanation. And I believe that is probably the case with the 9/11 events.

Every political event has unknown aspects and these unknown aspects throw up ‘clues’ which cannot be readily explained. It is job of historians and political scientists to probe, seek the facts and provide the best possible explanations.

Fran Jenkin (died 23 July 2010)

I was extremely saddened to learn of Fran Jenkin's death.

I got to know Fran in the mid-1980s first through political activities and then personally. At the time I was one of the leading promoters of Devon Labour Briefing, a left-leaning but independent group of people, who were attempting to shift Exeter Labour Party to the left. Most of us were just out of university and winning support outside the Pennsylvania and St. Davids branch was proving difficult. Fran, then an Exeter College Teacher of English, joined us readily, became an active supporter of Devon Labour Briefing and felt at home in our company. Her house in Portland Street, which she shared with several cats, became an unofficial meeting place for us all.

Though her reputation established some years before in CND spared her from expulsion threats from the Labour Party, I still remember the battering she took at the General Management Committee meetings of Exeter Labour Party for her association with us. Animosity reached its height in 1987-88 when the Labour-led Exeter City Council sought to promote celebrations for the Tercentenary of the arrival in Brixton of king-to-be William of Orange. Fran, a passionate supporter of Irish nationalism, threw herself into the campaign to oppose the William of Orange celebrations.

Opposition is never painless. Though the police generally left us alone, Fran awoke one morning to have a team of police officers search her house. Why or what they were looking for we never discovered; and she alone suffered this indignity, but she emerged from it as cheerful as ever.

I felt particularly honoured when Fran turned to me to ask me to tutor her son, Larry, for his politics A-level. That led to a strange incident; one evening on returning home I found my metre-high poster of Karl Marx missing from the wall. My partner could offer no explanation and it remained a mystery until one day it was re-presented to me in a glass frame by Fran and her son. The framed photograph of Marx still hangs over my writing desk.

Sadly from the end of the 1980s Fran and I had no contact and I know nothing of the last two decades of her life.

Tomlinson case shows up British state

A passer-by, with his hands in his pockets and walking away from a line of police officers, is suddenly struck on the back of the legs with a baton and then hurled to the ground. He suffers severe internal bleeding as a consequence of the fall and dies some minutes later.

The facts are not in doubt because the whole incident was filmed, but it takes the Crown Prosecution Service fifteen months to come to decision not to charge the offending police officer with any criminal offence.

Perhaps one is not surprised that this psychopathic police officers exists, but that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service do everything they can to prevent his prosecution is more surprising. Also of note is the silence from government and politicians; the message they send out is that the unprovoked police assault on Ian Tomlinson on 1 April 2009 is of little importance.

The meaning of all this is not, as some have suggested, that the police have been given a carte blanche to assault and kill at random, but that when they do, even when there is rock-solid evidence of state misconduct, citizens have no right to remedy. People are subject to the state; the state is not accountable to the people who live within it.

social class: a reality

Walter argues that class politics is now outdated, and if we are to build a coalition for socialism it has based on something else. As evidence he points to the decline, especially outside the state sector, of trade union affiliation.

I don’t think this argument is wholly correct. It is certainly true that levels of political class consciousness have declined, but does that mean class itself is less of a social reality so socialists should ignore it? I think not.

Social class is a concomitant of the relations of production under capitalism. Economic and political structures affect classes in such a way as to bring about a variety of class divisions based primarily on income and wealth, but also on ethnic group, status, education, etc.

In the last three decades Thatcherism and then New Labour have overseen an increase in social inequalities of income and wealth so that Britain is now more unequal than at any time since the Second World War. In parallel social mobility (inter and intra-generational) has declined. It is thus wide of the mark to talk about the disappearance of social class; and if social classes are a reality they cannot be ignored in politics.

As of old, it remains the job of socialists to convince working people, as working people, of the injustices of the capitalist order so that they can become instruments of progressive social change

Cameron & Clegg's electoral reform

The whole of this debate is nonsense.

Constituencies are to be made larger and less geographically meaningful in an attempt to get the votes to seats ratio more equal between the Tories and Labour. The fact that the Liberal Democrats and others face a huge votes to seats ratio does not seem to matter.

Why is PR which would mean one person, one vote, one value rejected? Is it because PR would make constituencies larger - or because first-past-the-post leads to stable one party governments?

All of these manoeuvres (retaining the present boundaries, limiting electoral reform to AV, changing the number, size and geography of constituencies) are forms of gerrymandering.

Violence

Violence is basically bad; it causes pain, death and violates human dignity. The conception of violence as a liberating good (along with its associated symbols of virility, fire, steel, etc) is a fascist narrative. Recourse to violence can only be justified if no other means is available, the violence can succeed in its aims and we can be sure that by not engaging in violence we would create or sustain a greater wrong.

For socialists, particularly in advanced capitalist society, violence is never the chosen terrain of struggle. Class power relations are asymmetrical. The state has bodies of armed men at its disposal; the left’s power lies elsewhere. It has political organisation, in the economic domain strikes plus other forms of industrial influence and the means of ideological struggle.

Socialism and violence

Socialist politics may on occasion involve violence, but ours is certainly not a creed which is either fundamentally about or seeks violence. There are two reasons why violence is very much something secondary for us.

First, precisely because we are people who seek reforms within capitalist society at least as a first step, we acknowledge the state’s legal order and its monopoly of force. In exchange for that, we receive the state’s protection of our bourgeois rights within society such as the right to form civic organisations and to protest. If fascists intimidate us and our families, our first response, beyond immediate necessary self-defence, is to call the police. It is precisely for this reason that defence and advancement of civil and personal liberties are so vital.

Second, in the class struggle power relations are asymmetrical. It is the state that has armed men at its disposal not us; our power rests on political organisation plus the force of argument. Our success usually depends on the avoidance of violence.

And finally it is worth adding that violence can never be justified solely to punish (corporal and capital punishment). Socialism is the strengthening and realisation of the values found in liberalism, not their negation.