Writeback SWPers should read Lenin

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creative Marxism ERRY SMITH's letter in is gained by being unCa TERRY SMITH's letter in Socialist Organiser 69 en shows total ignorance of the feminist movement.

If he had actually read any feminist literature, he would know that they owe a great deal to Marxism, acknowledge this debt, and in many cases use a MarxThis is true of socialist materialist method. feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir and Juliet Mitchell, and also of radical feminists such as Shulamith Firestone.

Complacent

Patronising remarks about the need for feminists to learn from Marxists are therefore quite out of place.

On the record of the Marxist movement, comrade Smith is unbelievably complacent. No-one in the socialist movement can be uninspired by the Russian revolution, and its practical if short-lived We inyite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words.

Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28, Middle Lane, London n London N8. achievements. But nothing achievements. is gained by critical.

We should recognise that the communist movement has been very weak in its programme for women. The Comintern Theses on women (1921) summarise this approach: they are based entirely on an exhortation to women to join the communist movement because their liberation will only be achieved with the triumph of socialism.

Comrade Smith follows this method, which completely misses out the whole question of fighting women's specific oppressown demands. It's the UWII modern women's liberation movement that has highlighted this weakness and forced the organised left to rethink.

What we need now is a creative Marxism that does more than cling to the past ideas and methods.

ANN EVANS, South London. I FOUND it very difficult to take the letter by two disgusted SWPers (SO no.68) at all seriously. They claim that Martin Thomas's statement that 'Marxists are for parliamentary democracy' shows that Socialist Organiser is a left reformist paper.

Did they really not read the rest of Martin's article? Or even the rest of the sentence? Did they not read the other articles expressing the position of Cannon, ON BEHALF of the Executive Committee of the Committee for the Defence of Democratic Rights in Turkey (CDDRT), this letter is submitted for pub!ication in the columns of Socialist Organiser in order to correct distortions about this Committee which appeared in your interview with Dogan Tarkan (issue no.67, January 7 1982).

Dogan Tarkan is reported by you as saying, "At first I and my comrades from Kurtulus went both to the TSC and to the CDDRT.

Both promised to help"

This is untrue. At no time has Dogan Tarkan or anyone else from Kurtulus had discussions with any officer or Executive Committee member of CDDRT, nor were any requests of any kind received from them.

Then Mr Tarkan says, 'But when we called a picket on Downing Street a few days later the CDDRT refused to attend". Since CDDRT was not told about this event, it is not surprising that we did not participate. The question of refusal is therefore a nonsense.

Again, Mr Tarkan says, •Then on September 12 they would not let me speak at their meeting"

CDDRT organised a pickLenin and Trotsky?

They invoke the name of Lenin, even if the distorted version provided in Tony Cliff's book. Surprising then that they have not understood Chapter 7 of Lenin's 'Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disord:. entitled, Should we Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?' Lenin, arguing against the German Left Communists who answered • the question in the negative, says Parliamentarianism has become obsolete in the propaganda sense, but everyone knows that this is at of the Turkish Embassy on 12 September 1981. On 13 September a Rally and a Solidarity Concert in the Camden Centre were organised jointly by CDDRT, El Salvador Solidarity Campaign and the Chilean AntiFascist Committee. Presumably it is this Rally to which Dogan Tarkan refers.

Quite apart from any difficulties in rearranging a platform of speakers such a jointly-organised action, there was certainly no request of any kind. made by, or on behalf of, Dogan Tarkan to any of the organisers, including officers or Executive Committee members of CDDRT.

Later, Dogan Tarkan declares, "At their Conference in December we even won the vote to unite the two campaigns - but they failed even to report this in their conference statement!"

As Socialist Organiser should know, since a delegate of the Socialist Organiser Alliance attended the whole of CDDRT's National Conference on Turkey on 12 December 1981, there was free and open discussion of the Conference Statement: after extensive amendments had been incorporated, the finalised statement was read several times and

a far cry from overcoming

it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared obsolete • many decades ago, he continues, but this dees not obviate the need for a persistent struggie on the basis of the continuing existence of capitalism.

The SWP's position on Parliament is like that of the Left Communists whom Lenin was arguing against. They adopt the same attitude to the Labour Party by declaring that it is dead (for the last ten years, that I can remember), ignoring its very real existence and adopted unanimously.

This Statement was issued within a week to all organisations who sent delegates to Conference. Perhaps Socialist Organiser would care to publish the Statement for the information of its readers. We should like to point out that Dogan. Tarkan did not attend Conference.

Towards the end of his remarks about CDDRT Dogan Tarkan talks of ...Iscinin Sesi, who dominate the CDDRT. They will not unite with others" • Another absurdity. Of course there are supporters of Iscinin Sesi (Workers' Voice) - a paper of the Communist Party of Turkey amongst CDDRT's supporters. But then other supporters of CDDRI include the CPGB, NOLS, NUM, various CLPs and labour movement organisations at all levels: indeed, the NEC of the Labour Party was represented at our December 1981 Conference by Eric Heffer MP, who spoke from the platform.

We also have the support of the Turkish Students' Federation of the UK and the Union of Turkish Workers, as well as many individuals such as E.P.Thompson and Mgr Bruce Kent, and others who have taken

abstaining from the fight

to remove the right wing and reformist leadership of the party, which has such a detrimental effect on the class consciousness of the working class.

Bluster But even here the SWP is not consistent. In by-elections between 1976 and 1979 the SWP ran candidates. Having come up against the real existence of the Labour Party, expressed in the fact that the great majority of class-conscious workers continued to vote out individual affiliations.

In fact, any organisation or individual accepting the aims and constitution decided at the June 1981 Congress of CDDRT is eligible for affiliation.

ČDDRT is sure that Socialist Organiser will wish to put the record straight, as several important cases of inaccuracy are contained within the interview as printed. We welcome the widest debate of the issues surrounding Turkey on the principled basis of fact, and will always encourage this whilst ensuring that maximise solidarity with the working people of Turkey, particularly in the labour, democratic and student movements.

JIM MOODY, General Secretary, CDDRT * We stand by our story.

We note that Dogan Tarkan, even while criticising the CDDRI, called clearly in the interview for support to the CDDRT's week of action [March 6-13]. He aiso lamented the problems in uniting the CDDRT with the Turkey Solidarity Campaign which ran the successful struggle in his defence. The above letter appears to bear out his argument.

Labour and ignore the SWP

(indeed, the SWP could not even beat Socialist Unity candidates!), the SWP has withdrawn from this basic test of strength with the Labour reformists — covering up with bluster about elections not being important enough for them to bother with.

And we have the spectacle of Paul Foot and Socialist Worker changing from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde at election time and calling uncritically for a vote for Labour.

Contempt

The healthy contempt for the union bureaucrats and support for the rank and file militants which the comrades have spills over into ignoring the role of leadership. This is true both in terms of their attitude to the Labour Party and the unions.

The example they take of Laurence Scotts is a good one. The fact is that, had the AUEW been led by revolutionaries instead of Duffy and Boyd, the Laurence Scott workers would not have been left fighting in isolation, without strike pay etc. Making the strike official alone would have opened up the possibility of blacking by the NUM and brought Snipe to his knees long ago.

Criteria

Having failed to make reality fit their illusions in elections, having isolated themselves from the battle for socialist ideas in the Labour Party, having failed stable SWP members, and having isolated themselves from the growing women's movement by closing down the Women's Voice organ.

isation, the only criteria the SWP has of its import.

ance now seems to be hom many copies of Socialist Worker they can sell.

And from the comrades letter, even in this they are not performing too well.

ARTHUR BOUGH, Stoke, AB vow!

facilitiés prevent the proper use.

By August 1981, thirtee of them had been caug breaking their promi by distributing free samp es of their milks in ten di erent Third World cou tries.

The lesson from this that brewers do not mal good prohibitionists, a in May last year, the Wor Health Organisation ador ed a stricter code of pras ice (though still with co siderable loopholes).

In confirmation of the humanitarian intention the milk manufacture fought WHO all the wa Their main worry, it seen was that the WHO co would undermine freed speech by banni advertising.

It must be considerat relief to malnourished ba ies and their families know that they are dyi in pursuit of such a lo idea.

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ion, and of organising wom- en now to fight for their

priority is given to the fore- most question of how to

to turn any sizeable number of ANL supporters into