Colin Fox, leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, addressed Fettes College in Edinburgh, Tony Blair's old alma mater (fees £8,620 per term)In his speech Fox said "The truth is that socialist ideas are more necessary in today's world than ever before. To win that change it is essential that socialists win public confidence and that can only be done by telling the truth ..."
He was, of course, alluding to old pupil Tony Blair's lies that led to the Iraq Invasion and to his party's own ex-leader Tommy Sheridan's perjury trial. Yet SOYMB finds it a bit disappointing that Colin Fox failed to apply this standard of intellectual honesty to one of his own heroes and role-models - Lenin.
But perhaps Fox is unaware that in his pamphlet "Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder" Lenin claimed that opportunist TU leaders would "...resort to all the dirty tricks of bourgeois diplomancy..." and counselled Communist Party members "... to be ready for any and every sacrifice, and even if necessary, to practice trickery, to employ cunning, and to resort to illegal methods, to sometime overlook or conceal the truth—all for the sake of penetrating into the trade unions..." [Workers Party of America pamphlet, "Should Communists Participate in Reactionary Trade Unions?" (early 1920s) quoted in Socialist Standard, September 1974 ]
This passage has (not surprisingly) subsequently been re-phrased in later editions to read: "We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even – if need be—to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them at all costs."
But Fox also forgets that when he accuses Blair and Sheridan of re-fashioning evidence to fit their version of the truth, it was not above Lenin to engage in cynical manipulation and distortion of Marx's writings to make it conform with the Lenin version of "socialism" and to justify The Party's dictatorship over the proletariat and the establishment of a non-Marxist transitional society, described as "state-capitalism".
1 comment:
The original pamphlet is here:
http://ia700109.us.archive.org/16/items/ShouldCommunistsParticipateInReactionaryTradeUnions/221058.pdf
On page 13, under the heading, "Communists Must be Tactful", it reads:
"There is no doubt but that the opportunist leaders of the unions will resort to all the dirty tricks of bourgeois diplomacy, invoking the help of the capitalist governments, priests, police, judges, etc. in order to prevent the communists from penetrating into the trade-unions, to force them out of the unions, to make their work within the unions as dangerous as possible, aiding the police to persecute and run them down. But we must be able to withstand all that, to be ready for any and every sacrifice, and even if necessary, to practice trickery, to employ cunning, and to resort to illegal methods, to sometimes even overlook or conceal the truth,— all for the sake of penetrating into the trade-unions, to stay there and by every and all means carry on the work of COMMUNISM."
Post a Comment