What is Their Problem?

The AWL have asked me not to write more than three or four lines in future in comments on their Discussion Board. They are of course entitled to impose such a restriction on me or anyone else. What I can’t understand is why they have asked me to abide by this limit now. Last year after I wrote some short articles on the AWL’s politics, and the way they were contradictory in respect of the position of Albert Glotzer – whose position in respect of Israel they supported see here, here, and here - the AWL, first deleted my posts several times, and then when I persisted deleted my account. They said it was due to a little technical difficulty, an answer I questioned seriously, See here.

Eventually, after some discussion and the fact that other Left groups were picking up on the issue my account was restored, and I was requested to keep my comments to a more moderate level, which I agreed to do, and to post long comments here on my blog. That I have been doing, though I was again requested to reduce the number of my comments a few months ago again as a fairly lengthy debate arose over the National Question. But since then I have posted far fewer comments to their discussion board. In the last month I have posted only a handful, and most of them not very long comments. In fact during the last few weeks one reason for that is that I have been engaged in a couple of lengthy debates with anarcho-capitalists on another board – See here, for instance.

Meanwhile, on the WL Board a discussion between the reactionaries Mikey and Paul Bogdanor against Tony Greenstein runs to 47 long posts! bluerose799, posts a number of long posts, putting out Albanian racist sentiments against Serbians referring to them as “beasts”, and so on. So why is it that my handful of posts provoke a demand that I limit myself to just 3 or 4 lines???? One reason seems to be that I posted a comment almost immediately after an article by Trotsky attacking petit-bouregois moralism had been put on the Board. My comment pointed out that Trotsky’s article could just as easily have been written about the petit-bouregois moralism of the Shachtmanite Third Camp, the tendency to which the AWL has aligned itself.

But why should that be a problem. In relation to another discussion on Ireland the other week Seam wrote that there should be more discussion and debate. I agree, so why does the AWL want to restrict that debate when it comes to the discussion of ideas it finds awkward? Surely, a Marxist organisation with a firm beleief in its ideas can respond adequately to the arguments of a single individual like myself can’t it? The AWL said to me “your comments force people to respond to your ideas, not to ours”, and the purpose of the Board is for us to get our ideas over. As far as I am aware I am forcing no one to do anything. Surely, anyone who puts forward there ideas can likewise be accused of forcing those that disagree with them to respond to their ideas. On that basis the only discussions would be between people who agreed with each other, and what is the point of that.

Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks should be a Pure party. He rejected the idea of freedom of criticism, because it would mean that those such as the Economists and Revisionists who had some of the better theoreticians would be able to influence the ordinary workers in the Party. But, we saw the ultimate consequecne of dealing with ideas, you cannot defeat ideologically, by means of organisational bureaucracy and split in what happened to the Bolsheviks. Long before Stalin became dominant within the Party Lenin was standing up at a party Congress and saying to Kollontai and the Workers Opposition, “If you are serious about your arguments against us, you should be taking up arms against us, not bringing resolutions to the Congress.” That is the logic of the leninism that the AWL still adheres to. It is what leads it to respond to arguments it cannot handle with the same kind of rudeness, and limitation that the Bolsheviks descended into. The AWL defends the principle of free speech, compared to other Leninist organisations its site is far more open but there can be no limits put on free speech, certainly there should be none in the Labour Movement other than against fascists. As the AWL once said in relation to free speech and the Cartoons – a position on which I defended the AWL 100% - its eeasy to give someone free speech when they agree with you, but it only means something if they are also free to disagree with you.