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Reactionary separatism in India
The call for the establishement of a Sikh nation (Khalistan) in the Punjab is a totally reactionary and sectarian demand Jonathan
Jones (Socialist Outlook 14) is wrong to.
equate this reactionary movement in the
Punjab with national feeling in Kashmir.
The agitation today in Punjab is not for a
Punjabi state but for Khalistan. In any case
Punjab is divided between India and
Pakistan - a division which look place at the time of independence and which involved the most hrutal inter-community conflicts.
This brutal communalism is mirrored today in the pro-Khalistan movement in the
Punjah and in communalist parties in other states. As well as systematically murdering socialists and other political opponents, the
Khalistanis regularly slaughter ordinary
Hindus. In this way Chey hope to drive hop-Sikhs out of Punjab and to have Sikhs.
driven out of other parts of India.
Despite the fact that the Khalistanis are in tics, in which he argues that it was
Trotsky who misunderstood the dialectic, and that his interpretation of history was flawed.
With Harry Wicks, Reg Groves,
Henry Sara and others, James played a prominent part in the
Trotsky Defence Committee which was set up to counter the avalanche of falschoods which came out of the Moscow Inals. Although he continued to play a role in Trotskyist circles, he increasingly concentrated on rescarch and
His novel about West Indian harrack-yard life, Minty Alley was published in 1936, and he was working on what was to be his magnum opus, his study of the San
Domingo revolt, the first success ful slave rising in history. The
Black Jacobins is now acknowledged as the classical study of that epoch-making event, and showed
James mastery of the theory of permanent revolution.
In 1938 he published A History of Negro Revolt. After the unifica-
- a small minority even among Sikhs, they have had a degree of success in this aim. The
Khalistan movement is not one of an oppressed nationality, but of religious fundamentalists reflecting the interests of well-off farmers and petit bourgcois sections, and supported only by reactionary forces in
Pakistan and their friends in the CIA.
Thus any success for the Khalistan movement would strengthen reactionary communalist and scotarian forces in other
Indian states. Far from strengthening the hand blow, opening up further divisions that would take years to heal.
The I.C.S. (Inquilabi Communist
Fourth Internation) is implacably opposed to
An unrelenting struggle against the
Khalistanis, both in Britain and India, should not detract from our oppostion to other communalist currents, nor to the increasing concessions which the ruling Congress Party makes to such developments. Indeed in many places it has heen rections of the Congress
Party who are themselves responsible for fomenting communalism and who have played their part in creating the basis for the rise of the pro-Khalistan movement.
Oliver New, West London
Once again, lesbians made invisible
1 am writing to reassure readers that despite the blatant omission of any mention of lesbians from the write-ap of the Women for
14, Women for Socialism is committed to
Lion of most of the Trotskyist grouplets in 1938. James was one of the delegates to the Founding
Conference of the Fourth Intemational, and was elected onto the Intemational Executive Committee.
In 1938. James left Britain for the United States and immediately plunged himself into the work of the Socialist Workers Party
(SWP), particularly concentrating on issues affecting black people.
He spent some weeks with
Trotsky in Mexico, where they discussed the question of an autonomous black movement.
Within the SWP he fought for a tum toward black people as an integral part of the revolutionary movement in the USA.
The outbreak of World War
Two and the crisis which arose within the SWP over its position on the Soviet Union gave James the opportunity to develop his differences with Trotsky, For James, the signing of the Stalin-Hitler Pact was the culminating evidence that the USSR was no longer a
R S of the Indian masses, it would be an enormous
Sangathan - which is the Indian Section of the the Khalistan movement as are other socialists the same stuff"
ClIff Slaughter,
Leeds
Socialism Conference in Socialist Outlook No
"terminal'.
workers' state which had to be
In collaboration with Raya
Dunyevskaya he formed the
Johnson- Forrest Tendency, which developed theoretical positions which took them further and further away from the traditional positions of Trotsky and the Fourth Intemational. They argued that the
Stalinist parties outside the USSR were not the 'tools of the Kremlin".
but were an organic product of the mode of capitalism at this stage.
The Soviet Union was not a deformed workers' state in which the bureaocracy had usurped state power, but state capitalist. His break with Trotskyism was now
James also played an active role in support of the growing revolt against colonial rule, especially in
Africa. Kwame Nkrumah was a protege of his, and he was hopeful that Nkrumah would lead the fight for a free and socialist Africa. But he did not hesitate to break from
Nkrumah when he saw where he building a socialist feminist movement that is for all women, including leshians,
This was demonstrated by the fact that we had a speaker from the Socialist Lesbian
Group on the platform in the opening plenary of the Conference, a workshop on "Lesbians and Socialism' which was one of the best attended of the day and discussed a wide range of issues rarely on conference agendas, and that the 'structure, aims and objectives"
which were adopted, specifically state that
Women for Socialism is anti-heternsexist and that the steering group would include the post of lesbian Liaison officer (which was filled).
I certainly feel that this is a great step forward for a socialist-feminist tradition that:
has largely failed to take up lesbian issues.
greatly to its detriment Unfortunately this appears to be a view not universally held.
Yours wondering what it takes sometimes,
Rebecca Flemming
The stuff that dreams are made of?
John Lister (Socialist Outlook No 14) says thoughts…. are material things.
They are not. Matter is that which exists independently of thoughts. There is no other definition. If thoughts are matter, how can matter oxist independentiy of them? To say that thought is material is no better than saying matter 1s
"mental", and turns materialism into a nonsense. Both say 'matter and thoughts are
PS I must correct Mike Pearse's letter on
Lhe WRP. The WRP's crisis of 1985 was not
In his latter years CLR - as he was universally called - almost became a living legend. His room in
Brixton became a place of revolutionaries from all over the
His interests widespread and cosmopolitan. A passionate love for Shakespeare and Beethoven vied with his devotion to cricket and hiscontinued interest in revolutionary politics.
He remained an optimist all his life. On his 80th birthday he told a young audience in Chicago '1 will live to sec the South African revolution. I don't think I will live to sce the American revolution, but when you make your revolution I will find some way of coming here
That revolutionary optimism, that unquestionable belief in the future of humanity was the characteristic wich best sums up CLR
James-thinker, writer, revolution-
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