More proof that the Weekly Worker is scarcely more than a grubby little gossip sheet (677, June 14 2007). Its flirtation with some AWL comrades over Iraq goes unrequited, so out come the slurs about “imperialist economism”, with neither the majority nor the minority spared.
The CPGB compares the AWL to Pyatakov in 1916, because he denied the right of self-determination. Sadly the analogy is facile: no one in the AWL denies the importance of fighting for self-determination in Iraq. We simply believe that, given the balance of forces between the current Iraqi state and the Islamist militias, that the immediate withdrawal of US/UK troops would lead to the break up of Iraq in sectarian statelets i.e. the opposition of self-determination.
Unable to actually argue about the situation in Iraq or assess the consequences of the “troops out” slogan, instead the WW prefers to selectively cut and paste some correspondence with AWL comrades.
The CPGB can’t even read Lenin right. In his article against Pyatakov, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, Lenin wrote about the nonsense of slogans like “troops out” detached from any anchor in reality:
“There is not, nor can there be, such a thing as a ‘negative’ Social-Democratic slogan that serves only to ‘sharpen proletarian consciousness against imperialism’ without at the same time offering a positive answer to the question of how Social-Democracy will solve the problem when it assumes power. A ‘negative’ slogan unconnected with a definite positive solution will not ‘sharpen’, but dull consciousness, for such a slogan is a hollow phrase, mere shouting, meaningless declamation.”
