Write on: letters to the editor

Write on: letters to the editorArrighi
On reading Jonathan Strauss' stimulating review of Giovanni Arrighi's latest book, The Long Twentieth Century (GLW #203), the question that springs to mind is: who are Arrighi's main influences? Certainly, Braudel is, as the major ancestor of world systems theory. But the other must be Immanuel Wallerstein, who assumes a similar stature to Braudel within this school of Marxism.
Wallerstein's view of the development of historical capitalism does differ from Braudel's. In particular, the relationship between state formation and the emergence of historical capitalism is viewed very differently. This is a crucial dimension that has been greatly neglected. Braudel's thesis that Western states prior to the eighteenth century were "the antithesis of the market economy", is not fully shared by Wallerstein. It would seem that Arrighi is closer to Wallerstein's position than Braudel's, but this is not clear in the review.
Strauss raises an excellent point regarding the enclosure. What this particular historical illustration points to is the revolutionary character of the process of establishing capitalist social relations. This process is thoroughly ignored by world systems theory.
However, the example of the enclosure is pertinent in another way. It highlights the role of the state in influencing the conditions of capitalist accumulation. This can be seen as another side of the primitive accumulation process so well theorized by Marx. This is a neglected dimension of much of the historiography of capitalism.
Moreover, within Marxism the relationship between state formation and the development of capitalism still remains generally under-theorized. World systems theory does not resolve this problem in any substantial way. But it does address it, albeit in the framework of a "trade relations" model of development that does little to account for the formation of the modern classes of capitalism. Here, at least, however, the specific forms of the crucial imperial states that historically governed the conditions in which historical capitalism spread are causally linked to the process of the formation of capitalism.
Jeremy Smith
Melbourne
[Edited for length.]
NUS
The latest round of NUS justification by the ISO seems to be hinged on the role of NUS in endorsing the National Days of Action (NDAs) in '95 and somehow organising the March 23 NSW action in Wollongong. There are, however, 2 fundamental faults in this argument.
1. The national no fees conference in December '94 called the NDAs and they would have been organised and gone ahead with or without NUS even though NUS did endorse them.
2. NUS didn't organise the Wollongong NDA. Having been a founding member of the Wollongong Uni Education Action Collective (EAC), I am surprised to hear this as part of the ISO argument. NUS didn't have much of a presence here until the day itself, when Jamie Parker, amongst others, dominated a very "time" restricted mega-hone and open microphone. Previous to the day the on-the-ground work was done by EAC activists and members of the SRC. Of the 2000 strong crowd, over 1000 were Wollongong students.
Wollongong Uni had and still has very good relations with the academics union which exist outside the framework of NUS, and I don't see how NUS is crucial to building any campaign against fees.
Before '95 in NSW there was an already existing CCEN outside the framework of NUS. In '95 the only difference was that NUSNSW state exec members changed the letterhead to include NUS before CCEN. This was done without the agreement of all the activists involved.
In fact, when I asked at one of the first meetings this year, everyone agreed that the CCEN was not an NUS meeting. Obviously something happened outside the meeting framework to overturn that decision.
The no fees campaign is based not on NUS, our national peak body, but on activists building the campaign.
Freya Pinney
Wollongong Resistance
Political independence
Colm Bryce's letter (GLW #203) raises some interesting points on a revolutionary approach to reformist formations (in this case NUS), which the ISO continues to fail to grasp.
Bryce complains that the "DSP [and Resistance] says we need a campaign that is 'independent' of the ALP. How exactly? Should socialists announce at the start of the demo that every ALP member or voter should leave the march?". Nothing could make it clearer that the ISO does not understand how a movement remains independent from the parties of big business.
It is precisely this point — political independence — which the ISO repeatedly fails to grasp in campaign after campaign. Political independence doesn't mean kicking ALP members out of campaigns (or anyone else who agrees with the aims of the movement), but welcoming as diverse a range of people as possible.
It is the ALP as a whole, as a party, which works to make campaigns ineffective, to co-opt or divert them into parliament in the interest of the bosses. In Victoria the "Public First" campaign (dominated by the ALP) only campaigns on state issues — it does not take up the federal ALP's privatisation programme.
So, whereas we work alongside NUS or ALP members, we do not subsume our politics or the needs of the campaign to the goal of keeping these organisations on side. That sort of "tail-endism" is precisely what the ISO in practice has done in almost every campaign that I have been involved in with them, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. The most recent example is in the anti-nuclear campaign, where ISO members suggested dropping our "No Uranium Mining" demand so we could get the ACTU label on our posters!
So long as the ISO continues to tail the ALP, to hide behind NUS or the ACTU or the ALP, they, and anyone who does likewise, will never lead anything but a retreat.
Ray Fulcher
DSP, Melbourne
[Edited for length.]
United front tactic
ISO member Colm Bryce (GLW 203) correctly notes that "Any mass campaign for the foreseeable future (against fees or anything else) will involve socialists working alongside reformists."
This means that socialists have to apply what we have traditionally called the "united front tactic": building mass actions through campaign organising committees that are open to all those — including the ALP student bureaucrats — who are willing to support the commonly agreed upon aim of the campaign, such as opposition to the introduction of university fees.
But precisely because such campaigns should not exclude anyone who agrees with their aim, they must be independent of the ALP. Bryce violently objects to this argument. He writes: "The DSP says we need a campaign that is 'independent' of the ALP. How exactly? Should socialists announce at the start of the demo that every ALP member or voter should leave the march?"
Bryce seems incapable of distinguishing between political independence and political exclusion. This leads him to equate the DSP's argument for the need for a campaign that is not contingent upon the ALP bureaucrats' support or subject to their control with the argument that ALP members or voters should be excluded from participation in such a campaign.
Indeed, such incomprehension leads the ISO to believe that the only way to get students who have illusions in the ALP to participate in the anti-fees campaign is to subordinate it to the ALP bureaucrats' control. This opportunist approach, which stems from the ISO's sectarian inability to distinguish between those who have illusions in the ALP and its pro-capitalist leaders, hinders the building of effective student campaigns and the breaking down of illusions in the ALP.
Doug Lorimer

DSP National Organisation Secretary
Sydney
Yeltsin and Yugoslavia
Just as a passing remark on Renfrey Clarke's article on Yeltsin and Bosnia (GLW #203): the best summary I have heard of Western policy in Yugoslavia is that it aimed to give the Croats enough time to arm themselves and the Serbs enough rope to hang themselves.
This I believe has as much to do with the course of events as any realisation of Russian weakness, which is surely nothing new. Wayne Hall
Athens
Lies and writers
Helen Darvidenko's book got past the judges because she is only confirming existing prejudices. She's heard these anti-Semitic lies in cabs (I heard them from Nazis and Ustasha and other Fascists on jobs — and now I'm hearing them from the League of Rights).
She repeats them without question. After all, isn't the taxi-driver, or fitter-welder, a first hand witness, she, naively, thinks. And the Miles Franklin Award judges like "Lones" Kramer (an extreme right winger and multi-millionaire) have also heard the lies in many forms, including the Nazi/Yanqui masterpiece of real film footage and fake dialogue dub-over.
So when they read Helen, they feel chuffed. The girl has done it for us. She has confirmed what we privately know. Didn't we see it on the tellie?
But Helen doesn't have to apologize to the Communists, nor does Gerard Henderson. Gerard has made a "whore" of Helen, by attacking her, to cover his own guilt, having received a rocket up his arse from Jewish organizations. Has anyone every imagined how many Communists there were, from 1848, writers, artists, scientists, who are now all as black as Helen wishes to paint any one of them? And "Lones" Kramer stamps them with the smoking stub of her semi-extinguished soul.
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Investigators
Heard on the ABC last night (28/9) that the program The Investigators is in a couple of months' time to be "axed".
This program, which I feel sure has been of great value in exposing the rip-offs and frauds that go on in this "enterprising" society, is a backward step. Not only has it exposed the rip-offs, but it has enabled many people to have their wrongs righted.
Jean Hale
Sydney
Hilton bombing
I am amazed that the Federal Government continues to peddle the absurd proposition that the Hilton bombing was a violation of NSW laws therefore it is solely a matter for the NSW government to hold an enquiry.
That position ignores several grave reasons why it is essential that the Federal Government be involved in a joint State and Federal Government inquiry.
Responsibility for security at the conference where the bombing occurred was a joint State and Federal Government responsibility. The failure to prevent the bombing was a joint responsibility. Army sniffer dogs which could have easily detected the bomb were in training for the conference for 2 weeks beforehand but were stood down a few days before the bombing. We still don't know why. Army employees are Federal employees therefore the Federal Government needs to be involved in the inquiry. ASIO has been accused of involvement in the bombing — a senior scientist from CSIRO approached the NSW Attorney-General in 1980 to report that he had been approached by ASIO before the Hilton bombing to manufacture two bombs. ASIO employees are Federal Government employees therefore the Federal Government needs to be involved in the inquiry.
The only Agency to benefit from the Hilton bombing was ASIO. In the 1978 budget 6 months after the bombing ASIO's annual budget was increased by 26% against a background of cut-backs in the Federal Public Service in the era of "Fraser the Razor". Before the Hilton bombing the intelligence community in Australia was enduring much adverse criticism heightened by alarming revelations about the activities of the CIA and the FBI in America. After the bombing it became difficult to criticise the intelligence community without being accused of being soft on terrorism.
Perhaps the Federal Government drags its heels because ASIO, as a flypaper for gossip, has "the dirt" on somebody. It's not unprecedented — J Edgar Hoover in the US of A had "the dirt" on Senators and a former President.
Leigh Howlett
Campsie NSW