Letters: Two leaflets (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a Libertarian Socialist I send you an “Open letter— Alliance & Solidarity for a New Left/European New Left”, that is a translation (bad I’m sure) into English of an idea that started in Portugal during the last European Elections. Let me know what you think:

“—MAY 68— PARIS/FRANCE —APRIL 74/75— LISBON/PORTUGAL —CUBA/NICARAGUA and after?

For some the Left is dead, for others, the Left is the ‘Third Way’. But the reality is that we don’t know what’s meant by being ‘Left’. What do we stand for? What sort of Left in Europe for the 2000s?

It’s time to re-invent, to re-think, the Left, and in ‘Alliance & Solidarity’ to rebuild a New Left/European New Left.

For us the New Left will be a project for a new society, more democratic and alternative, socialist, libertarian and Ecologist/Green .A more free and less consumerist society.

This project must come from local community experiences, and not from ready-made theories. It must be a project capable of changing relations between human beings; producers; consumers; development— environment; sex—religion; working relations—leisure; racism—culture; nation state, etc. A project with new experiences for new communal relations and relations between peoples and countries.

There are no ready-made answers, neither will the answers be for sure. But in ‘Alliance & Solidarity’ with the contributions of all interested, Socialists, Libertarians, workers’ co-operatives, ecologists, green activists, lesbian/gay movement activists, New Age groups; trade unions, etc. we can rebuild step-by-step a new project, the New Left/European New Left.”

Emmanuel, 

Bracknell, Berks

Reply: 

The Old Left with its project for state capitalism has certainly failed but we don’t think what you propose is the answer. Certainly, all the groups you mention have an interest in getting rid of capitalism—and so, if only they knew it, of establishing a socialist society of common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use—except the New Agers (though perhaps they too will find what they’re looking for in socialism). But before bringing together various disparate interest groups, some of whose demands can be accommodated within the context of capitalism, we would need to be clear on the goal aimed at. We would need to be clear what the more free, libertarian and democratic and less consumerist society respecting ecological principles that you rightly want can only be achieved on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s productive resources. This understood, it would follow that all our political efforts should be exclusively directed to achieving that goal.

Editors.

* * *

Dear Editors,

The enclosed “Election Leaflet” represents a fictitious attempt by a World Wide Free Access Party in support of an equally fictitious candidate for Parliament. I was inspired to write this because of the recent correspondence in the Socialist Standard regarding changing the name of the Party. This leaflet is a fallout from it:

“Many voters will be learning about Free Access for the first time as a political force although the practice of Free Access is as old as mankind itself, in fact it worked inside every family in the past and so it does today. Whenever did you hear of parents selling food to their children or making them buy it from them? Never. That’s Free Access at work.

This long history of Free Access has been further developed by small groups all over our planet and advocated by poets and philosophers down the ages. Indeed the use of money as a total exchange unit is a comparatively modern thing, societies getting along without it for thousands of

years and, if using it at all, only sparingly.

World Free Access! What does it mean? Will it work today?

1. No, it can’t work because firstly it must be mentally accepted, then it will work.
2. It requires no leaders. They tend to freeze the mind. Free Worlders have no leaders and don’t need them—we know what we want.
3. We just need to be able to produce abundance for all—we can, right now!
4. A moneyless, frontierless world society will release a mighty flood of hitherto unproductive labour. No armed forces or armaments, no banks, no insurance, no income tax, no ticket collectors or travel costs, no customs, etc.
5. The rape of the planet for profit leading to global warming and danger to all life will cease instantly.
6. Numerous wars, always raging somewhere, will cease.
7. The elimination of life on earth will no longer be a possibility.”

Sam Levitt, 

London NW3

Reply: 

Your leaflet is certainly better than the one from Portugal. We will let readers judge for themselves whether separating the concept of socialism from its history and the class struggle doesn’t make it sound a bit insipid.

Editors.