I am sending this as a letter to Socialist Worker (the newspaper of the British SWP), and distributing it fairly widely. I doubt they'll print it, but you never know...


Your 3 February editorial (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17041) has the headline "House of Lords? Off with their heads!" This is presumably not to be taken literally, but since you call for "a workers' militia" in your paper every week, maybe that presumption is incorrect.

You state "The House of Lords doesn’t need reforming – it needs abolishing", without any justification. Surely it would be far better to join with the many others who call for its replacement by a purely elected body (renamed obviously), preferably advocating the single transferable vote (STV) form of proportional representation (PR), to eliminate tactical voting. With capitalism self-destructing and the likelihood of the UK going bankrupt (as you echo capitalist commentators in pointing out in the latest edition of Socialist Review), socialists could even gain a majority in such a body!

This would highlight the extremely undemocratic nature of the House of Commons electoral system, in which it is very difficult (but not impossible as you dogmatically assert) for socialists to achieve a majority, and in the future we could even call for abolition of the House of Commons!

Maybe you don't call for PR because it would undermine your project of hierarchies of committees based on workplaces (called "soviets" in Russia). Despite the name "Constituent Assembly", this body abolished in favour of "all power to the soviets" was actually elected by PR rather than based on constituencies. There have been over 90 years of capitalism, largely as a consequence of that undemocratic move by the Bolsheviks.

If you are going to suggest reforms under capitalism, such a call (plus other more radical demands than yours like democratisation of the already nationalised banks with most control in the hands of savers and borrowers, and forcing rich individuals and big corporations to pay tax) would be far better than your wishy-washy People Before Profit charter.