Towards
a Socialist Alliance party
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1.
Ways and means
3.
Bowing to nationalist spontaneity
4.
Economic and political demands
7.
Leninist advocates of authoritarianism and local objectors
10.
Europe and the politics of the offensive
When the post-Tony Cliff Socialist Workers Party threw
its weight behind our Socialist Alliance, it gave us a vital qualitative boost
in terms of resources, cadre and reach. Nevertheless since then the burning
question of ‘ultimate destination’, and therefore organisational ways and
means, has been left hazy or unanswered. This pamphlet is intended as a contribution
aimed at provoking thought and debate and achieving clarity.
The
June 11 2001 general election rightly was our immediate priority. However, for Marxists elections have never
been the be-all and end-all of politics. The Socialist Alliance desperately
needs a programme and an ambitious system of practical work that will stage
by stage bring about a rapprochement between our various component parts and
in the shortest possible timespan achieve solid and durable unity in a single
democratic and centralist party organised throughout, and against, the United
Kingdom state. By the way, that overriding objective of ours is no dogmatic
obsession. Only armed with such a party can the working class take on and
overcome our main enemy. To argue for anything less is to argue for defeat.
Neither
the SWP’s designation of the Socialist Alliance as a united front of a special
kind nor the federalist non-aggression pact advocated by the Socialist Party
in England and Wales describes what exists at present, let alone provides
any sort of alternative - offensive - vision to the dominant - defensive -
ideology and forms of Labourism.
On
the other hand John Nicholson’s, Pete McLaren’s and Dave Nellist’s unrequited
courtship of greens, direct actionists and assorted anarchist types now appears
completely dated and more than slightly embarrassing. The All Red and Green
title of the photocopied Socialist Alliance bulletin put together by comrade
McLaren is a quarterly self-confession of failure. The Socialist Alliance
unites reds - but not reds with greens. Excellent.
True,
there still remains a definite infatuation with the greens. This despite the
undeniable fact that they follow an agenda utterly alien to socialism and
the cause of the working class. Every genuine socialist is an environmentalist
but very few greens even formally adhere to socialism. Small-scale and shopkeeper
capitalism is their social ideal.
Nonetheless
comrade Pete McLaren, editor of The All Red and Green, warns of the
danger of “direct clashes” between ourselves and the “Green Party” in elections
- as was the case on June 7 2001.
Let
us be crystal clear. The Socialist Alliance should invite green socialists
into our ranks - where we can work together and frankly argue through our
disagreements. The Socialist Alliance though ought to be an alliance of socialists,
not an alliance of socialists and non-socialists.
Moreover
a sharp class line must be drawn between socialists and greens. Socialism
is not merely a nice idea. It is the global self-liberation movement of the
working class. The greens in general are neither socialist nor pro-working
class. That is why the CPGB favours deepening the red in the Socialist Alliance
not diluting it with greenism. Put another way, we were right to stand against
the Green Party.
As
a school of thought, deep greens oppose global capital. But they do so in
the name of an imagined self-sufficient past, not a communist future of freely
associated producers. As a corollary the Green Party itself programmatically
insists upon a thoroughly inhuman - Malthusian - reduction of Britain’s population
from 60 to 20 million - presumably along with draconian ‘non-racist’ immigration
controls. Africa, China, India and the ‘overpopulated’ ‘third world’ are viewed
with the same bilious eyes. People, not alienated capitalist social relations
and production for its own sake, are for them the root problem. In the final
analysis that leads to gas chambers.
Despite
all the damning evidence highlighting the reactionary essence of the greens,
Ian Burchall fantasised a while ago - as an SWP “exercise in political science
fiction”- about a “possible” reformist “coalition” government consisting of
greens, the Socialist Alliance and independent Labour leftists (Socialist
Review December 2000). His ‘science fiction’ served not to warn but
was meant to inspire. Heaven help us. Nevertheless those siren voices that
seek “positive links” with the Green Anarchist and warn against
fighting seats where there is also a Green Party candidate are nowadays increasingly
marginal. Good.
In
part that is no doubt because the Socialist Alliance has been decisively tilted
in favour of the reds and is therefore an unattractive prospect for green
careerists and freebooting muddleheads. The SWP’s entry cemented the whole
Socialist Alliance as an alliance of socialists; principally Britain’s
main left organisations. Something it should be stressed the CPGB consistently
advocated and tenaciously fought to achieve.
There
was what might be called a cost. Insubstantial elements fell away - goodbye
Green Socialist Network, Green Way Ahead, etc. However, there were in both
material and political terms significant gains. Left dominated local socialist
alliances sprung up by the dozen and new affiliates rallied - hello Workers
Power, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Revolutionary Democratic Group, Red
Action, etc.
In
every respect this rearticulation of the Socialist Alliance has orientated
the whole project towards an altogether different destination to the one envisaged
by the original Liaison Committee. In the opinion of the CPGB, objectively
things point unmistakably towards an eventual merger of all affiliates into
a single democratic and centralist party; at least in terms of logic.
Yet
it cannot be denied that at present the pro-party bloc forms a minority, albeit
a rapidly growing one. As revealed by voting figures at our Socialist Alliance
conferences, there exist two bigger, albeit bitterly opposed, conservative
blocs - the biggest is around the SWP, the other exists in the form of SPEW
and an ephemeral collection of localists. Neither bloc holds out any kind
of dynamic or inspiring perspective. Let me expand somewhat on this bald judgement,
beginning with the bloc headed by the SWP.
Officially
it promotes the Socialist Alliance as a united front between revolutionary
socialists and left Labourites. The International Socialist Group and the
Revolutionary Democratic Group echo this perspective.
In
the canon of Marxism, eg, the 4th Congress of the Communist International,
a united front refers to a particular tactic, or set of tactics, designed
to win over the working class to the side of communism. By entering into negotiations
and agreeing to jointly campaign with social democratic misleaders communists
gain the ear of their followers. The aim is to put us, the communists, at
the forefront of the workers’ day to day struggles and in the process secure
mass support. So the united front is an initiative whereby communists actively
fight alongside the mass of workers in order to defeat and replace reformist
traitors. That hardly describes the Socialist Alliance. The unity we have
achieved is essentially between small revolutionary groups - the largest being
the Socialist Workers Party which still counts its membership in the few thousands
not tens of thousands ... certainly not the millions necessary for a decisive
socialist breakthrough in a country like Britain.
It
is not a matter of abstruse theory. By designating the Socialist Alliance
as a united front of a special kind the SWP implicitly limits us in terms
of tempo and scope to what it imagines is acceptable to left Labourism. Apart
from the lethargy and narrow-mindedness of left reformism, the flaw is obvious.
The Socialist Alliance has never contained anything more than a smattering
of groups and individuals who might define themselves in terms of the tradition
of social democracy; eg, Leeds Left Alliance, Democratic Labour Party (Walsall)
and the now defunct Independent Labour Network. However, to ensnare disillusioned
Labourites and to provide them with what appears to them to be a comfortable
political home, the SWP bloc tries to adulterate or tone down our commonly
held principles and would-be programme. This is done so as to fashion us into
a trap which will pull in and catch those disgruntled or disgusted with the
Labour government and its repudiation of any pretence at being committed to
social transformation.
As
a front the Socialist Alliance is of course thereby privately visualised
as a transmission belt into the SWP - supposedly the revolutionary
party, but in actuality a state capitalist confessional sect.
Today they join the Socialist Alliance. Tomorrow the SWP. That is the schema.
As for the Socialist Alliance itself, with the SWP as a ventriloquist majority,
that essentially underhand and dishonest method means voicing politics which
are far to the right of the Socialist Alliance’s true political centre of
gravity.
So
instead of thrashing out our own common ideas as Marxists and revolutionaries
and then unashamedly and confidently presenting them to the working class,
the SWP et al do their best to ensure that we routinely stand
on politics that can be described as warmed over left social democracy. Stop
the closure of X. Clean up the streets in Y. Don’t privatise Z. Not that we
should ignore such matters - the role of revolutionary socialists and communists
is, however, to generalise, to raise and integrate all grievances and demands
and immediately direct them towards the overthrow of the existing state.
Mistakenly
there is no recognition that militants - and in time the broadest layers,
having fallen out with Blair’s Labour Party, and establishment politics in
general - can be won intellectually and organisationally to full blown Marxism
by a direct course, or leap, as opposed to some abstract and shadowy half-way
house.
Of
course as a rounded body of historically accumulated knowledge Marxism can
only be grasped through painstaking, extensive and ongoing study. However,
Marxism’s straightforward insistence on the reality of classes and class struggle,
consistent promotion of extreme democracy and heaven-storming mission of universal
human self-liberation means that millions of so-called ordinary people can
quickly, easily and passionately come to see Marxism and its ‘big ideas’ as
their own. Individuals invariably have their Damascene conversion, the decisive
moment when they suddenly see the light.
In
Prague, Nice, etc, SWP contingents chant flamboyant anarchist style anti-capitalist
slogans - but such bluster is not for the consumption of the mass of electors
in Britain. Here the SWP speaks on behalf of the dead body of old Labour and
offers a series of emaciated ‘action’ demands that in their totality fail
to transcend the system of capital or even prioritise opposition to the constitutional
monarchy system. Democracy and high politics, which alone can forge the workers
into a potential ruling class, were only to be found tucked away in the crevasses
of our 2001 general election manifesto.
Put
another way, the SWP - and the Socialist Alliance majority - is still yet
to break with economism. At this juncture the SWP cannot therefore properly
lead the Socialist Alliance, despite the welcome flexibility and initiative
displayed by the post-Cliff quadrivirate of Chris Bambery, Alex Callinicos,
Chris Harman and John Rees.
What
of the SPEW bloc? SPEW and its anarcho and localist allies of convenience
are even less ambitious than the SWP. When not actively sabotaging the Socialist
Alliance by standing against us, or holding back finances in their “war” on
the SWP and those “heavily inclined to support” them, SPEW is set upon little
more than an election non-aggression pact (SPEW national circular December
21 2000). Along with Bakunin, their organisational totem is federalism.
Peter
Taaffe is galled by the prospect of his rank and file mixing with other forces
on the left and being contaminated by the dangerous ideas of unity. He is
also blindly searching for a prophylactic formula that will magically restore
the fortunes of his rapidly declining and fragmenting organisation. Incapable,
it seems, of putting the interests of the whole to the fore, his sole concern
has been his survival as general secretary of an accidentally but appropriately
named sect.
Politically,
it hardly needs adding, SPEW constitutes the rightwing of the Socialist Alliance.
Under the banner of Marxism it advocates a completely bombastic and apocalyptic
version of left reformism. Note: SPEW’s hopes for socialism rely on a cataclysmic
economic slump. As an opportunist chameleon, SPEW colours red everything that
suits - Kier Hardie, the Labour Party, Stalin’s five year plan, Assad’s Syria,
Gorbachev’s counterrevolution within the counterrevolution, Burma, the black
separatism of Panther (UK), Scottish nationalism, feminism, the petty bourgeois
fuel protests, etc.
Obviously
there are understandable fears of being swamped by the SWP. Peter Taaffe’s
‘Ken Livingstone and a new workers’ party’ article in the April 2000 issue
of Socialism Today ended in an anti-SWP diatribe. Interestingly,
it earned a stern rebuke from the Scottish Socialist Party’s international
secretary Frances Curren. She accuses SPEW of making a number of big “mistakes”
in London and a “yearning for a return of the glory days of entrism” in the
Labour Party. Instead of idle chatter about a new mass party, she rightly
urges SPEW to throw its full weight behind the living Socialist Alliance project
(CWI Members Bulletin May 2000). The CPGB is convinced that
the best way to overcome fear of SWP or anyone else’s domination is to consistently
strengthen democracy and constitutionally enshrine the rights of minorities
to representation at the highest levels (that is why we advocate an elections
preparations committee at conferences and a balanced recommended list).
What
of the third bloc, which has at its head the CPGB? Inevitably, as we think
of ourselves as the most farsighted, consistent and selfless component of
the Socialist Alliance, the CPGB has tried to present radical, ambitious and
yet fully realisable and coherent proposals. It may be said without exaggeration
that what the Weekly Worker proposes invariably finds confirmation
in the grain of events which we have helped to direct and shape.
The
CPGB took the prime lead in establishing the London Socialist Alliance in
January 1999. Our comrade Anne Murphy broke the SWP’s auto-Labourism and edged
them towards the strategic-tactic of revolutionaries standing together in
elections - she secured active SWP support, standing as the Socialist
Unity candidate in North Defoe (Hackney). Having a fully theorised understanding
of the agitational purchase and educational importance of elections in the
present period of reaction sui generis, we did everything in
our power to ensure slates of Socialist Alliance candidates in local, regional
and European elections. From the start we argued for and in due course won
a full SA list in the GLA elections.
On
the Socialist Alliance Liaison Committee our delegates were, to begin with,
alone in flagging the target of 50-plus candidates for the June general election
and calling for a London headquarters. Some wanted six candidates. Others
20. Nothing more could be afforded. We were also determined to provide practical
means whereby coordination between ourselves and the Scottish Socialist Party
and the Welsh Socialist Alliance could be democratically facilitated. The
CPGB therefore recommended that Liaison Committee seats be permanently reserved
for the SSP and the WSA and that together with these comrades we set the target
of 100-plus candidates on a UK wide basis and thus secure the right for a
nationwide TV party political broadcast. Thankfully what began as CPGB madness
became accepted as the bottom line of Socialist Alliance common sense.
The
CPGB has also distinguished itself by steadfastly championing an ever widening
and ever deepening democracy in the Socialist Alliance. That is why we equally
stress the freedom to openly dissent as we do the duty to implement agreed
actions.
At
Coventry in September 2000 the CPGB and its cothinkers were able to act as
‘king makers’ and score a string of successes which advanced the mutually
reinforcing principles of democracy and centralism. The shameful Mike Marquesee-SWP
ban on selling partisan literature while canvassing for the London Socialist
Alliance was reversed. A body blow against bureaucratic centralism.
Yet,
as we freely admit, in terms of numbers the two conservative blocs dwarfed
us. It should also be pointed out that our motions recommending the inclusion
of the Marxist vision of socialism as an act of working class self-liberation
in our 2001 election manifesto were soundly, but revealingly, defeated by
their combined votes. Our Socialist Alliance partners voted in that baneful
and regressive way as a direct corollary of their self-serving perspectives.
Opportunist narrowness either holds them back or actually produces regression.
Our intention as authentic Leninists is, in contrast, to pull everybody and
everything forward.
Besides a common Liaison Committee, common regional
and local structures, a common programme, common rules and constitution, and
common election candidates and manifestos, the Socialist Alliance requires
in addition - as a matter of urgency - something else. In our opinion, a common
political paper.
True,
the December 2 2000 meeting of the Liaison Committee contemptuously dismissed
the CPGB’s motion on a Socialist Alliance paper - there was not even the show
of debate. A sea of hands outvoted us. Nevertheless we are not downhearted.
Nor are we going to give up.
Such
a bold initiative would tangibly meet our burning needs and is furthermore
absolutely necessary to advance the whole Socialist Alliance project. Launching
a Socialist Alliance political paper would certainly galvanise, unite and
coordinate Socialist Alliance members. No one I am sure, believes our awful
All Red and Green quarterly internal bulletin could do anything like
that.
Equally
germane here, instead of being almost totally reliant on leaflet shots and
the uncanny ability of Anna Chen and her publicity team to sneak our politics
into the establishment’s self-obsessed media, a Socialist Alliance paper brings
with it another obvious advantage. Operating in tandem with and powering the
SA website, we would have in our collective armoury a regular, uncensorable,
unambiguous and independent voice.
The
Socialist Alliance should not have to bank on the generosity, or gullibility,
of The Guardian, the BBC or the Murdoch empire. Use them when we can.
But let us primarily look to our own strength.
A
Socialist Alliance paper would also surely act as an invaluable and ongoing
vehicle to bring about the organisational and ideological convergence between
the principal supporting groups and body of non-aligned members. Those who
write, sell, raise finances and carve out a bigger audience together stay
together. In short a political paper represents the starting point, the first
step towards creating a genuinely effective revolutionary party in Britain.
And that, not some united front or centrist halfway house, is the overriding
goal to which everything else should be subordinated.
A
Socialist Alliance paper would therefore not only send out a potent and inspiring
message to our constituency amongst the politically advanced section of the
working class. It sets in motion a system, which if kept to and sustained,
would enable us to steadily tighten, deepen and massively extend our organisational
activity and political scope.
A
political paper more than complements and enhances electoral interventions.
It provides the means, which at present we lack, to make systematic propaganda
and agitation on all issues. And doing that must be the permanent, and at
this moment in time is the most pressing task facing the Socialist Alliance.
Standing 98 candidates on a minimalist platform in a Westminster general election
is, in comparison, mere child’s play.
Without
full and open debate, only possible with a frequent Socialist Alliance paper,
there can be no consistency of principle on the ‘big questions’. Nor can there
be a speedy and generally agreed response to the countless new challenges
brought forth by the maelstrom of socio-economic, parliamentary and international
events. The trade unions, the anti-capitalist movement, the battle for the
restoration of student grants, the ecological crisis, the stubborn national
questions in the United Kingdom, etc, all cry out for Socialist Alliance organisational
and political answers.
The
progress we have made over the last three or four years has been amazing.
Not so long ago the mere suggestion of getting Britain’s six principal left
organisations working in unison under any sort of proto-party umbrella would
have been dismissed as pure moonshine. But no revolutionary worth the name
can afford to rest on their laurels. Much more needs to be done. Therefore
much more must be done.
Conditions
are ripe. It is not simply that we operate under an unprecedented second-term
Labour government with the Tories mired in crisis and unable to cash in on
the disillusionment with Labour. The revolutionary left in Britain had the
duty throughout the 1960s and 70s to present a viable political alternative
to a Labour government and thus the Labour Party, and not only in the field
of elections. After all, way back in 1914 the Labour Party had visibly solidified
into a thoroughly bourgeois - ie reactionary - workers’ party. The
famed introduction of clause four in 1918 was in actual fact no more than
a bit of state socialist window-dressing. And, of course, Labour governments,
every one of them from MacDonald to Blair, grovellingly and undeviatingly
served the interests of accumulated dead labour (capital) not living labour
(workers).
If
standing means a batch of Tory MPs slipping through because of the first-past-the-post
(or any other) electoral system, and even if it means a Tory majority, then
so be it. The job of revolutionaries is not to choose between the butchers.
We should be quite prepared to run the risk. A Tory government along with
a million votes for revolutionary candidates is infinitely preferable to a
Labour government with no revolutionary candidates and therefore no votes
for revolutionaries. Under the former circumstances the working class is far
better equipped, far more willing to fight, far more able to fight. Nonetheless,
whatever disagreement we have with our SWP allies about the past, whatever
worries we have of them dropping the Socialist Alliance project once Tory
fortunes revive, there can be no denying that an historic window of opportunity
exists today.
Blair’s
’third way’ infatuation with the market. The sop constitutional reforms designed
to shore up the UK. The impeccable neo-liberal record of chancellor Brown.
The dramatic shift in who pays for the Labour Party and therefore who calls
the tune. The maintenance of Tory anti-trade union legislation. The definite
anti-capitalist sentiments amongst a layer of radicalised young people. The
votes by the FBU and Unison on their political funds and a similar and narrowly
lost vote in the CWU. All that and more means the Socialist Alliance can begin
to practically transform the political landscape in Britain ... if we manage
to change ourselves and become an active agent.
The
ideas of Marxism, revolutionary democracy and working class self-liberation
can be made into a social force. However, that requires finding the audacity,
energy and skill needed to raise ourselves from localist, trade unionist and
sectarian concerns. We must become the nationwide political-organisational
focus for the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, who are already deeply
alienated from Labourism, the UK state and capitalism in general.
So
there is a pressing need to augment the dispersed, often parochial and invariably
mundane agitation which we presently conduct, usually in the form of leaflets
and election flyers, with the generalised and systematic agitation and propaganda
that can only be conducted in a common Socialist Alliance political paper.
Indeed, the extent to which we publish frequently, develop the sinews and
muscle weight needed to quickly deliver to newsagents, bookshops and into
the hands of activists in the workplaces, colleges and on the estates, and
thereby build our influence day by day, will be the measure of our real progress.
Getting votes is vitally important and provides a momentary snapshot. But
organising, building and directing a living network of members and active
sympathisers across the whole country is an altogether higher and more exacting
form of engagement.
Doubtless
it will be argued from within those blocs wedded to the concept of the Socialist
Alliance as a united front or a loose federation that we already have abundant
rounded agitation and propaganda. How many times have you been in effect told
by the seller of x, y or z that while every rival is a load of rubbish, x,
y or z is all the working class needs for a balanced political diet? Such
carefully inculcated and deeply ingrained attitudes reek of complacency and
are thankfully increasingly out of tune with the spirit of comradeship and
vaulting ambition implicit in the Socialist Alliance.
At
this phase of development an overwhelming majority of Socialist Alliance members
loyally back, write for and circulate a medley of one-sided, but often fiercely
competing, factional publications. Attend any all-London or national gathering
and you will be overwhelmed by choice. There must be well over two dozen papers
and periodicals inhabiting our SA space.
As
well as the Weekly Worker there are two well-entrenched weeklies
- Socialist Worker and The Socialist. There is
one fortnightly, the Alliance for Workers Liberty’s Action for Solidarity.
The above clutch of factions also publish Socialist Review, International
Socialism, Socialism Today and Workers’ Liberty as offshoots
or leftovers. Then, slipping down the evolutionary ladder, come the cold-blooded
monthlies Socialist Outlook and Workers Power
and their slow moving auxiliaries. And in the murky depths the intrepid explorer
will find Republican Communist, Workers International,
Red Shift and a host of other equally worthy publications whose
names do not spring to mind or still remain to be discovered by science.
Frankly
we anticipate that tough factional centres will persist within the Socialist
Alliance for some considerable length of time. And that goes for factional
publications too. Expecting anything else is to indulge in simple-minded or
bureaucratic utopianism. So the Socialist Alliance was right after a few initial
wobbles to have taken a firm stand against any hint of bans or curbs on disseminating
minority viewpoints.
However,
we earnestly hope for, and will strive towards, a situation where factional
differences are, stage by stage resolved into little more than the differences
of shade that are inevitable and healthy in any vibrant and genuine party
of the working class. A first qualitative step in that mutually beneficial
direction must be a Socialist Alliance political paper (naturally all the
main strands in the Socialist Alliance must have an editorial seat and find
journalistic expression).
The
sum of the whole is much greater than the parts - including when it comes
to publications. Herculean financial, journalistic and logistical efforts
undoubtedly go into maintaining our present divisions. Pooling resources
and talents is surely guaranteed to produce results way beyond the dreams
of any existing circulation department. Just think of the stable of writers
we have at our disposal - Paul Foot, John Pilger, Lindsey German, Alan Thornett,
Jeremy Hardy, Peter Taaffe, Mike Marqusee, Sean Matgamna, etc, etc.
There
is another aspect to our political paper. The revolutionary proletariat, as
Marx and Engels, unforgettably declared, has no country. But we do face an
enemy that exists on two mutually reinforcing but mismatched levels: the global
and the state. Doggedly and unflinchingly we must therefore continue to uphold
an all-UK perspective.
The
UK state exists - a simple statement of fact. And the first decisive contribution
to the universal supercession of world capitalism that the working class movement
within the UK can make is to overthrow that state. The corollary is clear
and straightforward: one state, one party.
So
our political paper must aim to be all-UK. Combine all efforts. Certainly
the nationalist fragmentation we have inadvertently legitimised and thereby
allowed to fester must be rectified. Nationalism blunts common efforts and
sours relations between socialists. For example, replying to a proposal for
discussion around a joint party political broadcast and the offer of a permanent
seat on our Socialist Alliance leadership, Allan Green, Scottish Socialist
Party secretary, indignantly writes in tartan nationalist mode and as if Scotland
were an independent class state. The Socialist Alliance and the SSP, he protests,
“operate in different countries” (Weekly Worker January 18 2001).
The
hand of friendship must be held out to comrades in the kingdom of Scotland
- and the principality of Wales and the province of Northern Ireland. Our
common enemy is the UK state and every revolutionary socialist and militant
worker has an elementary internationalist duty to unite against it. To perpetuate
fragmentation is to invite a self inflicted defeat.
Stressed
throughout this section is the term political, ie, the Socialist Alliance
needs a political paper. The Socialist Alliance project is not only
fragmented by nationalism but held back by economism. By that Marxists primarily
mean downplaying democratic questions and leaving to others initiatives on
high politics.
The
vast majority of Socialist Alliance activities do not rise above the horizons
of local work and issues that concern the workers as a slave class. That is
why we advocate a political paper.
We
must train our membership in the politics of all classes and make our paper
the tribune of the oppressed. Without such an approach the Socialist Alliance
is doomed to tailism. That can mean voting Labour as the lesser evil, welcoming
Blair’s constitutional sops for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, aping
anarchists in the anti-capitalist movement, pandering to routine trade unionism
and so on and so forth. Whatever its particular form, tailism remains tailism.
Entering
the field of elections was a decisive step forward. Now the Socialist Alliance
must take another decisive step. Perhaps beginning as a monthly, but going
weekly as soon as is technically and financially feasible, and in time daily.
Launching a political paper would take everyone and everything to a new plane
of readiness and combativity.
We have already mentioned how the Socialist Alliance
majority - in particular the Socialist Workers Party - has fallen in behind
the separatist agenda of Scottish and Welsh left nationalists. Whereas our
main enemy is effectively and malevolently organised across the whole of the
United Kingdom state, we have irresponsibly divided and thereby weakened our
small and fragile forces.
The
Scottish Socialist Party is set upon a parliamentary deal with the thoroughly
bourgeois and reactionary Scottish National Party in 2003. SSP leader Alan
McCombes promises to “collaborate” with an SNP minority government; he specifically
cites “legislation for a referendum” on independence (Frontline March
2001). A crossing of class lines originally floated last year by Tommy Sheridan
MSP in the Scottish edition of The Observer. Evidently the socialism
of Alan McCombes, Tommy Sheridan, Frances Curren, Richie Venton, et
al is nowadays more a combination of Eduard Bernstein and Joseph Pilsudski
than Leon Trotsky and Ted Grant.
All
such pan-nationalism should be unreservedly condemned. For us the guiding
principle should be achieving working class unity - a process of becoming,
synonymous with winning working class hegemony over all democratic issues
and cases of injustice. So the goal of communists is not to weaken the UK
state by hiving off eight percent of its population in Scotland. The working
class movement must have more elevated sights: sweeping aside the UK state,
and cementing the voluntary union of the peoples of this island of Great Britain
through a federal republic.
Tormented
by our unremitting polemics, left nationalists run for cover into the dark
cave of stupidity. Many refuse to recognise or admit the elementary fact that
national self-determination can be exercised in favour of unity. Self-determination
for them equals independence. It is as if their brains have been hard wired.
Again
in a ludicrous attempt at self-defence left nationalists rant and rave about
the CPGB’s red, white and blue loyalty to Britain. Some even believe they
can stop us dead with our party title - Communist Party of Great Britain.
Sad. Yes, it is true that territorially Great Britain is our immediate sphere
of activity (the same could apply to the United Kingdom). But that state is
also our main, immediate, enemy.
The
same went for Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches and their Social Democratic
Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. Suffice to say they were neither
royalists nor patriots. Like us their flag was red. Let left nationalists
should also ponder this. The CPGB is committed to doing away with the European
Union of the commission and council of ministers and replacing it with a fully
democratic, federal, Europe. Does that make us Europhiles? No. The starting
point of authentic communists is not nationality but proletarian internationalism
and the interests of the universal revolution. We really can imagine a world
without frontiers.
How
do our allies in the Socialist Alliance respond to the SSP’s left nationalism
and class collaborationism? In a word - regrettably.
Chris
Bambery and the SWP employ an oft-repeated stock formulation. The break-up
of Britain - and by implication the historically constituted working class
- is “no problem”. What a pity they do not trenchantly stand by the “We oppose
everything which turns workers from one country against those from other countries”
formulation (Socialist Worker ‘Where we stand’).
Peter
Taaffe’s Socialist Party in England and Wales adopts an equally agnostic attitude.
The only break-up that appears to bother comrade Taaffe is the one between
his Committee for a Workers International and the International Socialist
Movement of comrades McCombes and Sheridan.
Others
positively connive with separatism. Alan Thornet of the International Socialist
Group would gleefully welcome the formation of an independent kingdom of Scotland.
It would constitute some kind of perverse “step forward”. Like Yugoslavia?
Though
not going that far - yet - the SWP has uncritically promoted the McCombes
and Sheridan book Imagine. Obviously there was a degree of Machiavellian
cynicism here. The SWP was determined to pursue its courtship of the SSP.
At Bookmarks’ promotional meeting comrade Louise Christian - SA candidate
in Hornsey and Wood Green - actually described their national socialist tract
as “the best exposition of socialism there ever is” (Weekly Worker
March 1 2001).
What
about Wales? The comrades in the Welsh Socialist Alliance have virtually been
abandoned. Cymru Goch might be sulking on the margins. But given the stand
off between the SWP and SPEW, localism is rapidly filling the political void.
One can already hear whispers of a Welsh Socialist Party modelled on the SSP
coming from the lips of disenchanted Taaffeites. Hardly surprising, given
that our Socialist Alliance bars all Welsh organisations from membership.
A synergy with left nationalism born of inverted English chauvinism.
But
there is a stronger connection. Both the SWP and left nationalism have a common
methodological root, namely, tailing spontaneity. At first sight this statement
might appear bizarre. After all the SWP insists week after week that: “At
most parliamentary activity can be used to make propaganda against the present
system” and that “a socialist revolution cannot survive in isolation” (‘Where
we stand’). The ghastly fate of Stalin’s USSR is, of course, waved aloft as
a clincher.
On
the other hand comrade McCombes and Sheridan solemnly swear that their long
and winding parliamentary road will eventually arrive at a “thriving, blossoming
socialist democracy” in Scotland which would provide the whole world with
“inspiration” (A McCombes, T Sheridan Imagine Edinburgh 2000, p189).
The underlying idea is to follow the unstoppable and supposedly ever rising
curve of nationalism. Incidentally only a narrow-minded economist would deny
or downplay the national question in Scotland or the need for a democratic
solution.
Yet
comrades McCombes and Sheridan extrapolate convenient opinion polls of under
25s, etc, to the point of absurdity. The break-up of Britain is not an open-ended
matter to be decided by class interests and struggle, but exists almost as
a definite fixture in the future. It is, to all intents and purposes, regarded
as a foregone conclusion. Evolutionary nationalism!
Nevertheless,
a connection there is. SSP left nationalists and the SWP merely bow before
different aspects, or manifestations, of spontaneity. Look at SWP practice
and what do you find? Proclamations about fidelity to revolution prove to
be merely about sustaining a belief system. When it comes to the ‘grubby business’
of contesting elections, the SWP is interested in votes for their own sake,
just like any run of the mill electoralist machine. What does that mean in
practice? Instead of revolutionary propaganda the SWP collapses into old Labourism.
For
example, the debate on the minimum wage in Haringey Socialist Alliance. Comrade
Tina Becker for the CPGB proposed £8.57 as an hourly rate, or a £300 minimum
for a 35-hour maximum working week. This is not a figure plucked out of thin
air, or a leftist attempt to outbid others. We calculate that £300 is the
barest minimum required to physically and culturally reproduce a worker in
today’s Britain. Think about it. Could you live and replace yourself as a
human being with anything less? To demand £4.61 (SWP), £5 (SPEW) or £7 (AWL
and Workers Power) is therefore to argue for wages below the level of subsistence.
Take
Weyman Bennett, SWP member and our Tottenham candidate on June 7. He did not
want to put forward demands that might seem “too radical” in the eyes of union
branches and regions that are beginning to support the Socialist Alliance
(Weekly Worker March 1 2001). Comrade Bennett is clearly on
a very slippery slope to who knows where. The above incident is quoted because
it is, unfortunately, typical. Witness the exact same electoralism galloping
across the board. Defence spending, the police, immigration controls, campaigning
against the monarchy, etc. Except in the anti-capitalist milieu where it adapts
to anarchism, the SWP is determined not to appear “too radical”.
Chris
Harman gives trawling for “more votes” a rather thin theoretical veneer. Apparently
the SWP no longer views standing in elections “simply” as a means “of making
propaganda” because the number of votes “affects” peoples “willingness to
fight” (Socialist Worker February 24). So instead of deriving
strength from winning masses of people to the principles of socialism and
working class self-liberation, the SWP has chosen the line of least resistance.
Where
the SSP seeks to ride nationalism, the SWP thinks the Socialist Alliance can
replace New Labour by aping old Labour. Both forms of tailing spontaneity
sacrifice working class independence.
For
decades the SWP haughtily denounced fielding candidates as electoralism pure
and simple. They were wrong. Their impotent ultra-leftist pose not only implicitly
dismissed the historically significant role of Bolshevik deputies in the tsarist
duma, the brilliant use made of parliament by Marxists such as August Bebel
and Wilhelm Liebknecht, Shapurji Saklatvala and William Gallacher and the
insistence by Lenin’s Comintern that communist parties were obliged to try
and get into parliament if conditions allowed. More than that, the SWP light-mindedly
abrogated politics to the Labour Party.
Refusing
to fight elections went hand in hand with auto-Labourism. The standard refrain
was “vote Labour ... but”. The “but” alluded to the working class upping the
economic struggle against the employer and government vis-à-vis restrictions
on, or relations to, trade unionism. Having taken the step from a Tory to
a Labour parliamentary majority the workers are energised and soon come up
against the nature of the system and open to political conclusions ... or
so the stagist theory goes.
From
this angle it becomes clear why the SWP, unable to withstand the spontaneity
of economism, is unable to withstand the spontaneity of SSP left nationalism.
The
Socialist Alliance should never turn its back on the economic struggles of
the working class. However, if we are to raise the working class to the level
of a class for itself, ie, a hegemonic class ready for state power, it is
necessary to recognise the limitations of trade unionism. Battles around economic
issues often take workers to the point where it confronts the government’s
attitude towards them as trade unionists. But little more.
As
a result, no matter how comrades ingeniously attempt to equate economic and
political struggles, the workers remain a lower class of wage slaves. No matter
how militantly fought, their wage and other economic engagements never attain
the level of political - Marxist - consciousness.
Famously
Lenin expressed the view in What is to be done? that it was impossible
to develop class political consciousness from within the workers’
economic struggles. By this he meant starting from or prioritising economic
struggles. Class consciousness “can be brought to the workers only from without,
that is only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of
relations between workers and employers” (VI Lenin CW Vol 5, Moscow
1977, p422). Class political consciousness is only obtainable in the sphere
of relations between all classes and strata and the state and the government.
It
is exactly with this in mind that the CPGB wants the Socialist Alliance to
prioritise political questions as opposed to narrow economics and trade unionism
- which is, when all thing is said and done, the bourgeois politics of the
working class. Together we must take the lead against the New Labour government
and the UK monarchy system and fight to unleash the floodtide of extreme democracy.
That way, and only that way, can the dream of socialism come to be a living
reality.
Examining the ‘priority pledge’ submissions to the
Socialist Alliance’s March 10 2001 Birmingham conference is sadly instructive.
Before us we had on parade economism lined up in neat regimented rows. An
army of malign innocence (see Weekly Worker February 22 2001).
Besides
debating and amending Mark Hoskisson’s policy document, the intention at Birmingham
was also to agree five or six key demands which would feature on posters,
leaflets, etc, during the general election campaign. These were the priority
pledges.
Each
supporting organisation forwarded initial proposals (the SWP granting themselves
ten generous bullet points which were unsurprisingly carried over into the
general election campaign). Apart from the CPGB, differences were of nuance.
Not substance. For example, the SWP talked vaguely of raising the minimum
wage; SPEW fixed upon £5 per hour; whereas the AWL and WP boldly set their
below subsistence level minimum wage at the European Union’s decency
threshold of £7 per hour. Manifestly the general approach is exactly the same.
No one even bothers to think of asking what workers need and beginning
there.
Other
priority pledges were likewise caged within narrow trade unionism. Put another
way, they reeked of economism. The AWL, whom we have - perhaps wrongly - imagined
as our closest allies can be cited as a locus classicus. In brief they advocate:
“an emergency plan for workers and jobless”; taxing the rich and slashing
the “arms budget”; the restoration of “benefits and pensions”; an expansion
of “public services”; the “right to join a union”; “companies threatening
closures” should be nationalised. And they still feign surprise, even indignation,
when we dub them economists!
Ridiculously
theorists and cadre alike attempt to parry the charge by reducing economism
in their own minds to nothing more than routine trade unionism and the worship
of militant strikism. A desperate ploy. Any half-educated student of Marxism
will tell you that there are many other forms of economism - in this instance
electoralist economism. We have said it many times before, and we will
hammer home the point as long as necessary: economism - broadly defined -
is characterised by downplaying the centrality of democracy.
Spellbound
by economistic common sense, our allies actually voted on our Liaison Committee
against highlighting a militant demand for the abolition of the monarchy
in the Socialist Alliance general election campaign. And even when prepared
to countenance key democratic demands in our policy statement - a republic,
Scottish and Welsh self-determination, a united Ireland, abolishing the House
of Lords - when it comes to priorities, economics always comes first.
What
political nuggets could be found amongst the prioritised pledges? The
SWP called for “tough controls” over pollution, ending “discrimination on
the basis of racism, sexism and homophobia” and cancelling the “Third World
debt”. Apart from WP’s demand to “abolish all immigration laws” and the final
maximalist flourish of establishing a government “fighting for workers’ power
and international socialism”, that more or less was that. Between our Socialist
Alliance quartet we had a grand tally of 23 purely trade union-type bullet
points and a paltry four that might be said to be political.
Historically
our movement has drawn a sharp distinguishing line between socialist politics
and trade unionism. By creating two separate categories we do not mean to
imply that trade unionism is apolitical, rather that trade unionism is limited,
one sided and in the last analysis circular. Such an understanding ought to
inform the Socialist Alliance. We should seek to lead the struggle
of the working class, not only for better terms and conditions, but for the
abolition of the system of capital that compels the propertyless - those who
posses no means of production - to sell their ability to labour.
The
Socialist Alliance represents the working class, not in its relation to a
given employer alone, but in relation to all classes in society and the state
as an organised political force. If that is the case, and it should be, then
it follows that the Socialist Alliance must not limit itself to the economic
struggle. More, we must not allow economic struggles to dominate our activities
and demands. On the contrary, the Socialist Alliance must prioritise the political
training, or education, of the working class and developing its political
consciousness.
What
do we mean by the political education of the working class? Can it be confined
to propaganda centring on trade union grievances against the state? Of course
not. It is not enough to protest against the Blair government’s retention
of Tory anti-trade union laws (just as it is not enough to complain when employers
use these laws). We must take a definite stand on every democratic shortfall
and concrete example of oppression and violation of rights (as we should with
every trade union dispute).
It
is a much repeated establishment boast that Westminster is the mother of all
parliaments and that Britain is the epitome of democracy. For example, the
carefully cultivated myth that parliamentary democracy dates back to 1215
and Simon de Monfort’s robber barons, and that nowadays the system of capital
is synonymous with democracy.
Nothing
could be further from the truth. Every democratic advance originates from
below - Wat Tyler’s peasants’ revolt, the Levellers, the physical force Chartists,
militant suffragettes, poll tax refuseniks, etc. All these movements faced
stiff, not to say bloody, opposition from above. Universal suffrage was only
achieved as recently as 1930 after generations of sacrifice and struggle.
Nor should we forget that Britain is still constitutionally a monarchy with
the crown holding significant - and potentially counterrevolutionary - reserve
powers.
Furthermore,
due to the very workings of the capitalist metabolism - profit overriding
human need - there is a constant erosion of democratic gains, a draining of
active content and the reduction of democracy to a four and five yearly ritual
of choosing the lesser evil. Democracy and capital are in fact antithetical.
So
in Britain we find countless examples of commercial corruption, state repression,
divide and rule, chauvinist discrimination, inequality, gross exploitation
and the denial of popular sovereignty. Inevitably this affects the most diverse
social groups and spheres of life - family relationships, ethnic minorities,
homosexuals, recreational drug users, the arts, religious sects, small businesses
and farmers, scientific researchers, etc.
We
cannot develop the political consciousness of the working class without having
answers to all democratic shortfalls and exposing all cases of injustice.
Indeed the working class can only be readied for state power if it is educated
in the spirit of consistent democracy and comes to champion all oppressed
and exploited sections of the population.
Frankly
our principal Socialist Alliance allies only pay lip service to such a Leninist
perspective. Doubtless that in part explains why none of them took up our
urgent call for a Socialist Alliance political paper during the election
campaign. The comrades are still wedded to economism. In practice that means
putting trade unionist demands to the fore and seeking to give them a socialistic
coloration. Their initial priority pledges prove the point beyond a shadow
of doubt.
Evidentially
the comrades believe that economic struggles provide the surest, perhaps the
only, means of drawing the working class into active political struggle. For
them politics loyally follows economics. That is as true for the AWL and the
SWP as it is for SPEW and WP. One way or another we have heard it from them
all.
But
is prioritising economic demands the best means of involving people in political
activity? No it is not. Any and every police outrage, usually completely unconnected
to the economic struggle, can galvanise large numbers. Kevin Gately, Blair
Peach, Stephen Lawrence, Winston Silcott and Harry Stanley: each became a
cause célèbre. The same happened with the Irish republican hunger
strikers - the funeral of Bobby Sands in 1981 brought 100,000 out onto the
streets of Belfast - and other victims of the British legal system such as
the Guildford four and Birmingham six.
What
of the criminalisation of cannabis smokers and pill popping ravers, the horrors
of Campsfield, clause 28, the Brixton, Soho and Brick Lane nail bombings,
the air war on Serbia, son of star wars, the democratic deficit in Wales and
Scotland, Aids, GM food, etc? Surely these and thousands of other such non-economic
issues represent ways of drawing masses of people into political activity?
Why then should the Socialist Alliance prioritise economic demands?
Long,
long ago (May 1 1997) our principal allies in the Socialist Alliance voted
Labour with varying degrees of enthusiasm. According to their theory of stages,
before workers could do anything serious they first had to rid themselves
of the hated Tories. Blair’s victory was celebrated as heralding a crisis
of expectations. Trade unions would be emboldened, economic militancy would
undergo a revival and hopes fructify. Suffice to say there has been no such
explosion.
Auto-Labourism
was always a variety of economism: a veering away from the politics of authentic
socialism and class independence. Hence the left groups and ‘parties’
- not least the SWP - found themselves swept along in the wake of Blair’s
constitutional revolution from above, ie, a complement and continuation of
the Thatcherite counter-reformation. Trailing behind New Labour they urged
a ‘yes’ vote in one referendum after another: Scotland, Wales, Ireland, London.
A sorry record, which though one can forgive, should never be forgotten.
To
achieve socialism requires revolution. Not just any revolution though. The
revolution will have to be democratic, in the sense that it is an act of self-liberation
by the majority and aims to take the democratic state to its limits as a semi-state
that is already dying. Democracy and socialism should therefore never be counterposed.
The two are inexorably linked.
Without
socialism, democracy is always encumbered and stops short of ending exploitation.
Without democracy, socialism is only post-capitalism, it is not proletarian
socialism. The task of the working class is to unleash the floodtide of extreme
democracy, not leave high politics to the Blairites, the top bureaucracy and
the so-called chattering classes. Existing democratic forms must be utilised
and new forms developed, eg, soviets or workers’ councils, and given a definite
social or class content. The purpose is to extend democracy and control from
below, both before and after the qualitative break represented by the proletarian
revolution.
In
June 1934 Trotsky set out a minimum programme. The flaws are best left aside
here - what we are interested in is his plan for a “more generous” democracy.
‘A programme of action for France’ contains the following, for our purposes
very relevant, passage:
“We
are ... firm partisans of a workers’ and peasants’ state, which will take
the power from the exploiters. To win the majority of our working class allies
to this programme is our primary aim. Meanwhile, as long as the majority of
the working class continues on the basis of bourgeois democracy, we are ready
to defend it with all our forces against violent attacks from the Bonapartist
and fascist bourgeoisie. However, we demand from our class brothers who adhere
to ‘democratic’ socialism that they are faithful to their ideas, that they
draw inspiration from the ideas and methods not of the Third Republic but
the Convention of 1793.
“Down
with the Senate, which is elected by limited suffrage and which renders the
powers of universal suffrage a mere illusion!
“Down
with the presidency of the republic, which serves as a hidden point of concentration
for the forces of militarism and reaction!
“A
single assembly must combine the legislative and executive powers. Members
would be elected for two years, by universal suffrage at 18 years of age,
with no discrimination of sex or nationality. Deputies would be elected on
the basis of local assemblies, constantly revocable by their constituents,
and would receive the salary of a skilled worker.
“This
is the only measure that would lead the masses forward instead of pushing
them backward. A more generous democracy would facilitate the struggle for
workers’ power” (L Trotsky Writings of Leon Trotsky 1934-35 New York
1974, p31).
What
a contrast to our principal Socialist Alliance allies. The AWL, SPEW, ISG,
SWP and Workers Power obsessively downplay democracy and prioritise economic
issues. As everyone knows the CPGB does not ignore or dismiss economic demands.
However, in and of themselves they are containable within the wage-capital
loop of bourgeois society. There is no circuit breaker.
The
circuit breaker, comrades, is not a “decent job for all” or “nationalisation”,
etc. It is, and can only be, a plan for a “more generous” democracy. The working
class must be trained through political struggle to become a universal class,
a class that can master every contradiction, every grievance, every constitutional
issue and sees its own interests as the liberation of the whole of humanity.
That
is why we wanted to prioritise the following five political demands:
1. Abolish the United Kingdom monarchy system, the
House of Lords and all aristocratic privileges.
2. Abolish the acts of union. Self-determination for
Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For the voluntary union of England, Scotland
and Wales in a federal republic. For a united Ireland within which a one county,
four half-counties British-Irish province exercises self-determination. For
working class unity. Oppose all forms of separatism and nationalism.
3. For an annual single chamber parliament elected
by proportional representation. No to the presidential system. For the right
to recall MPs. Limit MPs’ salaries to that of the average skilled worker.
4. Combat national chauvinism. Scrap immigration controls.
If the product is free to move, so too should be the worker. Defend asylum
seekers and economic migrants.
5. Not a penny, not a person for the United Kingdom’s
armed forces. Against standing armies. For a system of local, workers’, militias.
Inevitably the subtext of all debates and manoeuvrings
prior to and during the 2001 general election campaign concerned the period
after the general election. For example each and every debate at the Birmingham
March 10 conference was haunted by its attendant ghost of things to come.
Should
the Socialist Alliance set its sights on attracting Labourites as Labourites
- a united front of a special type which secretly acts as a transmission belt
into a chosen sect (SWP, SPEW, ISG, Workers
Power, etc)? Should we settle for a loose - federal - non-aggression pact?
Should the Socialist Alliance boldly aim to transform itself into a party?
And if so what sort of a party is needed? A reddish-greenish protest party?
A Labour Party mark II within which a snug communist minority is kindly tolerated?
A democratic and centralist revolutionary party with full factional freedom?
As
we have detailed over a whole series of polemical articles, the majority of
groups and factions in the Socialist Alliance are congenitally infected with
economism. Comrades automatically bring to the fore economic demands, or seek
to give economic demands a socialistic coloration. High politics and the vistas
of extreme democracy are not for today and ought not to disturb the bovine
minds of ordinary folk. Stick to the European Union’s minimum wage, anti-trade
union laws, the NHS, etc. In other words let’s back drab day to day efforts
to improve our lot as wage slaves.
Such
an approach leads to a narrow view, not only of our political, but also of
our organisational tasks. Economic struggles against employers and the government’s
anti-trade union laws hardly require a revolutionary programme. Nor do economic
struggles around the NHS necessitate a Socialist Alliance political paper.
Nor does the economic struggle demand a body of professional Socialist Alliance
leaders. Nor can the economic struggle give rise to a Socialist Alliance party
which exists to coordinate all protests, all movements against injustice,
all discontent with the government and the system of capital - eventually
into one final mighty assault. This much is obvious.
Organisational
forms are determined by the content of activity. Consequently, our SWP, ISG,
SPEW, AWL and WP allies, by prioritising the economic, trade unionist-type
issues mentioned above, author and legitimise not only a narrowness of political
activity, but also of organisational work.
With
their famished agenda the best that the Socialist Alliance can aspire to is
an electoralist ginger group. In leaflets and manifestos, in interviews and
at rallies, we could hold out the promise of a socialism, while at the same
time being completely hobbled by the inability to provide any realistic roadmap
to the desired future. The endless loop of buying and selling labour power
remains unbroken. Only the extreme democracy championed by the CPGB offers
a theorised way out of that conundrum.
We
have come a long way. Since the mid-1990s - when the Socialist Alliance first
came into existence in response to the bureaucratic exclusion of the organised
left from Arthur Scargill’s still-born Socialist Labour Party - wider and
wider forces have gradually swung into our orbit. Beginning as a loveless
match between what was then Militant Labour, the CPGB and a flotsam and jetsam
of vaguely leftwing grouplets and individuals, the Socialist Alliance now
has all of Britain’s principal revolutionary organisations giving their support.
Above all, of course, the SWP.
By
combining our scattered forces we managed to stand 98 candidates throughout
England and Wales (the kingdom of Scotland, for the moment, is a different
story, if not a different state) and garner some 57,000 votes. Yet there is
no room for smug self-satisfaction.
Leave
aside the fact that our votes were well within the fringe category. We have
a proven body of support and a far wider circle of activists relying on an
infrastructure which is rightly described as woefully primitive. True, this
is made blindingly obvious mainly by the impressive distance we have travelled
and the mountain we have climbed in order to fight the general election. But
what just about served five years ago must become an impediment under these
new and propitious circumstances. Precisely because our problems are those
of rapid growth and much expanded influence there can be a determined campaign
to overcome backwardness from a position of strength.
Primitive
organisational forms can no longer be tolerated. The Liaison Committee and
our executive committee must be won to lay plans for the greatest degree of
professionalism and centralism we can achieve. Certainly the CPGB and its
committees will do everything in their power to persuade our Socialist Alliance
cadre that the amateurism which at present handicaps and blunts efforts must
be fought tooth and nail.
To
begin to describe what the CPGB means by primitiveness we can do no better
than quote Alan Thornet in his pinched address to the March 10 2001 Birmingham
conference. Speakers had to make do with four-minute snippets. Replying -
rather grumpily - to the minority who were determinedly trying to arm the
Socialist Alliance with some basic revolutionary and democratic principles,
he frustratedly told us that such attempts were completely misplaced. Apparently
the Socialist Alliance manifesto is no place for such ideas. Why? Because
most of us already have our “party”! In his case he is presumably referring
to the International Socialist Group.
What
came from the mouth of poor old comrade Thornet could equally have come from
any number of factional gladiators. For example, the SWP’s Chris Bambery,
John Rees, Chris Harman or Lindsey German. One after the other these comrades
have stood before us, momentarily posed to the left and then loudly urged
a vote to the right. Fancy revolutionary ideas should be kept to the revolutionary
‘party’ and its coterie of consenting sympathisers and certainly not propagated
to all and sundry. That is not where the mass of workers are at, and we should
begin where people are at, and not where we want them to be.
A
direct corollary of this bowing before spontaneity is justifying, perpetuating
and blessing the continued existence of the sects. There is no need for the
Socialist Alliance to undergo the painful, protracted and difficult transformation
into a revolutionary party because there is already a plethora of them. My,
your, their - we all have our preferred
revolutionary party.
A
simple statement of fact: there is no revolutionary party in Britain. Neither
the SWP nor SPEW, nor the ISG, AWL or WP. The CPGB is not a party either.
Let me explain that apparent paradox. In 1991 as disciplined CPGB members
we Leninists did our duty and took the title of our party from the Marxism
Today liquidationists. They killed the party but scum such as these
had no right to deprive us of our party membership or party responsibilities.
As we stated at the time our overriding task was, and still remains, to “reforge
the Communist Party of Great Britain” (‘What we fight for’ Weekly Worker).
Establishing a Socialist Alliance party on the basis of democracy and centralism
is in our opinion synonymous with that aim.
Sects,
whatever their pretensions and grand name tags, are alien to and far removed
from parties. Sects are defined not simply by small size and lack of deep
roots in the working class. That is incidental. Sects are marked out by the
primacy they give to some fetishised ideological catechism - usually conjured
up by this or that all-knowing sage. A requirement of continued membership
is full public agreement with the sect’s current version
of these ruling ideas. To disagree, for example, with the SWP dogma of state
capitalism, or its latest line turn on elections, is to invite expulsion or
is a prelude to yet another split. The same goes for the brittle regimes of
SPEW, ISG and WP.
Life
is richer than any theory. The former is four-dimensional. The latter an approximate,
blurred and frozen reflection. With the passage of time theory and reality
diverge to the point where even the best theory becomes its opposite in the
hands of the guardians of the word. No wonder the history of the left since
1945 has been of one schism after another. Sects produce sects ... and from
their nothing comes their nothing.
A
party is another matter entirely. A party is a part of the working
class - the advanced part. As the leading detachment of the class, a party
will and must contain within its ranks many different viewpoints because there
will be many different thought-through experiences. Fierce arguments and clashes
of opinion between rival groupings are inevitable and healthy. And far from
being confined to closed annual conferences or monthly internal bulletins,
frequent polemics on all manner of subjects, yes, in front of the whole working
class, should be the norm.
Sects
operate as something akin to a religious order. Every sect has its incumbent
pope and governing body of cardinals, along with the saints of old. Below
the privileged ecclesiastical hierarchy stands the humble flock. Here the
stress is on discipline of thought, not unity of action. Moreover each sect
is marshalled for war. Each has its special enemy. SPEW against SWP. AWL against
SWP. Workers Power against SWP. SWP against everyone. Theory is not about
explaining the world, let alone changing it. Theory is about the cohesion
of the sect itself and a weapon to be deployed in the primordial war of one
against all and all against one.
Given
such an inauspicious environment, activity in the working class movement and
society in general is bound to be inept, crass and above all selfish. Anti-fascist
work and student protests against the abolition of grants, trade union broad
lefts and anti-capitalism, standing in elections and the Socialist Alliance
- it is all the same. Progress is first and foremost judged not by the self-confidence
and self-activity of the working class but the number of paper sales and tally
of recruits.
This
state of affairs, especially within the Socialist Alliance, can no longer
be excused. While sects in some way kept alive the embers of the revolutionary
Marxist tradition under bleak or particularly adverse conditions, they found
justification. For example, in the 1950s. But, unless revolutionary theory
is animated through revolutionary practice, it becomes a mere fossilised dogma,
a mantra to be learnt by initiates, but of no use in the real world.
Anyone
with even a passing knowledge of the Socialist Alliance will be aware that
its best elements, its most forward thinking personalities, have begun to
regard the existence of the sects and their primitive methods as a phase that
ought to be left behind as soon as possible. A precondition for that is, though,
the recognition of the connection between sect primitivism and economism.
Inexperience,
amateurism and an inability to fully meet agreed financial targets are common
to us all, including those who steadfastly fight for the principles of Marxism.
If all it took was John Rees and one of his training days to overcome primitivism
then there would not be much to worry about.
But the problem of ‘primitivism’ is a wider one than a lack of experience and training. It denotes a narrow approach to priorities. The Socialist Alliance cannot be built into a genuine alternative to New Labour while the ‘theory’ of a united front of a special type continues to excuse a majority voting to confine our programme to the narrow politica