30.11.2000

Which way for SWP?

The Socialist Workers Party published only two pre-conference bulletins this year, containing just 21 contributions from rank and file members. We reproduce two of these, featuring that rarity for the SWP - members engaged in polemic with one another Once more on programme

At the Socialist Alliance conference in Coventry, John Rees told the meeting that "the SWP would not impose its programme" on the Socialist Alliances. Of course the Socialist Alliances will have to decide very shortly what their general election programme will be. We will have to make an input into that.

But what exactly is the SWP programme comrade Rees refers to? The last time there was a debate on our programme was in 1990 in the internal bulletin involving a Luton member, Ged Peck. 1990 pre-conference bulletins are therefore a constructive place to begin this pre-conference contribution. At that time some comrades argued that the central task of the SWP was to clarify and agree on a draft programme if it was to become the dominant pole of attraction around which opposition in the working class centres would rally. For another comrade all of the party's problems were related to all the political unevenness within his branch - Luton - leading to "general cock-ups". His solution was to "continually raise the political level of comrades so that they could better intervene in a rapidly changing political environment". His thoughts on 'the programme question' were that grand documents of demands would not help in overcoming difficulties. A programme would be a complete "irrelevance".

Ten years on, what has altered? We are in a most interesting and challenging time for revolutionary socialists. There is 'global' growth of the anti-capitalist movement, albeit limited in Britain at the moment. Whilst we have yet to see anything on the scale of Prague and Seattle or the many mass strikes occurring around the globe, we have seen large numbers of working class people looking for a genuine leftwing alternative. Blair's election victory in 1997 has not provided any solutions to the growing poverty for the mass of the population. There is still massive, although largely as yet passive, support for both further economic and political change.

When socialists call to intervene to stop the jobs massacres - e.g., at Rover, Fords, Biwater - for pensions to be linked to wages, against PFIs (Dudley), levels of taxation (fuel protests), against racism (Stephen Lawrence), against the fat cats, against the monarchy, against the Dome, etc, we are swimming with the stream. This is reflected in the increased sales for Socialist Worker.

Locally, while I cannot speak authoritatively on the situation in the Luton branch in 1990, today the problems of Luton branch (as well as many of our other branches) remain the same. They are related to a political unevenness, leading to general cock-ups! The answer to the question posed in 1990 by comrade Peck in Luton has not changed - programme.

However, there is more of an urgency about the question of programme now. As we move towards working in and building the Socialist Alliances, we need our own clear and distinct programme. If we are to be serious about building a (revolutionary socialist) alternative to New Labour, then we have to have answers not only to the immediate crisis of capitalism, but also how does the working class emancipate itself. We, the SWP, as a major component of the Socialist Alliances, cannot be seen as a credible revolutionary alternative, when we go armed at election times, or into the Socialist Alliances with just a dozen or so 'action points'!

It may have been possible, for those who misunderstood and continue to misunderstand the programme question, to say that a programme alone will never defeat reformism but, as New Labour moves further and further to the right, the greater becomes our subjective and objective need for a clear revolutionary socialist programme.

Comrades, we can no longer dismiss the need for a programme as an 'irrelevance'. The Scottish Socialist Party has its own 'nationalistic' draft manifesto. Comrade Rees at the recent national network of Socialist Alliances stated that "the SWP will not impose its programme on the Alliance", which means that we already have one, and in the recent Zimbabwe elections, our sister organisation put forward its own socialist programme in the working class district in Highfield Harare and won the seat.

It is vital that we are central to the building and shaping of the 'anti-capitalist movement' and that we build an organisation that can replace the Labour Party in size and influence. To do this we need a programme. That need has been objectified somewhat, with the publication of the Socialist Alliance 'minimal' programme. This represents a start, but we need to go further and faster on this question. Our task - and I believe this to be historic - is to make the Marxist analysis of the next step and win workers and other revolutionary parties to it. While the existing consciousness of workers cannot be left out of the equation, we have to turn workers' spontaneity into class-consciousness. I am convinced that workers, and most party members, are primarily interested in a concrete programme of demands, an alternative programme around which to fight. However, this must be something more than a list of economic demands. It must include democratic demands.

Lenin explained that a programme "must formulate our basic views; precisely establish our immediate political tasks; point out the immediate demands that must show the area of our agitation activity; give unity to the agitation work, expand and deepen it, thus raising it from fragmentary partial agitation for petty isolated demands to the status of agitation for the sum total of social democratic demands". And the party, as Trotsky put it, "must be inspired by a distinct programme which requires organisation and tactics for its application". Indeed, "It is the union of programme, organisation and tactics which constitutes the party."

Why is programme so important? Well, it serves purposes all of which lead to the consolidation and consistent activity of the party. It will help overcome the localism and amateurism and unite the workers and the intellectuals around a common plan. This in itself will lead to less in the way of cock-ups and direct more purposeful and effective action. It will act as an educator raising consciousness about the aims of the party - very often the opinions held by those we come into contact with are mistaken in respect of our real tasks and methods of action. This false consciousness starts with the political purification of their real lives, which is then exacerbated and nurtured by our reformist and reactionary opponents.

A programme also has the necessary and vital purpose of opening and carrying through polemic in order that differences can be pinpointed and that we can seek to understand the significance of disputes, within the party and the periphery. While I recognise that simply stating this is our programme and proclaiming ourselves as 'the alternative' is a sectarian dead end, we must nevertheless win our periphery to it. We must concretely explore what we have in common with others, taking a stand on our programmatic principles.

To take an example, every genuine socialist is an environmentalist, but not every green is a socialist. While we must win green socialists to our ranks and engage in polemic around a programme, we must at the same time ensure that Socialist Alliances are an alliance of socialists, not an alliance of socialists and non-socialists.

Even within the party there is an unwillingness to argue the case for the abolition of the monarchy and the fight for republicanism. There is a 'dumbing down' on such questions. Again the monarchy has been described as an 'irrelevance' - 'let's discuss it again in 23 years time' - and that we should not argue for abolition because we may frighten off some people. Let's just stick with the slogan, 'Tax the rich'. We have a vital role to perform within the Socialist Alliance project around such questions.

Finally, a programme encourages party members and workers in making party policy - the workers must become thoroughly involved in programme debates. In order to do this I would suggest that some of Socialist Worker is allocated to polemic. It is essential that this happens to ensure the continued health and vitality of our party and ensure that even deeper roots are developed amongst the working class. We are, after all, the Socialist Workers Party.

A principle that we hold in common with our genuine periphery is that the working class needs to organise for itself a political party made up of its most class conscious and committed militants, to provide a focus of leadership for the class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and for the overthrow of the existing state. The question and tension for us is - is that political party to be the Socialist Workers Party or another party arising from the Socialist Alliances? There is clearly a tension here. We correctly liquidated political meetings within branches in the run-up to the London elections and we generally no longer meet in the same way. We should not be unduly concerned about this, however.

The importance for us that we gain an understanding of the ongoing transformation of the political and constitutional landscape, an understanding of the dynamic between New Labour's reforms from above and discontent from below. And how that reflects in the party. A situation that is ripe for a comprehensive alternative to Blair. We must strive for the highest and most conscious form of working class organisation.

Obtaining such an organisation is not the prerogative of any one particular party, but a party of our size and importance must bring its programme to the equation in order that it may in influence the line of march, winning every revolutionary worth that description to taking up their responsibilities so that they can play a full part in organising the advanced part of the working class into a revolutionary organisation.

Eric Karas
Luton SWP

Reply to Eric Karas

Eric Karas's arguments for a revolutionary socialist programme in bulletin No1 boil down to three elements: a programme will help overcome the political and organisational unevenness in the party, will help in constructing a manifesto for the Socialist Alliance, and help us to win "workers and other revolutionary parties".

If the construction of a document could achieve these aims I am sure we would all be in favour of it. But do the problems we face as an organisation boil down to the lack of programme? The implication is that there is a lack of clarity in what the party stands for, and this lack of clarity is holding us back. But really this is nonsense. Week after week Socialist Worker presents clear arguments about where we stand. Can there be any doubt where the SWP stands on the issue of pensions, or privatised industries, or the revolution in Serbia?

There is unevenness in the party. There are two ways of overcoming this. One is to become an irrelevant sect with no relationship to the working class. Such a tiny organisation can have complete political and organisational evenness in glorious isolation, with a perfect programme, talking to no one. The second is to accept that any organisation which is in a dynamic relationship to the arguments and struggles in the working class will always contain elements of unevenness, but to strive to overcome them.

Workers' experiences are not all the same. They draw conclusions about the world they live in. Some become revolutionary socialists, but this act in itself means that they immediately lose the baggage of earlier ideas. Within the party comrades, branches and districts may for whatever reason lag behind at times. The party has to learn to generalise from the best experiences of the working class and to develop from these experiences consistent revolutionary practice. The question then becomes, will the preparation of a formal programme help us to generalise from best experience?

The answer is sometimes. There are times when the presentation of a series of demands in the form of a programme can be useful. In the recent past we produced the Action programme as a way of attempting to relate to the increasing bitterness with Blair's continuation of Tory policies. The Action programme put into words the feelings of millions of workers to the left of Labour - it stressed the elements we have in common with the best elements of the class. But Eric's formulation demands more than this. He proposes a grand document which explains where we stand on everything, so we can take it into the class and attempt to win our periphery and other revolutionary groups to it. Despite his protests to the contrary, in the current period this is sectarian. Our task in the Socialist Alliances and other united fronts has to be always to stress the 90% on which we all agree, and to argue against those who focus on petty differences.

That is not to say we do not attempt to win the best elements to our party. But we will only be able to do this if we prove that, while we have our own distinct politics, we are open to working with anyone who is breaking from New Labour to the left. We are most likely to win people not by being sharp over our differences, but by being the clearest and most consistent fighters over the issues we agree on.

Concretely, Eric seems to feel that we are hampered in our attempt to construct a united front for electoral work by our lack of programme. Exactly the reverse is the case. In Manchester, where we joined an already existing Socialist Alliance we were the key players in writing the initial election statement which will form the basis of the Greater Manchester Socialist Alliance manifesto. In doing so, because we were flexible and did not approach unaligned socialists with our dogmatic set of demands, we were able to win broad agreement around the points which unite us: taxing the rich, funding pensions, an end to privatisation and so on. The small groups which demanded that their programmes take priority merely alienated themselves from the best people who form the vast majority.

The question of abolition of the monarchy is raised as one which is sidelined, in favour of 'dumbing down' with a slogan of 'Tax the rich'. The idea appears to be that we engage within the Socialist Alliances over the question of abolishing the monarchy. But is this really a central question with which to approach the working class? There has always been a strand on the far left which sees Britain as still in some ways feudal, the vestiges of the system being seen in the constitutional monarchy and House of Lords. A key task of socialists might then be to campaign for their abolition and a transition to full capitalism. If Eric believes this he should argue the case and try not to sneak it in with an argument over the programme.

In reality the slogan 'Tax the rich', whilst a simple one, is hardly dumbing down. In arguing for taxing the rich we expose the chasm that divides those who benefit the system and those who suffer. Starting with 'Tax the rich' leaves a small journey to arguments about the nature of exploitation and the class that creates the wealth in society. The royal family, whilst being an unpleasant groups of inbred parasites, do not play the central role in maintaining exploitation.

The core principles of revolutionary socialism do not change, but the nature of our demands changes with time. This is necessarily the case, as capitalism is an ever changing system. The Bolshevik programme became an irrelevance during the revolutions of 1917, when the demand for 'Bread, peace and land' was enough to unite the masses behind it. This demand did not come out of detailed internal debate about a formal programme, but out of the day-to-day experiences of the Bolsheviks in the heightened day-to-day struggles of that period.

As we involve ourselves in struggles, new and concrete demands and challenges will emerge. When we threw ourselves into the campaign against the Kosovo war we could hardly see that the links we forged then would form the basis of an electoral alliance. At the moment the key struggle we are involved in is to construct united fronts around a whole series of issues: asylum-seekers, council housing, anti-capitalist protests and, crucially, electoral work. This will be hard work and mistakes will be made, but in the end we'll make far more progress than by engaging in an internal debate about a programme.

John Baxter
Longsight SWP