30.04.2003
Workers Power, innit?: Workers Power
Newspaper: Workers Power (monthly).
Other journals: Revolution, as and when - paper of the formally "independent" youth group "in political solidarity" with WP.
Website: www.workerspower.com
Prominent members: Mark Hoskisson (member of SA executive); Dave Stockton; Keith Hassle.
Size: Probably between 40 and 50 domestically, perhaps a couple of hundred worldwide, when you tot up the numbers in its recently rebranded international grouping, the League for a Fifth International.
Comments: Originated in the International Socialists faction fights of the 1970s. Briefly fused with what went on to become the AWL (although the claim on the AWL website that WP is to "a considerable extent our creation" seems a little overblown). Has undergone a number of political u-turns over the years - no sin in itself, of course. But - like much of the left - it has simply announced these fundamental changes in its world view.
Take, for example, the group's view on the USSR. In 1998, after a clandestine "five-year debate" inside WP and amongst its international co-thinkers, readers of the organisation's since defunct Trotskyist International had a whole new world view sprung on them in the January-June issue. This revelatory article informed us that "under the impact of events in eastern Europe" from 1989 onwards, "some members of the former majority" in the organisation "joined the old minority" after the debate "broke out anew in 1993".
But what of the content of the debate - by what process of logical development did the minority become a majority? Exactly how and why did people change their minds? What had become the minority view simply gently slipped into the depths. Workers Power had a new, binding 'line' on the nature of the eastern European states after World War II. Our world had changed for ever - and we never knew how, or why.
The group is amiable enough, although pretty undynamic. It seems to spend huge amounts of time, effort and cash travelling around the world building its 'international'. Similarly, it has put a relatively huge political investment into the Revo youth group.
It is very hard not to be quite cynical about this venture. Essentially, it seems to consist of WP cadre running an undemocratic youth group behind the scenes, while a pretence of 'independence' is maintained. The charade is not designed to actually organise youth in the movement. If you are raw off some demonstration, fine; the young cadre of other serious political organisations are not especially welcome, however. Clearly a device for recruitment to WP - nothing more.
In its quite desperate attempt to grow, WP has wobbled in the direction of tailing some of the anarchist elements in the 'anti-capitalist movement' - a potentially serious development for such a small group defined for so much of its existence by an adherence to a 'hard' version of orthodox Trotskyism.