29.08.2013

Left Unity: Communicating across the archipelago of isolation

Jack Conrad puts the case for clear principles and greater boldness. This is an edited version of his opening contribution to the ‘Fighting for a mass party’session at Communist University

There are fundamental problems with both the Left Party and the Class Struggle platforms in Left Unity. Reading the first, the LPP, it is clear that it is a combination of bog-standard leftish commentary, faddish identity nostrums and devious platitudes. It has been signed by 130 Left Unity members. But it is fair to say that it is headed by Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson - the pair took the lead in establishing LU after falling out with George Galloway and quitting Respect. Their most important backers are Socialist Resistance (the British section of the Fourth International), the right wing of the International Socialist Network (Tom Walker and Richard Seymour) and old hands such as Nick Long, Mike Marqusee and Sean Thompson.

LPP is inspired by and wishes to emulate parties in Europe such as Die Linke in Germany, Syriza in Greece, the Front de Gauche in France, etc. A hostage to fortune if ever there was one. Take Die Linke. One of its two main components was WASG (Wahlalternative Soziale Gerechtigkeit), a minor split from the Social Democratic Party. The other component, by far the bigger, was the Party of Democratic Socialism, the organisational continuation of the ruling Socialist Unity Party in the German Democratic Republic.

Because of where it came from, because it lacks clear principles, because it is not committed to working class political independence, because its leaders hunger for a return to political office, Die Linke would eagerly, effortlessly, unhesitatingly enter a ‘red-red’ coalition government with the SPD after September’s federal elections.

What would happen then? A shift to the left? Lighting the beacon of social progress? Rapid moves towards socialism? Hardly. I would guess that the same would happen in Germany today as happened in the past when the left joined coalition governments either with social democrats or some sort of radical bourgeois party. The left is given a ministry or three. Usually, however, that includes the ministry of labour; and the said minister of labour proceeds to intervene to stop strikes, keep wage demands reasonable, sabotage opposition to redundancies, etc. What happens then? Swathes of workers stop voting for the left. We get a horrendous round of demoralisation and the return of a rightwing government.

And in Germany it has already happened - albeit at a regional level. In Berlin Die Linke disastrously participated in a red-red coalition with the SPD. Inevitably it voted for ‘left cuts’ instead of ‘right cuts’. Does anyone really believe that either Syriza or the Front de Gauche is any different? No, in terms of their political DNA they are basically the same. Such parties should serve as a warning. Not be a model. And, after all, in Britain we have already witnessed the abject failures of the Socialist Alliance, Respect and the Scottish Socialist Party (the latter still doggedly supported by Socialist Resistance). Obviously LPP needs self-imposed amnesia when it comes to history, especially recent history.

LPP is convinced that voters in Britain are ready and waiting for a “viable political alternative to the left of Labour”. This alternative is, of course, to be the Left Party, which is to do more than just defend and restore the “gains of the past”. LPP advocates the “democratisation of our society, economy, state and political institutions, transforming these arenas in the interests of the majority”. All rather vague, as is the claim to be informed by the “values of equality and justice: socialist, feminist, environmentalist and against all forms of discrimination”.1

So is LPP committed to superseding capitalism “in the interests of the majority”? Or does LPP want to leave the door open for those who wish to manage capitalism “in the interests of the majority”? Does LPP reject the idea that the existing state machine must be broken up, swept away and replaced? Who knows? The ambiguity is not the result of sloppy drafting. It is calculated, deliberate … and in the last analysis cynical.

The big idea is to recruit as many as possible, as quickly as possible, as easily as possible into Left Unity. A leftwing version of the UK Independence Party, according to some LPP comrades. Everyone who is against neoliberalism, everyone who opposes war, fascism and racism must be included. Socialists, yes. Stalinites, yes. Anarchists, yes. Left Labourites, yes. Greens, yes. If this improbable amalgam can be put together and kept together, the conviction is that this will help unleash a huge popular upswell that will, stage by stage, totally refashion British society.

However, the attempt to achieve broadness comes at a cost. Marxism, the October 1917 revolution, the Communist International, Stalin’s counterrevolutionary terror, the decline of capitalism, the undemocratic nature of Cuba, working class rule, socialism, etc, must be kept private, hidden away, problemised in Left Unity. Debating such big questions, learning from the past, taking an unambiguous stand on the monstrous crimes perpetrated in the name of socialism will fracture unity and frighten away so-called ‘ordinary people’. As a result comrades in Socialist Resistance are to be found busily opposing calls for Left Unity to specifically include working class rule and socialism as a defining aim. Maybe the organisation should rename itself once again. Sad to say, ‘Resisting Socialism’ would be a more accurate description of its current practice in Left Unity. The British section of the Fourth International is fast in danger of becoming the Blairites of Trotskyism.

Revealing the muddle, the confusion, the need to face two ways at once, Socialist Resistance comrades have signed an LPP ‘background’ document, where they collectively describe themselves as “socialist” - “because our vision of society is one where the meeting of human needs is paramount, not one which is driven by the quest for private profit and the enrichment of a few”.

Even this Janus stance is theoretically inadequate. I Googled the phrase, “meeting of human needs is paramount”. Within 0.27 seconds I got 100 million results. First on the list came the National Society of Professional Engineers and its code of ethics.2 As for “private profit and the enrichment of a few”, have the comrades not heard of nationalised industries, insurance companies, pension funds, the John Lewis partnership and giant transnationals such as BP, GlaxoSmithKline and Samsung? The essence of capitalism is not “private profit and the enrichment of the few”. It is wage-labour and the self-expansion of capital.

Of course, there are those ‘sophisticates’ who now and again whisper in your ear that what they are doing is cleverly applying the ‘method’ of Leon Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional programme. I find it impossible to believe that Trotsky would have signed up to the LPP. Either way, what we have with the ‘transitional method’ circa 2013 is pure elitism. The illuminati know what the ultimate aim is. But ‘ordinary people’ are not ready for that yet. So they are to be led, step by step, campaign by campaign, vote by vote, strike by strike, through a series of ever rising struggles that will eventually culminate in a Left Unity government (perhaps an example of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ - though the mass of the proletariat will doubtless remain ignorant of that till after the great event).

The ‘transitional method’ certainly informs the Class Struggle Platform. It is written and promoted by members of Workers Power. However, where LPP (rightly) concerns itself with ‘aims and principles’, the CSP is fixated on immediate issues and immediate demands that purportedly dominate the political stage this autumn. Eg, the bedroom tax, benefits cuts, domestic violence, etc. Apparently these are “the very struggles which must win if we are to develop the force that will actually create socialism.”3 The comrades appear to believe that revolution is just round the corner. Socialism will be realised forthwith if sufficient numbers get angry and get active over “the real class struggles”. Delusion and bombast aside, CSP is a strange document, given that it is to be presented to the founding conference of Left Unity in November. CSP is, in fact, a feverish action programme that will serve Workers Power for the next month or two. As a statement of aims and principles for a “new working class” party it falls flat.

Although the LPP is cringingly moderate and the CSP is breathlessly militant, yes, ironically they both derive from the same ‘method’. And we have seen where it leads. Small sects trying, but always failing, to manipulate and deceive masses of people. In essence a return to the impotent conspiracies and fantasies of Mikhail Bakunin.

Socialist Platform

What of the Socialist Platform? The Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB welcomed its publication and has called for Left Unity members to support it. However, there is room for improvement and we have submitted a few amendments (see p9). Wisely, and very positively, the Socialist Platform was not presented on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis by its initial sponsors. There is to be a meeting of the Socialist Platform on September 14, which will consider and vote on motions, amendments, etc.

The Socialist Platform represents the only correct approach if Left Unity it is not to be yet another fiasco. Begin with a theoretically underpinned statement of aims and principles. From these solid foundations patiently construct, educate and steel an organisation of many millions. Naturally that party must be democratic, encourage initiative at every level and hold wayward leaders to account. Nevertheless, I make no apology for describing this approach as ‘top-down’. The starting point is neither current concerns nor existing consciousness. No, it is Marxist theory, the lessons of history and the goal of working class power.

Yet, given their experience of the awful ‘official communist’ and ‘official Trotskyite’ regimes, there are honest and sincere comrades who instinctively object to this formula. Instead they call for Left Unity to be built ‘bottom-up’. As with all such words, phrases and formulations, such as ‘Marxism’, ‘Leninism’, ‘communism’, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, ‘democratic centralism’ and ‘revolutionary programme’, we must try to understand what is really being argued, meant and intended here. After all, our movement has been tragically separated, divided, disorganised into numerous parties, groups and sects over many years. All too frequently then, we mean different things when we say the same thing. There is a disjuncture between speaker and listener.

It is reminiscent of the Polynesian peoples and their colonisation of the Pacific. They headed out from the Bismarck Archipelago in 700 (or thereabouts) and settled one island after another. Their descendants finally reached Tonga and Samoa 900 years later. While they all remained part of the same Lapita culture, for the most part their 40 main languages developed in isolation. There was little, if any, two-way communication. Hence, although the languages spoken by Polynesian peoples are closely related and have many words in common, when a Niuean talks to a Tahitian there is often a failure to grasp nuance, frequent misunderstandings and sometimes total incomprehension.

So when former members of the Socialist Workers Party or the Socialist Party in England and Wales hear us in the CPGB talk about building a mass Communist Party ‘top-down’ they think Charlie Kimber, they think Peter Taaffe, they think bans on factions, they think bureaucratic centralism, they think undemocratic expulsions, they think unreadable papers. Of course, it works both ways. When we in the CPGB hear former members of the Socialist Workers Party talk about a ‘broad party’ and building ‘bottom-up’ we think that they have given up on Marxism, lost sight of socialism and do not grasp the necessity of a revolutionary programme. That might be true for some ex-SWP members. But it is obviously not true for all of them.

The reality is that the LPP and CSP are both ‘top-down’. It is just that their authors want to appear to be user-friendly, unthreatening and uncontaminated by bureaucratic practices. While that is in some ways understandable and positive, there can be no escaping the fact that neither the LPP nor the CSP appeared out of thin air. They were presumably written by one or two individuals and then amended and approved by a few select friends. Only after that were they launched for others to sign. Moreover, as already suggested, both platforms have a deep history, a history that can in fact be traced back to the first four congresses of the Third International, to the International Left Opposition, to the Transitional programme and to the subsequent splits, fusions and fragmentations of the various ‘Fourth Internationals’. Now, if we are to be honest, all that is top-down. And that is not a criticism. I am not accusing those who wrote or signed the LPP and CSP of bad motives. I just happen to think that they are wrong.

Three principles

So what about improving the Socialist Platform? We do not propose at the moment to add a minimum programme to it. That can wait. We view the Socialist Platform as providing the main planks of a maximum programme along the lines of the opening section of the Erfurt programme agreed by German Marxists in 1891.

Nowadays it is a ultra-leftist commonplace to dismiss the Erfurt programme as a reformist profession of faith. That is, of course, to deliberately ignore the call for the “transformation of the capitalist private ownership of the means of production - land and soil, pits and mines, raw materials, tools, machines, means of transportation - into social property”. It is to deliberately ignore the call for the “emancipation not only of the proletariat, but of the entire human race”. It is to deliberately ignore the call for the working “having” to obtain “political power”.4

It is also to deliberately ignore the fact that Erfurt provided the model for the programme of Marxists in Russia. A programme, almost needless to say, defended and developed by Lenin and the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party. And let us not forget that the “one great fault” located by Fredrick Engels in his critique was not the absence of blood-curdling references to revolution. No, it was the failure to include the demand for the democratic republic. There was the fear of another anti-socialist clampdown, which he appreciated. But Engels desperately wanted a formulation to get the idea over - after all, “our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of the democratic republic”.5

The maximum programme we are advocating is based on three main principles. One, extreme democracy in society, in the workplace, in the trade unions and in the party. In other words, freedom of speech, regular elections, recallability, rotation of office-holders, etc. Two, working class political independence. Deals with other parties, yes, when necessary, but no governmental coalitions with parties committed to running capitalism. The working class must be organised into its own political party, a party that aspires to conquer political power for the working class and abolish capitalism. Three, the working class is international. Its liberation requires global action and global coordination. Therefore our party does not just offer solidarity to the working class in France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Egypt, etc. They are our brothers and sisters and as such we envisage organising together in the closest unity, a Communist International, in order to achieve our goal of human freedom. It is these principles that we want to strengthen, clarify and bring to the fore in the Socialist Platform.

We also need to be clear about what we are against. Does the 1945 Labour government of Clement Attlee have anything to do with the rule of the working class? No, there were concessions to the working class, but the Labour Party managed capitalism, tried to preserve the British empire and allied itself with US imperialism. What about Stalin’s USSR? Does it have anything do with the socialism and the rule of the working class? No, the Soviet working class was a slave class. Nationalisation, the collectivisation of agriculture and the elimination of unemployment is not the same as socialism. What about Cuba, China, Venezuela? Again, no, no and no - whatever the pretences, they are not examples of socialism.

But do we want to stop at socialism, which, after all, must be a form of the state? No, we aim for something far higher. Socialism is the rule of the working class, a class which is, however, already ceasing to be a class. Crucially, socialism is the transition to communism - a globally organised society, which knows no money, no state, no country, no women’s oppression, no limit to human achievement. Only communism can realise the principle, “From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs”. In that sense socialism is not an end to be fought for in its own right. Socialism is the means towards the goal of human freedom.

Why do we need the vision of communism? It is both practical and necessary. Throughout most of the natural history of humanity we have been communists. Class society has been around for a mere 10,000 years. Our species has its origins going back some 200,000 years. So there is nothing predestined, inborn or natural about greed, exploitation and sexual oppression. Indeed today without getting rid of class society and moving towards communism our species faces an uncertain future - war, pandemic, economic stagnation, global warming, etc. And, to say the least, the vision of communism would strengthen no end our current prospects in the class struggle. Who is going to be the best fighters against cuts, privatisations, sackings, the victimisation of trade union reps? A class that clings to the vain hope of returning to 1945? Or a class committed to realising communism and human freedom. One only needs ask the question to arrive at the answer.

Two other points

We think that the question of Europe is of cardinal importance. The present formulation in Socialist Platform is garbled, reads like a fudge and is open to misrepresentation too. Replacing the European Union with a “confederation of socialist societies”?6 Socialist societies? Have we done away with the state? Do we consider nations, borders a permanent feature of human life? Surely not.

The EU should certainly constitute our point of departure. We should organise within and against the existing EU. Hence all perspectives based on, or which imply or pander to, the break-up of the EU - for example, through a British withdrawal - should be rejected outright. Socialism and the nationalism of ‘official’ communism’s British road to socialism and No2EU are counterposed, unrelated, antithetical.

The bourgeoisie is highly unlikely to realise a United States of Europe. It is surely impossible to form a voluntary union of capitalist states in Europe. A Bonaparte, a Bismarck, a Hitler would be required. Hence, although we might expect German power to increase considerably over the coming period, the chances are that the EU will stagger on as a highly unbalanced confederacy with one political crisis following another.

So what should replace the EU of the council of ministers, the commissioners, the 28 member-states and the treaties of Rome, Maastricht and Lisbon? Our view is well known. The working class must come to power over the whole of Europe. That is, it should be stressed, an integral part of a grand strategy for world revolution. The working class might first move in a Brazil or a South Korea. Such countries could quite conceivably constitute themselves the global vanguard. But, as things stand at present, and for the foreseeable future, Europe alone offers the only realistic prospect of a decisive breakthrough. It has the long socialist tradition, the deep organisation and the accumulated wealth needed for socialism. With the example of a socialist Europe before them, the working masses in the third world would soon be clamouring for revolution. The working class in North America would surely follow in quick time and secure the final and complete victory of socialism.

Naturally, a socialist Europe requires a socialist constitution. A confederation is more or less what we have now. A loose combination of states. But the working class needs centralisation if it is to successfully crush capitalist revolts and face down the threat of US-sponsored counterrevolutionary war. That means the “one and indivisible republic” (Engels). Why on earth would we want a situation where a Luxembourg or a Slovenia can opt out and constitute themselves an organising centre for capitalist restoration? The working class would be well advised to introduce a unified state. Yes, power must be concentrated as far as necessary … and devolved downwards as far as possible. Local autonomy and regional self-government do not contradict the unified state.

Lastly, we have proposed an additional clause to the Socialist Platform - this came out of informal discussions at Communist University between Left Unity members. A common accusation coming from supporters of LPP is that the Socialist Platform is set on excluding people. If we are honest, that contains a truth. However, all parties draw lines which distinguish between who can be and who cannot be a member. Churches and trade unions, football and chess clubs, Facebook groups and debating societies do the same. Of course, the aim is to convince millions to join us because we have convinced them, won them to our vision of socialism and human freedom.

But we are not insisting that members have to agree with everything in the aims and principles, let alone the full programme. There must be room for learning from experience, for disagreement, for those who argue for an alteration to this or that clause. As long as this does not involve a challenge to fundamental principles, such arguments can be and should be contained. Hence we say that members of Left Unity should be required to ‘accept’, not ‘agree’ with, its aims and principles.

In other words, members are being asked to view democratically arrived at programmatic positions as the basis of joint action. That goes hand in hand with the right to form platforms or factions - call them what you may. Members can organise together with co-thinkers and publicly argue for their positions. Without that Left Unity would shrivel into just another confessional sect. And that is in the interests of no-one.

Notes

1. http://leftunity.org/left-party-platform-statement.

2. www.nspe.org/Ethics/CodeofEthics/index.html.

3. http://leftunity.org/the-class-struggle-platform.

4. www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm.

5. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, pp225-26.

6. http://leftunity.org/socialist-platform-statement-of-aims-and-principles.