22.03.2018

A unique opportunity

Following changes at the top of the Dutch Socialist Party, Richard Hoogstraten assesses the prospects for the left

Last November Emile Roemer, parliamentary leader of the Socialist Party, announced his resignation after eight years at the helm. His failure to connect with more voters and secure a place in government - the deeply held wish of the SP leadership, of course - led him to believe it was time to step down.

His proudest achievement had been to strengthen the organisational foundations of the party, he claimed. To emphasise this, Roemer pointed to the significant increase in the number of party branches, together with the number of municipalities where the party plays a role in governance, including the Netherlands’ four major cities. How should we assess such claims and what does his departure mean for the party?

Firstly let us recall the 2015 congress, where Jan Marijnissen made way for union leader Ron Meyer as party chair. The chair is responsible for the general organisation of the party, as well as campaigns, making him more powerful than the parliamentary leader. Some might remember that this change was motivated in part because of the dreadful state of party organisation, five years into Roemer’s leadership. The general idea had been that a majority of branches had neglected their activist base, even if they had managed to secure a place in local government.

Now Meyer wants to reinvigorate the branches. The so-called ‘For each other’ (Voor Elkaar) campaign is aimed at recruiting new activists in the branches and mobilising around local protests and struggles in order to expand the broader movement and strengthen the party organisation. Simultaneously new standards were set that local branches had to meet before being allowed to participate in local government. A quota was imposed for the number of active members and local campaigns before branches got the go-ahead to participate in the March 21 municipal elections. This resulted in a relatively large proportion of branches being prevented from participating in the elections - motivating them to build the party organisation and excluding branches that had failed to root themselves in working class communities.

Party organisation, which had become a mess after years of neglect, has now been rebuilt thanks to the efforts of Ron Meyer. The claim that Roemer had strengthened the organisational base of the party long before Meyer has to be viewed in this light. So what was Roemer’s actual contribution to the development of the party?

Roemer’s legacy

As leader, Roemer was mostly concerned with the work of parliamentary and local representatives. He also acted as the public face of the party, of course. In that sense the organisational quality of branches has indeed little to thank him for. On the other hand, the number of branches did increase over his seven years as leader. Between 2011 and 2017 it grew from 140 to 157 - hardly spectacular. Meanwhile, the amount of municipalities where the SP took part in the local government only increased by 3%. Roemer believed that in order to increase the party’s credibility it had to break through the barrier of joining a national coalition government. Likewise encouraging party branches to take responsibility for local policymaking was supposed to win the trust of other parties and gain experienced ‘bestuurders’ (administrators) for the party.

This strategy of making the party regierungsfähig (fit to govern) marked Roemer’s leadership. Unsurprisingly, the result was a shift to the right, culminating in the run-up to the national elections of 2017, when Roemer cosied up to the social-liberal D66 party. As we have reported in the pages of this paper, the party had previously put forward its most leftwing programme for decades, but this was despite rather than thanks to Roemer’s efforts. In the aftermath of the elections he was still pushing for a ‘left’ coalition spearheaded by the Christian Democratic Appeal - displaying his willingness to cooperate not only with ‘progressive’ bourgeois forces, but the conservatives too.

Against this background, the liberal faction within the party, which had already had a growing presence for a number of years, began to flourish and gain confidence. They were fully behind Roemer’s strategy of broadening the party’s appeal, despite negating the Socialist Party role as part of the workers’ movement. The contradiction added to the instability of Roemer’s leadership, as his parliamentary policy was clearly ineffective, while at the same time he was promoting a section of the party that was already being undermined by the new leadership, put in place in 2015.

What then allowed him to retain the leadership for so long, considering his consistent failure in relation to both party organisation and electoral strategy? The answer is twofold. Firstly, Roemer enjoyed high popularity among the party’s rank and file due to his outgoing personality and apparent willingness to compromise on internal issues. This allowed more people to feel included within the party and as such he also served as a unifying figure. Although his overall performance was lacking, his leadership appeared crucial to the stability of the party, especially when we consider that his predecessor, Agnes Kant, collapsed under various pressures quite early into her leadership.

Secondly, Roemer’s position did not become the subject of open debate, partly because of the insufficiently democratic structure of the party. Congresses are confined to a single day, resulting at best in comrades only being able to engage in the briefest of exchanges. In addition, due to the SP’s semi-federal structure, there are no official channels for consultation with party members outside your branch. This makes it very hard to win a majority for oppositional arguments. In addition members fail to make use of the democratic structures that exist, and a great deal of trust is placed in the bureaucracy. As a result, criticism of the party’s policies and organisation is often viewed as treacherous and may be accompanied by a sense of guilt. All this allowed Roemer to carry on long after his time was up.

Rising star

After Roemer’s resignation, the parliamentary party announced it had elected Lilian Marijnissen as his replacement. She is a veteran union leader and had already been the party’s rising star since being elected to parliament less than a year earlier. Notably, she is also the daughter of the party’s first parliamentary leader, Jan Marijnissen - the bourgeois press was quick to slander the party with accusations of nepotism and a North-Korean style political dynasty.

Officially, Marijnissen does not claim to have inaugurated a new period or change of direction, but a strong shift of emphasis has been noticeable. Under her leadership, the party has strengthened the ongoing trend of rehabilitating leftwing rhetoric. While previously the notion of class struggle had been reintroduced into the party’s public discourse, it now more openly calls for the need to overcome capitalism. Notably, as we approach the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, the relevance of his ideas has been promoted and used to slam liberal policy - Meyer himself is fond of drawing on Marx’s idea that all wealth derives from nature and human labour. Meanwhile, when Marijnissen has appeared on platforms in various cities, she has started her speech by citing the Communist manifesto.

In another positive turn, during the first congress under Marijnissen’s leadership last month the party put forward a resolution extending the criticism of capitalism and pointing out the need for stronger ideological schooling of the cadre. The resolution is certainly lacking, in that it leaves capitalism vaguely defined and does not directly contrapose to it workers’ power or socialism. Nonetheless it represents a great step forward, compared to where the party stood just a few years ago, and this can be taken further, depending on which section of the leadership gets to oversee the development of the party’s new ideological school.

In addition, the congress declared that the SP should seek to strengthen its international ties and cooperation with parties on the left. Various voices in the party suggest that this might mean a step towards closer cooperation with, or even membership of, the European Left Party. However, the party remains deeply divided over European issues, having adopted a very isolationist stance on international affairs. EU spokeswoman Renske Leijten went so far as to dismiss last winter’s Catalonian revolt as an “internal issue” of Spain.

Nevertheless, the change in leadership and the party’s message have managed to further consolidate power in the hands of the unofficial faction that favours activism over parliamentarism, and senior figures of the liberal-left wing are now abandoning the party. But more is going on than meets the eye - the official ban on factions often makes contradictions hard to spot.

So there are many reservations to be made about the leadership transition. The way that it was handled also signals serious issues - the announcement of Marijnissen’s election caused a commotion among the party ranks, cutting straight through ideological divides. The controversy came down to three main strands. Firstly, Marijnissen had not been a member of parliament for very long, having only been elected in March 2017 - a mere seven months before becoming parliamentary leader. This ties in directly with the second concern: the fact that she is the daughter of Jan Marijnissen. Although he was politically talented, he seemed to be obsessed with managing every action of the party apparatus down to the smallest detail, and the election of his daughter evoked the fear of his grip extending beyond his retirement. While the comparison with North Korea is totally unjustified, the concern over transparency is certainly legitimate.

This feeling was only strengthened by the third, and perhaps most fundamental, problem: Marijnissen had known about the upcoming vacancy for up to six months longer than most other MPs. Other potential candidates were only briefed a day before the planned election took place, thus greatly marginalising their chances. Only one candidate, Sadet Karabulut, a favourite of the party’s left wing, mounted a challenge, but she was decisively defeated. Typically, the precise vote has not been revealed.

All this is symptomatic of the lingering Stalinist bureaucracy that plagues the SP. Its failure to produce a transparent, democratic procedure for the transition of power is certainly connected with the desire to preserve a seemingly monolithic party. The party cannot be seen to be divided, for fear of losing the image of a membership united behind the leadership, or even of causing the ‘moderate’ wing to split.

The question is whether such an outcome is in any way realistic. Certainly few would regret a rupture with the bourgeois moralists within the party. Challenging the leadership should not be a problem, but it should be combined with a renewal of the democratic structure and systematic training of the party cadre in order to create a shared conceptual framework for the necessary debate, based on Marxism.

All this is incredibly relevant in the SP. It is very clear that the party is still dealing with the consequences of the degeneration of the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution and that, like them, the Socialist Party is heavily dependent on its bureaucracy, which understandably meets a lot of opposition and confusion among comrades. However, many fail to conceive of an alternative or organise any real resistance.

Principled left

As a parliamentary leader Roemer proved rather lacklustre. His main aim - to lead the party into national government - was not only misguided, but failed to even approach its realisation. It strengthened the hand of the party’s right and led to a weakening of the party’s operational base. Roemer’s leadership was symptomatic of the party organisation’s weaknesses: its bureaucratic centralism, lack of any democratic culture and tendency to compromise with bourgeois forces.

Most of what has been achieved in recent years is in part thanks to the efforts of the chair, Ron Meyer. Therefore, Roemer’s words on his resignation amounted to a poor defence of his performance as leader and it is telling that no official criticism of them has been made. Now that he has finally been replaced, the new leader, Lilian Marijnissen, is a sign of possible further gains for the countervailing tendency that has clearly been gaining ground since the congress. Whilst still carrying with it many of the flaws that have marked the party as a whole, the current leadership looks to be set on a more solidly leftwing and militant course.

Considering all of the above, what are the perspectives for communists operating within the Socialist Party? Welcoming the positive changes, whilst continuing to offer criticism of the party’s policies and organisation, will not only help tackle the immediate organisational problems, but will point to the need for an alternative programme for a mass workers’ party.

We should encourage the critique of capital, but also point out that the leadership’s analysis is often inconsistent, switching between different definitions of capitalism. Some documents define it as a damaging ideology that has to be cast aside, whilst others view it as an economic system to be overcome. As Marxists we should be pushing for a consistent view on capitalism that reaches beyond the moralistic condemnation of bad behaviour by individual companies. A clear analysis is not only necessary ideologically: it arms the workers with a reason to struggle, and a goal to attain.

If the party and its cadre want to take seriously such terms as ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘class struggle’ and ‘the working class’, then we should also point them towards the logical conclusions deriving from them. This would make many positions currently favoured by the party untenable, whether on the issue of Europe, party activity or organisation. The Socialist Party needs to abandon its isolationist stance on Europe, party activity needs to be rooted in working class communities and the workplace, and it must abandon its Stalinist sham democracy. All this will inevitably lead to a confrontation with the party bureaucracy sooner rather than later.

Eventually we should aim for the adoption of a Marxist minimum programme that calls for the abolition of the power of capital and its replacement with proletarian dictatorship. The main aim of the Socialist Party should be to radically democratise society, thus opening the way to the rule of the working class. But this can only happen if the party takes seriously working class independence and the international fight against capitalism.

By adopting more traditional Marxist language, the leadership has given communists a unique opportunity to prevent the party from being crushed by false ambitions. Communists in the Socialist Party can make a real difference towards realising its transformation into a vehicle of the revolutionary working class.