21.03.1996

Menshevism in microcosm

Because they represent a real movement of the working class the Socialist Labour Party and Socialist Alliances have thrown into sharp relief the theoretical and programmatic limitations of many revolutionaries. The Trotskyite group, Workers Power, provides a case study

Tony Blair’s resounding conference success in ditching clause four, ‘new’ Labour’s atavistic return to its old liberal origins, the shadow cabinet’s ominous and unashamed commitment to putrefying capitalism are bound to cause a whole series of unintended knock-on effects.

For communists the imminent future holds great promise. Of that I am sure. Even now things are redolent with change.

Confused, tentative and imperfect though they undoubtedly are, the mushrooming network of Socialist Alliances and the Socialist Labour Party carry the possibility of a break with Labourism, and, if consciousness overcomes spontaneity, the reforged Communist Party we need for revolution.

This is a qualitative development. Though they only involve a thin advanced guard, we have in the Socialist Alliances and SLP a movement of the class itself. For the first time in a generation a stratum of the working class is positively rejecting the Labour Party. The giant stirs.

Only those leftwingers mired in sectarianism and dogmatism can talk down or stand aside from such a revival of anti-capitalist politics. Unfortunately there are too many of them, and frankly the unfolding class movement is in desperate need of trained and dedicated cadres. It is precisely in the attempt to overcome the backwardness of such comrades and rescue these would-be makers of revolution from tailism that my article is directed.

Blairism has exposed the pro-Labour tailism that has long programatically characterised a swathe of revolutionary groups in Britain - the SWP, Socialist Outlook, Workers International League, Workers Liberty could all be cited. Nevertheless a case study is provided by Workers Power. Here we find Menshevism in microcosm.

Labour’s constitutional marriage with market capitalism, Dr Drucker’s big business fundraising, Blair’s fawning before the totem of monarchy fatally undermine the perennial excuse Workers Power and co deploy to support Labour. That is, putting Labour into office in order to overcome the socialist illusions the masses have in it.

Despite that a Labour government is still presented - mechanically and artificially - as an inescapable and necessary stage which has to be achieved and passed through if the struggle for socialism is to progress. Until the Tories are “swept aside” the working class will supposedly remain incapable of politically fighting the state. Yet everything we know from the history of real revolutions shows that such a Menshevik approach is not only untrue but leads to utter disaster. It diverts the workers from their own hegemonic politics and subordinates our interests to those of bourgeois parliamentarianism. After all, whatever the subjective intentions of Workers Power, its call to vote Labour is a call to vote for Blairism.

Under certain definite circumstances it is tactically correct for communists to advocate a critical vote for a reformist workers’ party. That was the case in the early 1920s with the Labour Party of MacDonald, Snowden and Henderson. To put off socialism Labour adopted clause four in 1918. It cleverly feigned a conversion to socialism. Our CPGB therefore supported Labour ... like the rope supports the hanged man. Helping MacDonald into No10 would expose the Labour Party and create the best conditions for communists to win the mass of workers.

Nowadays though, as a result of experiencing four Labour prime ministers and in no small measure due to prime minister in waiting Tony Blair himself, only fools and the likes of Workers Power have socialist illusions in the Labour Party - even if it is the illusion that large numbers of workers have socialist illusions in the Labour Party.

Inevitably, Workers Power, to maintain its Labour tailism, has had to water down its centrism: ie, it has moved to the right. Over recent years the call to vote Labour in order to overcome the socialist illusions of the masses has quietly been subsumed by the call to vote Labour because “millions of workers place their hopes in Labour”.

Hence, faced with a choice between an imposed Blairite and the SLP’s Brenda Nixon at the Hemsworth by-election, Workers Power tells us in its monthly paper of the same name that it “preferred” to “undermine” the “illusions” of those who voted Labour in order to get the Tories out (Workers Power March 1996).

Quite probably the vast mass of those voting Labour at the next general election might think a Blair government could be no worse than Major’s. Conceivably plenty believe it will be better. That is a politically significant fact that must be assessed when framing the communist electoral intervention (which is incidentally quite feasible without a “sizable” revolutionary party). But understanding the masses under no circumstances justifies tailing them.

In the late 19th century workers in Britain loyally sided with Gladstone’s Liberals with a ‘lesser of two evils’ idea. Should Marxists have said, ‘Vote Liberal ... but organise to fight’? Later this year millions of US trade unionists will cast their votes for Clinton because they imagine him better for workers than Dole. Should Marxists say, ‘Vote Clinton ... but fight for socialism’? Communists do not follow workers in choosing the butcher. That is not independent class politics. It is the politics of a slave class.

Workers Power’s programmatic tailism forces it as a matter of principle to rubbish and reject those who have or who are actually in practice breaking with Labour and shedding their reformist illusions. Instead of actively siding with the militant minority, fighting alongside them and proving the superiority of the revolutionary programme, Workers Power contemptuously dismisses both the SLP and the Socialist Alliances.

Presumably only workers who, having cast aside their illusions in Labourism move directly to Workers Power’s version of doctrinairely pure Marxism are acceptable. If that is what our friends who run Workers Power are relying on they will have to wait forever ... and even then it will not happen.

According to Workers Power, the SLP “advocates a reformist road to socialism” and the Socialist Alliances, if “they were successful”, would “result in the creation of further obstacles to the building of a revolutionary party”. This is a combination of categorical dogmatism, untruth and criminal passivity - a harsh judgement maybe, but a justifiable one.

The SLP is in the process of formation and that by definition involves development as the most notable feature in its politics. Academic ‘Marxists’ can sit in their comfy studies and predict it will become a left reformist party. So what? Real Marxists, in contrast, are obliged to use every opportunity life presents to fight for what is necessary. The first approach is self-fulfilling and useless. The other is capable of changing the world and storming the heavens.

Arthur Scargill, the SLP’s founder, provides an excellent example of development, of fluidity. In the past he espoused a rather vague but heady mixture of NUM syndicalism, ‘official communism’ and left Labourite reformism. Compared with the conservative worker-kings of the British trade union bureaucracy, that put him on the outer limits of mainstream Labour. Needless to say, in order to lead the SLP he is following it to the left - at the policy conference on March 2 he spoke passionately of his feelings of liberation now he was no longer trapped in the Labourite straightjacket. He boldly declared himself a “revolutionary Marxist”.

One need not take such statements at face value. But to claim that the essential difference between Scargill and Blair is the number of people prepared to vote for their party at Hemsworth is politically inept, to say the least. Scargill personifies the militant spirit of the miners’ strikes of 1972, 1974 and of course the Great Strike of 1984-85. Blair is a pro-capitalist liberal, the most rightwing leader in the rightwing history of Labour leaders.

Of course, as far a communist tactics go, membership composition is decisive, not top personalities. The SLP is small. No one pretends otherwise. It is, though, drawing thousands of outstanding working class political activists and trade union militants into its ranks. ‘New’ Labour grows rapidly. That we do not deny. However its typical recruit is of a very different stripe. It is the atomised Guardian reader, worried by social decay. The SLP represents class struggle militancy - ‘new’ Labour, middle class angst.

There is next to no chance of the SLP gaining a mass following in the short term. After the next general election it could be another matter entirely. A viciously anti-working class Blair government could see the SLP becoming the focus of combative resistance and thereby gaining a wide popular base. Would Workers Power then lend its support? Or would it continue to faithfully support Blair’s party (and remain constituency members) while it attacks the working class, merely because Labour has an arithmetical majority in parliament?

So how should we categorise the SLP? As we have argued, the SLP is not a party “but an amorphous movement which aims to be a party” (Weekly Worker February 29). Yes, Scargill has proposed a monstrously bureaucratic constitution which would ban and proscribe tendencies and factions and establish a Bonapartist internal regime. Nevertheless the SLP will, especially at this formative stage, be made by its membership; the majority of whom are moving to the left and are open to serious revolutionary ideas. If they are not given those ideas, if they allow their critical faculties to be emasculated by a Scargill personality cult, then the SLP will not live up to its potential.

On the other hand if we can win the Socialist Alliances and other left forces to the SLP we can surely build it into the “open and democratic alternative” to Blairism Workers Power and others profess to want.

We communists, it should be stressed, are not after some “lowest common denominator” programme, let alone a “new form of left reformist party or organisation”. Workers Power is quite right to oppose any such perspectives. To overthrow the capitalist state, to bring about the rule of the working class, a democratic centralist party, organised on the basis of a revolutionary programme, is required. That is what we urge all partisans of the working class to undeviatingly argue and work for in the SLP. Will they succeed? Time alone will show.

However, one thing is certain. Workers Power’s tailing of Blair’s Labour Party and complacent satisfaction with the debilitating fragmentation of the “existing left” will produce nothing. As Hegel once said, “From nothing, through nothing, to nothing.”

Jack Conrad