16.05.1996

The main danger

Party notes

We stand accused by close friends of the Party of having an ultra-leftist tinge to our work around the Socialist Labour Party. These comrades suggest that a certain ambiguity in our position has led to problems in the position of comrades sympathetic to the Party in the SLP. In turn, this has produced some jitters among our allies on the left. Were we a loose leftist cannon. Would we perhaps screw it up for everyone?

On balance, I would reject the charge. Individual comrades - at all levels of our organisation - have made mistakes. These have been swiftly corrected, I think. In general, the organisation has charted a correct course through very turbulent political waters without its political ballast jerking either to the left or the right.

Realistically, the main danger we face is a rightist one. Taken as a whole, this is the strongest ‘pull’ on our organisation and others on the revolutionary left in the SLP. Again, the Fourth International Supporters Caucus is a pristine example.

At the SLP’s May 4 conference, Fisc gave ample illustration of how it is being nudged to the right. Leading Fisc members Brian Heron and Trevor Wongsam were the leading advocates of a ‘socialist’ immigration policy. In voting for this, the Fisc consciously violated revolutionary principle (in contrast to the majority of delegates at the conference, who voted for it as a result of their honest reformism).

Instructive also was the reason given by the Fisc for this infringement of revolutionary canons. As comrade Wongsam put it, opposition to all immigration controls was a hang-over from “small group politics”, a reflex of ‘sectarianism’.

Trotsky makes an acid comment on opportunists who posture against “the danger of sectarianism” when what they actually despise is “an active concern for purity of principles, clarity of position, political consistency, organisational completeness” (Centrism and the Fourth International, 1934). Perhaps Trevor and his ‘Fourth Internationalist’ chums have some re-reading to do?

Our organisation has not been immune to rightist pressures. Our initial response to the SLP was wrong. We went along with Militant Labour’s suggestion for an affiliate party structure in knee-jerk response to Scargill’s proposed bureaucratic constitution. This was a mistake, and was quickly corrected. We are fighting for a reforged communist party, something which is eminently achievable.

Some comrades - including those who are critical of our episodic ‘leftism’ - have by implication suggested that this is unrealistic. Dave Craig writes that “the best that can be won for now is a Communist-Labour party”, a historical throw-back to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party at the beginning of this century with its “Labourite and communist wings (ie, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks)” (Weekly Worker, May 2).

I think it would be stretching a point to describe the Mensheviks at the beginning of this century as “Labourite”. Certainly, at this embryonic stage, the Mensheviks anticipated the social reformism of the Second International, but to describe these orthodox Marxists who “fought like Bolsheviks” (Plekhanov) in 1905 as Labourites is surely not correct.

Our struggle for what is necessary - a revolutionary communist party - should not be interpreted in these circumstances as a ‘leftist’ campaign. If for a time we have a Labour-communist ‘alliance’, so be it. It should not be what we aim for, however.

Concretely, how must revolutionaries now work in the SLP? Leftist and rightist deviations must be guarded against and the fight advanced in an open way. The left of the SLP must be the most open and democratic part of the organisation. This will allow it to clarify its ideas and attract others from the revolutionary movement to struggle alongside it.

The substantial number of revolutionaries in the SLP are its most consistent and clear-sighted element. They must now be patiently cohered - organisationally, politically and theoretically. This is the key task for the coming period, an indispensable element of the struggle to build the SLP as the revolutionary party of the working class in this country.

Mark Fischer
national organiser