04.07.1996

The party we need

Martin Blum rejects Dave Craig’s call for a Communist-Labour Party

Dave Craig’s contribution (Weekly Worker June 20) on the way communists and other revolutionaries in the SLP organise for the way forward has opened up a number of interesting issues. His slogan, ‘for a Communist-Labour Party’, is pregnant with many of the contradictions that the new born SLP contains. In a sense, much of the rank and file of the SLP is suffering post-natal depression: branch meetings are overly bureaucratic; campaigning work is minimal; attendance is dropping. One branch that I know of even had, its monthly meeting cancelled for a Euro 96 match.

Much of the responsibility for increasing the tempo of the SLP rests on the shoulders of revolutionaries, particularly those who are or have been members of revolutionary organisations. Those from the Labour Party have little experience in running an activist party. Scargill needs revolutionaries in the SLP at the moment to stop the whole thing corning to a standstill.

That is why Dave Craig’s article is so timely. However, one danger of comrade Craig’s formulation is that it could be seen as offering a ‘left cover’ for what is rapidly becoming a social democratic party. To call for a Communist-Labour Party as an ‘open alliance’ between reformists and communists, and to conclude by saying that “we need the SLP to become a Communist-Labour Party” is disturbing. I know we continually press this point, but we press it because it is true. We must fight for a party of the working class, not an ‘alliance’ between ‘our’ leaders and ‘theirs’.

At this point it is vital that revolutionaries in the SLP take stock of our successes, defeats, and errors in building a revolutionary party. After all, for all communists, including all those in alleged ‘alliances’ with Labourites in the 19th century German SPD and the Russian SDLP, their political activity was subordinated to the tasks of building a party capable of leading the working class in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. This too must be our starting point.

I am sure that comrade Craig would agree. What the history of the past l50 years has shown us is that there is only one type of party that can fit the bill and that is the Communist Party: yes, and one that advocates soviets and fights, not merely for dual power, but for state power for the working class. Unlike Brian Heron, who extols the ‘Britishness’ of the overtly parliamentary British Road to Socialism, our working class in Britain has produced its Councils of Action and its Miners’ Support Groups.

What communists and other revolutionaries must unite around are tactics and stratagems that will lead us to reforging a Communist Party. At present, the SLP provides a unique historical juncture. Scargill’s break with Labour presents real fluidity on the left that has not been seen for decades. Whether the SLP will be a Communist Party has not yet been finally decided. At present, it has moved decidedly in the direction of a bureaucratic left reformist party with quite overt chauvinist tendencies. Whether revolutionaries can win the SLP for revolution is a strategic issue. We must fight for our position in this party of the working class. We do not just want minority rights, we want the leadership of the advanced part of the class, many of whom have followed Scargill’s call for a break with Labour.

Turning to the content of Craig’s article. Having found some areas of agreement with him, I must now unravel his formalistic thinking which leads him to call for a Communist-Labour Party.

Firstly on ‘alliances’. Craig seems to confuse these with united fronts and fails to differ between principled and unprincipled alliances. He argues that the leadership of the SLP is “basically an alliance of some with an NUM and Labour background... and Fourth International supporters”. However, this alliance is of a most unprincipled nature. An alliance where someone like Brian Heron, supposedly a ‘Trotskyite’, publicly extols the failed reformist programme of the old CPGB which was drafted by Stalin! Where supposed supporters of an erstwhile revolutionary ‘International’ openly call for immigration controls, with the ridiculous pretence of keeping out white South Africans and, amazingly, protestants from the north of Ireland! This is not an alliance we would wish to emulate.

Craig is also confused about united fronts. He claims that a Communist-Labour Party would be a united front against the Tories and New Labour. A political party is not my understanding of a united front. We can have a party which is centralised or is federal or has recognised ‘tendencies’. Communists fight for a democratic centralist party in which minorities have faction rights, access to party publications, the right to produce their own platforms and propaganda, and the right to strive to become the majority. At present, the draft constitution of the SLP is federal, with constituency branches and affiliated workers’ organisations. However, under Scargill’s draft constitution, it seems that only those workers’ organisation recognised by the bourgeois state as bona fide trade unions can affiliate. This is a far cry from a united front in which communists and social-democrats “strike together, but march separately”.

Further in the article, Craig describes a Communist-Labour Party as a party of a “new type” in Britain which would “bring together socialists from the two main traditions - left reformist and communist. These two traditions must form an open alliance.” This is exactly what Fisc and Scargill think they are doing. Craig also states that “it is the responsibility of all Marxists in the SLP to ensure that communist politics are recognised as a legitimate partner with Labourism.” This is too much pulling of the forelock and bending the knee. Communist politics is not about staking legitimacy in a left social democratic formation. We do not seek legitimacy from reformists: we seek legitimacy from our class.

The point here of course is the question of partyism. Scargill and Fisc and those around them are treating the SLP as their property. They are claiming that if you support any political body other than the SLP and a union recognised by the bourgeois state, then your membership is void. They are trying to paint the revolutionaries in the SLP as the problem, as being anti-party, when in fact they are being anti-party. We are not anti-party; we are resolutely pro-party. We just think that the leadership are not leading us towards what the working class needs to achieve the SLP’s stated aim: “to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist system”. Only the SLP organised as a Communist Party is capable of doing this. Once Scargill called for the formation of the SLP, it no longer belonged to him. It is no longer his baby, but the property of the whole working class. Brian Heron thinks that publishing the SLP election results is a hostile act. The Labour Party itself publishes its own NEC results. The word ‘party’ refers to being part of the class.

This question of partyism is not understood by Craig. He says that the “real question for communists is whether the SLP is a step towards a communist party or whether it is a new barrier.” Quite frankly this question cannot be fully answered one way or another. The process has not been fully played out. In his normal formalistic fashion, Craig, answering his question in favour of the latter formulation, needs to formulate his ‘step’. His Communist-Labour Party. If the SLP becomes a party that in essence has two wings - revolutionary and reformist - it will not be because we campaign around those wings being ‘legitimate partners’ in the party. No, to use the two examples that Craig himself used, the histories of the SDP and the RSDLP were those of the revolutionary wing struggling to build itself as the hegemon of the party, not creating an “open alliance” with reformists and opportunists. The Bolshevik revolutionary wing of the RSDLP sought to exclude reformism from its ranks. Marx railed against Lasalle in the SDP. Luxemburg and Liebknecht fought tooth and nail against Bernstein. To use a more recent example, the Leninist wing of the CPGB fought tooth and nail against the open liquidationism and reformism of Chater, Jacques and Temple. At the same time, we do not bureaucratically aim to silence the reformists. They may remain in the party if they carry out majority decisions. We are confident that, whether we are a minority or majority, our ideas will win through in open debate in the SLP.

Our task is to build a strong revolutionary wing of the SLP. If the SLP remains a federal workers’ party, we must fight for the right of all tendencies and organisations in the workers’ movement to affiliate. In this way we will win ‘legitimacy’; in this way we will been seen to be true democrats in the SLP. If the current leadership try to keep us out, if they expel revolutionaries, they will be signing their own death warrant. We will win a place in this new party of the working class from a position of strength, from a position of openly fighting for a democratic party, not by appealing for minority rights and being recognised as a ‘legitimate partner’ with Labourism.

Craig concludes his argument stating that “we do not need a left Labour party. We need the SLP to become a Communist Labour Party.”

He is wrong. What our class needs is a communist party and we will fight within the SLP around that necessity.