29.08.1996

For a democratic SLP

Martin Blum replies to Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group on the call for a Communist-Labour party (Weekly Worker August 15)

It is a feature of communist polemic that there is often much chaff to sort through in order to get to the grain. In the debate between myself and Dave Craig, yet again we are faced with this fact. This is because, despite what we think are the best formulations and slogans for our tasks, practice has a nasty habit of intervening.

I will firstly deal with the rather annoying and inaccurate way in which comrade Craig has chosen to argue against me. He chooses to use some notes by the CPGB’s national organiser against some wayward comments by Party members. Craig has rightly described these as ultra-left, and then attempts to paint my argument with the same brush. Comrade Fischer assures me that these points in his column were not directed at my argument against the slogan for a ‘Communist-Labour party’.

In painting the backdrop for his argument, comrade Craig ascribes various characteristics to the nature of the Socialist Labour Party. He says that the SLP is “more than just dissident Labour lefts”, that it is a confused product “of two traditions within the labour movement: Labourite and Marxist”. He agrees with comrade Fischer when he says that it is clear that “revolutionaries are in some sort of relationship with the reformists at the current stage of development”. With this backdrop, I not only have much sympathy, but positively agree, as I agree with the national organiser’s call for the need for SLP unity (Weekly Worker July 11). The concern I raised in my last article (Weekly Worker July 4) was around Craig’s call for a “partnership” and an “open alliance” with the Labourites. I was responding to what I regarded as bending the stick too far one way - perhaps in my article I bent it back the other way.

At this stage of the debate, as both of us are able to see concretely how our ideas are being received in the context of working in the SLP, it seems as though some balance is being achieved. However, I still reject the ‘Communist-Labour party’ as having any use as a slogan for our work.

Comrade Craig seems to regard the way in which we develop slogans as unimportant. He says that “it does not especially matter whether we describe the SLP as ‘left-right’ or ‘revolutionary-reformist; or ‘Communist-Labour’ ”. If this is the case, why does he insist on developing one of these descriptors into a slogan? He confuses the two. He argues that the “slogan of a ‘Communist-Labour party’ relates to the real issue of what kind of party the SLP is” (my emphasis). In terms of what we are trying to achieve in the SLP, his slogan for a Communist-Labour party falls wide of the mark. At this point of the development of the party, the slogan ‘For a democratic SLP’ is far more useful. We do not develop slogans which are simply descriptors of what we perceive as the current situation. I doubt very much that the comrade uses the slogan ‘For a constitutional monarchy’ in addressing the nature of the British state.

A slogan is something that contains within it the concretisation of our politics at a given time. It is something which we should be able to use in our day-to-day work in a field of political struggle. It is something which contains motion in its very formulation. Comrades I have spoken to find it almost impossible to conceive of a situation in their SLP work where Dave Craig’s slogan would be of any use. The comrade argues that “it is in the realm of practical politics to fight for and win a majority of the SLP to this conception” of a CLP. When applied to the concrete, this is almost laughable. Most SLP members I know would be more likely to say, ‘If you want a Communist-Labour party - then feel free to go and form one’.

What I think is at the bottom of the problem is something I mentioned in my last article. It seems to me that the comrades from the RDG suffer from a scholastic and formalistic approach. I see it in their programmatic formulation of a ‘dual power’ republic and I see it in their approach to the SLP, not only in relation to the question of the current slogan debate. Both in conversation and in print, comrade Craig’s attitude to the foundation of the SLP bears the same thinking.

He criticises the CPGB for entering the formation process of the SLP with the orientation of forming the type of party the class needs for overthrowing capitalism - a Communist Party. He says that “There was no chance of the SLP being founded as a Communist Party.” With this I agree. But by going in and fighting for what was necessary at that particular conjuncture when all was up for grabs, we were able to impact on the outcome. Even if revolutionaries had been a majority on the first NEC, the SLP would not have been formed as a Communist Party, but it would certainly be much more in that direction. As it is, we are dealing with a relatively weak left social-democratic organisation in formation which contains revolutionaries in it. Not a Communist-Labour party. Clearly, it is important whether various other groupings had joined or not - Workers Power would clearly have made an impact on the outcome; but Craig says that it is ‘a waste of time’ to consider such things.

The same formalistic thinking is applied to work in the SLP. Apparently, I can only be either a ‘donkey’ in the SLP or a ‘partner’ with the Labourites. This is further qualified with the observation that, “Partners have to work hard. Each is recognised by the other. Each will get an appropriate share of the spoils.” I find this quite an amazing formulation. I am neither a donkey nor a partner in the sense that Craig seems to formulate them. Of course I am in some sort of relationship with the Labourites, but not the sort that Craig is suggesting. The relationship is actually a dynamic one, as is the process of the formation of the party as a whole.

I notice in the resolutions of the Revolutionary Platform, which I received in the mail this week, a resolution on a Communist-Labour party. Two things leap out at me from this resolution. Firstly the title, “A Communist-Labour party”; and point a): “To this end we should campaign for a Communist-Labour party”. These two aspects of the resolution bear no relationship to the body as a whole. The resolution states our immediate tasks include “the fight for revolutionaries ... to win our democratic rights as a legitimate or recognised part of the SLP”. But it does not just stop there. It continues to argue that we “should seek to organise the communist wing of the SLP and fight for the hegemony of our ideas both amongst the communists and in the SLP itself”.

Comrade Craig accuses my last article of being a halfway house. Quite the contrary. His slogan for a Communist-Labour party is the halfway house. It will neither attract communists nor reformists breaking from reformism. It will tend to push those forces into opposing blocks and does not reflect our need for addressing the fluidity of our situation. Importantly, it does not help us in winning those who have broken from Labour, but not yet Labourism, to a revolutionary position. In Craig’s formulation, they will see themselves reflected in the Labour part of the Communist-Labour party and stay there.

The slogan for a democratic SLP is aimed at adding to the process of breaking up the past allegiances of many SLP members to Labourism. We must be the champions of party democracy - it is not only in our interests, but the interests of the whole class that we fight for a democratic workers’ party. We will find many more allies in this struggle from all camps and factions in the SLP than in Craig’s ungainly formulation. We are fighting for the best conditions for communists and other revolutionaries to argue their politics free from bureaucratic intrigue. If we are successful, those who wish to see the SLP form in an anti-communist direction will brand themselves as being against working class democracy by their own actions.

Rather than seeking scholastic formulations which suit what one individual believes to be the present case in the SLP, we need slogans that are fluid and transitionary. Craig’s slogan is a clumsy Frankenstein’s monster. ‘For a democratic SLP’ clearly fits the bill.