07.11.1996

The sword

Party notes

There is an aphorism from Lenin that I am particularly fond of.  He writes that “publicity is a sword that heals the wound it itself makes”. A little clumsy perhaps, but I’m sure it loses a lot in translation.

The essence of the idea is that openness in politics carries a price. You may provide ammunition to your enemies. You can alienate sections that you were seeking to draw closer. You may even - for a time - present your own Party as a seething mass of opportunist currents, petty fiefdoms or personal rivalries.

So speaking the truth can inflict a wound. But in politics, openness and honesty in all things is actually the healing agent.

I was reminded of this quote when I heard of the accusation coming from some more distant friends and acquaintances of the Party. Rather than putting loathsome little life forms in the Socialist Labour Party under the knife - like various Stalin Society stalwarts, or the unstable Tony Goss and his keepers in the Fourth International Supporters Caucus - it is said that we are actually providing them with the oxygen of publicity. We are keeping them alive and helping them thrive through our coverage of their activities.

Of course, it would be best to actually ask them. If you get the chance, corner one of these people some evening and ask whether the Weekly Worker’s consistent disclosure of their abominable activities gives them a warm glow. And in the case of Tony Goss, then stand well back.

The key point is that comrades who lecture us about this actually reveal far more about themselves than anything else. What they are unconsciously expressing is a certain sympathy, an injured solidarity with the ‘victims’ of exposure. Although many leftists may object to what Fisc or their eccentric Stalin Society allies are doing, they have no real problems with the way they are doing it. In other words, building a party of the working class behind the backs of the working class; treating political differences and struggle as a matter of conspiracy: all that is fine as far as large swathes of the revolutionary left is concerned.

The most recent complaint about our openness comes from a friend of the Party who slipped out of his own small organisation as an individual to join the SLP. There was no serious attempt to take with him comrades that he had worked with for years. There was no open struggle to educate and engage other advanced workers in these vital arguments. Instead, the comrade simply peeled off his organisation like an old overcoat in order to slip into something more comfortable. This is a profoundly frivolous approach to any working class political organisation.

Now this same comrade wants us to maintain a silence on the activities of the right wing, to treat the struggle as a conspiracy behind the back of - and therefore, against - the working class.

When they come to join the SLP, should advanced workers know that Fisc operates in the party? Should they be informed of the developing working relationship between leading lights of the Stalin Society and these rightwing Trotskyists? Shouldn’t they know something of the lustrous career of Tony Goss from a publication of the workers’ movement - or should they rely on Private Eye for all their information on the party they are devoting themselves to?

Genuine revolutionary politics benefits from a form of photosynthesis: light is life-giving. Opportunism thrives in the dark. We will proudly continue to drag out the slimy invertebrates of the SLP right to let the sun bake them hard.

Mark Fischer
national organiser