30.01.1997

Seismic change

Around the left

In this column we recently remarked that the time is ripe for the revolutionary left to “reassess their views on the 1989-1991 period, painful as it might be” (January 16). This comment was triggered by the upheavals in Serbia and Bulgaria, where we can see the development of mass reactionary movements against the incumbent regimes. During 1989-91 the revolutionary left attempted to paint such movements red - now they do not.

Having said that, we can be sure that some sections of the revolutionary left still hanker nostalgically for the good old days of 1989-91, still attempt to square the circle. This confusion manifests itself in near pristine form in a recent issue of Socialist Worker, in an article by comrade Charlie Kimber entitled, ‘Can protests turn into wider revolt?’ (January 18).

It almost goes without saying that the article is infused by the rank economism we normally associate with almost any SWP article. Thus - seemingly living in an alternative universe where VI Lenin’s What is to be done? has never been written - comrade Kimber writes: “There is a clear potential to link together hatred of the regime’s denial of basic democratic freedoms with workers’ economic demands” (my emphasis). The comrade obviously thinks that by vacating the political field and fighting for a 2.3% (or whatever) pay rise, the Serbian working class can turn itself into a conscious revolutionary agent and advance the struggle for socialism. Then again, at least the SWP is consistent on this one.

More intriguingly, after telling us that Serb oppositionists like Vuk Draskovic “hope to replay the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe where dictatorial communist regimes fell”, comrade Kimber informs us: “[We] celebrated the collapse of the fake socialism of the Eastern bloc. But what occurred were not revolutions in the true sense of the term, where one class takes over from another through methods of struggle outside existing political rules.” Leaving aside the comrade’s highly oblique formulations, it is worth noting that the SWP does not believe that we witnessed ‘revolutions’ in Eastern Europe.

In a near unforgivable crime, comrade Kimber proceeds to enlist the much abused Antonio Gramsci in support of the SWP’s grand thesis: “The results were what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called ‘passive revolutions’, where the old ruling class concedes significant reforms, and ditches some individuals, in order to keep their class in power” - nicely mystifying the whole issue.

However, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the SWP’s ‘shift’. It still fundamentally believes that there was some sort of progressive change in those years, something worthwhile, even if they were not “revolutions in the true sense”. Comrade Kimber reassures us that the SWP has been right all along: “But what was most exciting about 1989 was the potential for workers to take up the demands of the democratic opposition and to transform them into a challenge to the whole system”.

It will take a seismic change for the SWP to really get to grips with 1989-1991.

Don Preston