19.06.1997

For an open journal

At the CDSLP’s June 14 conference much discussion preceded the decision to launch an open publication. All comrades quite correctly wanted to focus the campaign on changing the party constitution at the October congress to break the witch hunt. Some wanted to restrict the scope of the campaign’s journal to the question of SLP democracy, while others argued for an ‘internal’ bulletin, addressing itself to SLP members only.

The view which won the day, however, recognised that the arguments for socialism, and for the kind of party needed to achieve it, are inseparable. The necessity for party democracy, and what this means, cannot be properly argued without drawing on the full range of political knowledge and ideas. Only three comrades voted against an open journal. One did not want “yet another” left paper. The other two upheld the principle of openness - but after the congress.

The comrades from Socialist Labour Action abstained, on the spurious grounds that they did not want to enter an “unprincipled propaganda bloc” with other revolutionary trends with which they have programmatic disagreements. Of course, sorting out differences of opinion is precisely the role of an open journal.

These comrades should explain why they are fighting for the right to air their views in Socialist News. Why is the democracy campaign, and not the SLP itself, an unprincipled propaganda bloc? And why is it OK to indulge in the spoken exchange of ideas in meetings, where “comrades are failing to understand”, as one comrade complained, but not in written polemic in the CDSLP journal?

Those who try to restrict or postpone the open discussion of differences in front of the working class are treating a fundamental principle as if it were a short term tactic. If human liberation could be handed down from above, then open discussion would be superfluous. But for self-liberation, revolutionary understanding must become the property of the mass, not any elite.

Stan Keable,
Brent Branch SLP