Letters

CPGB contradictions

The Weekly Worker of June 19 carried a report on the round-table discussions organised by the CPGB. I would regard the summary of the positions expressed by comrade Jack Conrad on behalf of the CPGB as a serious deviation from Marxist politics. In particular the statement that: “The working class does not exist politically, and has not done so for some time - it just exists in a limbo state as voting fodder for the bourgeoisie.” Conrad then asserts that the vote for New Labour was qualitatively different to that for Clinton in the USA.

This is a somewhat wild assertion, perhaps based on Marx’s distinction between a class-in-itself and a class-for-itself - however, not much use as a guide to concrete political action. The picture of a completely atomised working class that Conrad describes is close to a description of what existed in Italy under Mussolini, or in Chile under the military dictatorship. As a description of contemporary Britain it is next to useless, vastly exaggerating the success of the Tories in defeating the workers’ movement. Furthermore, it entirely misses the issue of the political role of the bureaucracy of the labour movement.

The trade unions may have declined, but they are far from defeated. They may take strike action less often and be trammelled by anti-union laws, but they still have the capacity for action. The Blair leadership may have been successful in steam-rollering the opposition in the Labour Party, but as yet the link with the unions is unbroken and thousands of members of the party are uneasy with the Blair ‘project’. The organisations of the working class clearly do exist, even if they are depleted and lacking in a coherent alternative.

For Labour to be an effective political instrument for the capitalist class in the coming decade it will be necessary for Blair to push ahead with his plans to transform the party. This will include proposals for state funding of political parties, PR and devolution. Blair would doubtlessly have preferred a smaller majority so that he could have moved closer to the Liberal Democrats. New Labour’s huge majority in parliament makes this much more difficult and gives the Labour left (focused mainly around the Socialist Campaign Group) the possibility of much greater room for manouevre.

Forces to the left of Labour should be demanding that the lefts stand up and fight, even it means losing the Labour whip and having to go back to the electorate. Excuses about the need for Labour to move cautiously so that they can be re-elected in five years must be totally dismissed. Such an approach demands the application of the united front tactic to the Labour left, but not any subordination to their parliamentary politics.

It is easy for you to dismiss the arguments of the Socialist Party, since they have undergone an ultra-left drift since the ‘open turn’. Peter Taaffe’s post-election comments were indeed contradictory - lurching between this new position and the old line of Militant Tendency. In fact, the general election showed that the mass of the working class do not yet accept the arguments of the parties to the left of Labour. Whether Peter Taaffe, Arthur Scargill or Jack Conrad like it or not, workers on the whole did vote Labour. That is not to say that they accept every jot of Labour’s policies - they clearly don’t. Most people don’t want further privatisation and want the rich to pay more taxes. But on the whole they don’t see a credible alternative yet.

So how can that alternative be built? Well, simply arguing for the creation of a genuine communist party in a period of deep ideological schism and confusion is not the way forward. Something more is needed at the moment than a continuing debate among the various splinters of the revolutionary left, which threatens to become a permanent sectarian circus. I applaud your openness and the fact that you have got the likes of the SP and Workers Power group to debate in the same forum with you. However, I am not a fan of permanent factions. If groups are to fuse into something more substantial, they have to find a common basis programmatically. Democratic centralism requires open debate, but it also means that debates and differences must, in the final analysis, be resolved by common action. If not, then inward-looking sectarianism and splits are inevitable.

Having a common programmatic agreement means that smaller issues in the class struggle are less likely to lead to divisions in the future. Unfortunately, Marxists in many countries have been all too willing to split over secondary tactical issues and unable to agree on the major programmatic ones. Looking at your ‘What we fight for’ column, I would say that you are still some way from elaborating such a programme.

I think Jack Conrad is right to say that we aren’t interested in creating a centrist bodge-up like Communist Refoundation if we can avoid it. But as Lenin said in Leftwing communism, the closest approximation to a model for European countries was German revolutionary social democracy (ie, the pre-1914 edition). This was a fairly broad party which included both opportunists and revolutionaries. The fact that as a mass party it was basically healthy is shown by the fact that, after the period of disorientation created by the war, it was possible to build a mass Communist Party from the fusion between the Independent Social Democrats and the Spartacists.

The key point being to always distinguish between the mass influence of social democracy as a trend in the working class and the particular role of its leadership. The leaders of German social democracy carried out a bloody counterrevolution in January 1919. Based on their actions, it might have indeed been justifiable to categorise them as ‘social fascists’. Yet, as Trotsky so rightly showed in the 1920s and 1930s, this ultra-left categorisation of social democracy was to contribute to one of the greatest defeats in working class history.

Similarly, to define the Labour Party as having qualitatively shifted to the right since Blair assumed the leadership ignores that Labour has been led in the past by the likes of Ramsay McDonald and ‘Sunny’ Jim Callaghan - hardly raving Bolsheviks. Equally, it ignores the fact that it is still possible for a mass split to occur which would see the forces of the left attempting to claim the Labour tradition in competition with the Millbank mob. Such a mass split would be of considerably more significance than the SLP’s rather premature one, although it could propel the Labour lefts and Scargill back into an alliance with each other. Whatever the outcome of the next five years, it is hard to imagine Labour coming out of it any more popular than they are at present.

The political conclusions from this are as follows:

1. It is extremely important for revolutionary socialist to focus their demands on Labour, and in particular leftwing MPs.

2. A united front approach to the Labour lefts around specific demands for practical action is essential.

3. The left must support the demand to keep the union link until such time as the Blairites break it. Any other position is ultra-leftist nonsense.

4. Trade unions in struggle must at all times seek to involve their local Labour MP and demand to know their position on that struggle. They should invite their Labour MP to union meetings, strike meetings, AGMs, etc, so that the membership can question them.

5. Trade union caucuses need to develop political alternatives to New Labour policies and challenge the assumptions of the TUC. Economic militancy alone won’t win: we need an alternative socialist programme.

6. Those forces outside the Labour Party should prepare for the possibility of a large-scale split in the Labour Party over the Party into power document. Should Blair win on this issue, the position of the Campaign Group MPs will become intolerable and they may well begin to operate as a separate political caucus. There is also a possibility of regroupment with Scargill and the SLP. Such a party, while not being a revolutionary socialist party, would have an overwhelming political attraction to socialists left of Labour. It would be the duty of all socialists to join it and fight to make it an adequate instrument for the tasks ahead.

John Laurence
Wolverhampton

Arm-wrestling

The first Midlands region meeting of the SLP was held in Birmingham on Saturday June 28. Branches represented were Birmingham, Potteries, Derby, Leicester, Coventry and Wolverhampton. The main object was supposed to be to meet each other for the first time and discuss experiences from the general election. Going for a Balti meal together afterwards had even been suggested.

Bridget Bell from the Potteries branch is the only NEC member in the Midlands area, and she gave an NEC report focusing on the general election results and preparations for the annual conference. It soon became clear that what she assumed all the branches knew about, they did not. There was general concern that information is not getting from the NEC to the members.

A comrade from Birmingham then raised the question of the ‘Message to members’, some copies of which he circulated. He had attended the Campaign for a Democratic SLP meeting as a delegate from the Birmingham branch, only to be confronted by a picket of NEC members giving out this message. Bridget Bell replied that if it was a picket line, then he was a scab - a remark to which most comrades took exception.

By this time four Bullites - supporters of Roy Bull’s Economic and Philosophic Science Review - from the Leicester branch had arrived, who set about raising the temperature one after another. Apparently anyone questioning the constitution is a renegade to the superb party leadership. Trotskyites are trying to introduce the whole of the transitional programme of the Fourth International (written in 1938!) into the SLP’s policy document. Bureaucracy is necessary and people are making a fetish out of democracy. One of them said SLPers should have no time for factionalising outside of our branches, since our class is suffering out there in the council estates and we should be selling them papers. This comes from an actual member of a faction!

I thought I heard, ‘The Vauxhall branch are running dogs of imperialism’, and ‘Arthur Scargill walks on water’, but I may have been mistaken.

Most comrades were totally bemused or angered by their hectoring, confrontational style. Even an honest reporting or accounting of the election campaign and attempts to learn lessons was impossible, since who could compete with the magnificent achievements of the Leicester branch? They saw the meeting as an arm-wrestling and witch hunting exercise, not as a sharing and learning process among comrades.

No doubt they reported the meeting as a success: for the formation of an SLP Midlands region it was a disaster.

Jan King
Midlands

Marxism betrayed

I am a current supporter of your Party, but unfortunately I was a previous member of the Communist Party of Britain. With friends still in contact with the CPB I was recently able to read their May edition of the so-called Communist News. Whilst reading it I had great satisfaction knowing that I am no longer a member of their party.

They still ludicrously believe in the Labour Party and they still actually somehow believe that the left has some sort of influence within it. The CPB has become a very weak party with no right to call themselves communists. Their centralist views are deluded.

Why cannot every leftwing group be as true to communism like the CPGB? But just like the CPB, many parties of the left around the world have betrayed their Marxist past.

Ray Hancock
Berkshire