20.11.1997

‘Bugger it’?

Party notes

There seems to be a mood of quiet despair among some sections of the Socialist Labour Party left. From around the country, comrades report that SLP lefties are musing along the lines of ‘after the SLP, what next?’

And it is not just them. The latest issue of Workers Power reports on the forthcoming SLP conference and appears to essentially write off the project as dead in the water. In the first issue of Socialist Democracy - journal of the recent dismally unambitious split from the Socialist Party, the Socialist Democracy Group (see ‘Party Notes’, October 30 for a critique of its orientation) - we find the idea that unless the leadership of the SLP takes what is deemed “emergency action”, then “disaster looms”.

Indeed, like the dispirited sections of the SLP left, these comrades seem to think that the SLP is all over bar the shouting. Thus, in the supposed aftermath of the SLP debacle, “the task of building a broad socialist party has now been rendered a long and difficult task”.

There has also been an understandable mood of ‘bugger it’ amongst some comrades. Scargill’s organisation is certainly drifting into bizarre political waters. Anyone picking up a copy of Socialist News can get a glimpse of bedlam. It is an eclectic journal talking to no one but itself and in a variety of quite eccentric voices. Thus, it is not surprising that some have expressed the view that the time might have come to draw a line under SLP, to move on to greener pastures.

Understandable, but quite wrong of course. As the Communist Party’s draft Perspectives ’98 document puts it,

“The SLP is the most important left split from Labour post-war, led by the most militant and best known union leader of the same period. It is an extremely important development ... It is vital that we underline this as, given the grubby reality of the SLP and the sordid nature of much of its internal politics, it would be very easy for us to forget this and start to project our conclusions about the organisation onto much wider layers ... We should be wary of drawing any sort of line under the SLP, however. Precisely because of Scargill, it still has a chance.”

Many on the left of the SLP went into this new formation without a clear understanding of what it represented and thus with potentially fatal illusions. Their despondent and irresolute demeanour is a direct product of this original confusion.

We should be clear. The fact that the Communist Party calls on the left of the SLP not to walk away from the fight in no way implies a heads-down, wait-and-see strategy. I think our practice around the SLP project would underline that we believe that political boldness and openness should characterise the revolt. Indeed, we have criticised the left precisely for its timidity. Many of those who are now forlornly looking for the ‘next big thing’ to attach themselves to actually castigated us - ironically - as “splitters” and short-term “raiders”.

It seems that in despair sections of this wing of the SLP feel pulled in the direction of a British version of ‘parties of recomposition’ like the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany, the United Left in Spain or Italy’s Communist Refoundation. For a while it looked as though Scargill’s SLP might fit the bill, but its bureaucratic regime and increasingly wacky public manifestation has meant that it can no longer be considered such “a new socialist party”.

These comrades - most of whom consider themselves revolutionary Marxists of some type - believe in effect that the task must be to agitate for such a centrist formation as some unskippable ‘stage’ in the recomposition of working class politics. As the SDG put it, the need for this “different type of left” will necessitate us going “through the complex process of refounding the socialist left and its Marxist wing”.

The fuzzy term ‘socialist party’ comes into focus as a cop-out when a “Marxist wing” is added. Clearly, the comrades are calling for a social democratic formation of some sort, with a tolerated Marxist section firmly in a minority.

The comrades are formally correct in their evaluation of the ‘recomposition parties’ where they are real and mass. They state that whether Marxists operate in them or not is a tactical question - in Spain and Italy they suggest it would be “vital”; in Germany “it is far from clear”. Similarly, it is true to say that “whether inside or outside, socialists must attempt to build strong links of mutual struggle and political debate with the militants of these organisations”.

We would suggest that the purpose of such “strong links” would be to convince such a layer of the need for a revolutionary organisation. The so-called ‘parties of recomposition’ are in fact products of the defeat, confusion and decomposition of the workers’ movement. Where they exist, Marxists must take a serious and mature attitude towards them. Where they do not, it is it hardly the task of revolutionaries to fight for them.

Essentially, such mechanical ‘processism’ reflects the British left’s congenital inability to fight for what is needed - a reforged Communist Party. Instead, we see Quixotic attempts to conjure out of thin air something neither life nor working class struggle is producing.

The comrades will not get a mass party of recomposition. They will produce nothing but yet another demoralised ‘Marxist’ sect.

Mark Fischer
national organiser