19.02.1998

Sectarian methodology

Mark Fischer replies to a recent polemic against the CPGB

Richard Brenner of the Workers Power group writes in the lat­est issue of the organisation’s monthly newspaper that “incontro­vertible”, “definitive” proof was pro­vided by the Socialist Labour Party’s December 1997 congress that “the transformation of Arthur Scargill’s party into a force for socialist revolu­tion is impossible” (all quotes unless otherwise indicated from Workers Power February 1998).

In fact, I would agree. Certainly, our organisation has held that since the SLP’s very earliest days there has been no possibility of ‘transforming’ it into a Communist Party (which I presume is what comrade Brenner means when he speaks a little ambiguously of “a force for socialist revolution”). How­ever, the comrade has a polemic to write and - I am sure - a pressing dead­line. This perhaps explains why he has strayed badly into error when characterising the positions of the Commu­nist Party on Scargill’s SLP and the fight for revolutionary unity. Normally a relatively rigorous polemicist, com­rade Brenner’s latest offering is there­fore slipshod, scrappy and profoundly inaccurate.

For example, the comrade writes as evidence of our continuing “bizarre illusion” that the SLP can be rescued for revolution: “The Weekly Worker ... without hint of either irony or shame [states that]: ‘Whether the SLP can make the transition to a party of re­publican refoundation remains to be seen’.” Certainly these lines appear in the Weekly Worker of January 15. They actually come from an article by Jan Berryman who is introduced as analysing “developments in the SLP from a republican-communist angle”. Throughout the article, the comrade clearly presents a study of the bal­ance of forces which draws much from the outlook of the SLP Republicans group. Hence the designation of the SLP as a potential site for “republican refoundation”.

Comrade Brenner’s mistake in pre­senting the assessment of a single individual writer, clearly not a Com­munist Party member but associated with a different grouping, is even harder to understand, given the con­tent of this particular issue. On the facing page, a piece from John Bridge - a comrade that Richard is not unfa­miliar with - presents a far more rounded estimation of the prospects for the SLP. It is worth quoting in some length to leave no room for ambigu­ity:

“What of the SLP? Frankly it is too early to write it off. Much will depend on what happens with the Labour Party ... Arthur Scargill might have discredited himself in the eyes of the soft left. But for millions he is a potent symbol of militancy, of intransigence, of socialistic principle. Today that ex­ercises little or no gravitational pull. But tomorrow may well be different. ... A mass turn to Scargill cannot be ruled out. That is why it is wrong, irre­sponsible and premature to desert the positions the left has gained for itself in the SLP. ... While it has the poten­tial to attract those who enter the field of class struggle, the SLP remains a site for communist intervention ... That is not to say we should put all our energies and hopes into the SLP - ­far from it. The SLP left must actively promote and support the formation of an all-Britain Socialist Alliance as well as other united front bodies and cam­paigns. It should also closely identify and align itself with the CPGB. Com­munists in the SLP should certainly join the CPGB. Dual membership is against the Scargill constitution, but that is no barrier for genuine revolu­tionaries” (Weekly Worker January 15).

Comrade Brenner did not have the gumption to present the offending ‘re­publican refoundation’ quote as ema­nating from ‘bloc partners’ or ‘co-thinkers’ of ours. He simply has tried to present the words of another organisation as our own, studiously ignoring what we have in fact written on Scargill’s party.

Comrade Brenner plods on, how­ever. As late as January 22, we were apparently “still refusing to face up to the shattering of [our] perspec­tives”. Why? Because we are able to write that “the SLP presents new op­portunities for communist rapproche­ment”.

Now, this still holds true in my view. It says little about the nature of the SLP other than its role as a potential forum. However, where does this quote come from? Comrade Brenner cites it - correctly - from the January 22 issue of the paper. It was - as was quite clear- a joint statement of the Provisional Central Committee of our Party and the Organising Committee of the Revolutionary Democratic Group. In other words, two organisa­tions that have facilitated their poten­tial fusion - or rapprochement - through their work around the SLP project. Comrade Brenner presents the quote as the forlorn wish of a sad lit­tle group, sitting amongst the shards of its ‘shattered perspectives’, des­perately trying to piece something together.

In fact, the document the quote is culled from provides circumstantial evidence of the truth of the observa­tion. Also, it must pointed out that this joint statement between the two organisations was originally agreed and printed well over a year ago. It was reprinted in January of this year. Even such a careful reader of the Weekly Worker as comrade Brenner could be forgiven for missing this. Yet it sets into context some of the more bald statements in the text.

However, the comrade is attempt­ing not simply to prove that the SLP as constituted today is no place for revolutionaries. Richard wants to show why we should never have had anything to do with the party.

He cites a point I made in the Weekly Worker of December 18 1997, where I castigated the frivolously schismatic nature of the British left - in particular, those comrades who lightly allude to ‘bureaucracy’ to justify a split. I drew a parallel with the unions and com­rade Brenner indeed agrees with me that there a split would be “suicidal” - they have a “mass character”, as he puts it. However, he concludes from this that if the SLP was “mass” then revolutionaries “might be obliged to campaign within it - provided that it were possible to fight for communist ideas without getting expelled”. (And what if the movement had an undemo­cratic regime - would WP not be inter­ested in playing in that case?)

I think in comrade Brenner’s mealy­-mouthed and prissy words here, we have an object study in small group sectarianism. It is worth dissecting the passage in some detail.

If the SLP - a left split from the La­bour Party led by the most important trade union leader in the post-war pe­riod - had been a “mass” phenomenon, the comrade and his chums might have deigned to fight in it. Let us look - once again - at this concept of ‘mass’.

To justify its pro-Labour sectarian­ism, WP has cited this category sev­eral times in contradistinction to the SLP, “a Stalinist sect with around 200 active members and tiny influence” (Brenner). Now, I have written several times about the Marxist understand­ing of mass politics - for Lenin and Leninists, this is a political category, not a dull, inert numerically large lump such as the membership of today’s trade union movement, for example. In contrast to phenomena that exist objectively - such as ‘class’ or ‘peo­ple’ - the concept of ‘mass’ refers to a section drawn into struggle. It is thus an elastic concept, as Lenin makes clear:

“It ... changes in accordance with the changes in the nature of the strug­gle. At the beginning of the struggle it took only a few thousand genuinely revolutionary workers to warrant talk of the masses ... When the revolu­tion has been sufficiently prepared, the concept of masses becomes dif­ferent: several thousand workers no longer constitute the masses” (VI Lenin CW Vol 32, Moscow 1977, pp475-476).

I am sure comrade Brenner is aware of this scientific definition of ‘mass’; it is a shame he opts for philistinism for the purposes of this polemic. Clearly, from the point of view of Leninism, the SLP was a mass phenom­enon.

But moving on to the rest of the paragraph. Presume a mass SLP, as defined by Richard: that is, a numeri­cally large formation, which has split to the left of Labour. Comrade Bren­ner is still sniffy about this impres­sive phantom. WP “might” bestow its Marxist erudition on the movement “provided it were possible to fight for communist ideas without getting ex­pelled”.

I think WP’s profound conserva­tism flows from bad mechanical meth­odology that employs fixed categories instead of an analysis of a concrete reality. Clearly in the heads of WP theoreticians is a fixed schema of the development of the British revolution. The scenario could be summarised in this way. First, a Labour government is elected with widespread illusions in its nature (Workers Power was amongst those groups that peddled the nonsense that Blair’s election would inevitably produce something like a “crisis of expectations”).

Quickly, these illusions turn bitter in the mouths of the workers as, one after another, promises are sold out.

Radical Labour elements articulate the left movement, but continue to sow fatal illusions in the nature of the so­cial democratic government. A mass left centrist current splits to the left, reflecting the law-governed and se­quential evolution of mass conscious­ness to the left. The Marxists intervene in this milieu, winning workers through a united front policy - going onto the offensive to take common action alongside the workers and their centrist leaders, while ruthlessly ex­posing the latter’s programmatic short­comings.

Voila! A mass revolutionary party! Thus - with this attractive scenario burning brightly in his mind’s eye - comrade Brenner can seriously write that with the SLP “we are not witness­ing a break to the left by serious sec­tions of workers and youth from the old organisations”. In fact, all we have had with the SLP is a “small associa­tion of self-selected members [when is a political grouping, as opposed to a trade union or some other sectionally defined organisation, any­thing other than self-selected - is Workers Power not a self-selected group? - MF] isolated from the mass of the working class”. Presumably comrade Brenner dismisses self-se­lected people like Arthur Scargill, Jimmy Nolan, Bob Crow, Ronnie McDonald, etc.

In fact, as I have shown above, the SLP actually represented a key ‘mass’ political arena for Marxists to inter­vene in over the recent period. Clearly, comrade Brenner is talking - foolishly for a revolutionary - about the dull weight of inert numbers when he writes of ‘mass politics’.

Perhaps the comrade instinctively feels the weakness of simply counterposing an imaginary ‘mass’ to the SLP. Therefore, he tries to concretise the alternatives to work in and around the SLP in the exciting vis­tas of the class struggle that Workers Power see stretched out in front of them. This is perhaps the saddest part of his article. Comrade Brenner and his organisation are serious revolu­tionaries, but the following really does strain one’s credulity:

“Disabled people and single par­ents are coming into struggle against Blair. The reactionary welfare to work proposals are being introduced at the same time as a wave of struggles against unemployment in France and Germany. Students are still campaign­ing against fees. Young people are discussing the environment, the prob­lems of the Third World. Leftwing activists are resisting a witch hunt in Unison, the TGWU is running a re­cruitment drive amongst young retail workers.” All this - apparently - throws up the “fresh forces ... to win to revolutionary politics”.

I do not think I actually need to com­ment in detail on this. Any impartial reader running their eye down com­rade Brenner’s list of terribly exciting developments will conclude for them­selves that the class struggle in Brit­ain remains at a very low level indeed. The idea that we should have some­how leapt over the heads of that small layer of left bureaucrats and advanced workers who were attracted to a break from the Labour Party led by Arthur Scargill in order to get to “young peo­ple ... discussing the environment” is a novel one for a comrade who no doubt regards himself as a Leninist.

As an outstandingly silly remark this does not quite come away with the cigar, however ...

How is it that one small sect, the supporters of the Marxist Bulletin in the SLP, can arrive at a diametrically opposite estimation of our positions to that of WP? According to the Marx­ist Bulletin, the problem with the Communist Party is its “fundamental failure to know when to break from a corrupt political framework”. This is apparently illustrated by our “recent call for members of the Labour Party to retain their membership and fight from inside!” (Marxist Bulletin Feb­ruary 1998). But then another small sect leader - Richard Brenner - sug­gests that Workers Power is “con­stantly berated” by us “for not ‘splitting’” from the Labour Party, a political formation we have apparently characterised (where, when?) as “fin­ished”. The comrade does not refer­ence this accusation.

Nevertheless, there is something in common between the Marxist Bulle­tin and the WP group. That is, a sec­tarian methodology that views the world through the narrow prism of the cramped concerns of a particular sect’s shibboleths. This tunnel vision leads the comrades to concentrate on just one aspect of what the Commu­nist Party has been saying and thus fundamentally distort - unconsciously falsify, indeed - what our actual views are. I have pointed out an essentially similar malady affecting the Spartacist League. Perhaps I am over-generous, but I take individual comrades on trust as having polemicised as honestly as they are able... given their politics.

Readers may recall that the SL was retailing the particularly unpleasant falsehood that our organisation cam­paigned for a national ballot in the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-5. Of course, when challenged to “cite one single leaflet, article or statement” where this demand appeared (Weekly Worker April 10 1997), unsurprisingly the Sparts collapsed into embarrassed silence and - I believe - have not raised the issue again in their tired six-weekly paper. But as I commented at the time, in fact the purpose of the accusation was “to cohere its own members as a group, not particularly to affect the outside world”.

Which brings us back to comrade Richard Brenner and this particular polemical thrust. Even taking the fact that the comrade starts from a disad­vantage - he is a leader of a sectarian grouplet concerned to defend itself. We have certainly commented on the progress of the Labour Party to the right, its evolution away from the cat­egory of ‘bourgeois workers’ party’.

In the context of the introduction of PR, the stage it thus set for a possi­ble dramatic realignment of British politics. We have hardly been alone in this, or is Workers Power of the opinion that nothing is happening

As for the idea that we call for com­rades to simply ‘split’ from anything, let alone the Labour Party - this is sim­ply nonsense. In fact, Marxist Bulle­tin is far closer to the truth. Our attitude is that comrades should fight where they are and we have sharply criticised people who have simply walked out of the SLP, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party ... and, indeed. Arthur Scargill for sim­ply tearing up his Labour Party card.

Certainly, we castigated WP for their support for New Labour against the left in recent elections - including for ex-Tory Michael Howarth who stood against Scargill in Newport East. But if the comrades are indeed doing work in the Labour Party - very quiet work in the Labour Party, it must be said - we would be the last to simply sug­gest that they frivolously drop it and prance out. This is not a communist method and we would not recommend it to WP or anyone else.