14.05.1998

People in glass houses

Around the left

A workers’ organisation without a revolutionary programme is like a ship without a compass. It will never be able to lead self-liberatory movements in society to the goal of socialism. Instead it will be tossed from pillar to post, from one position to another, from fantastic optimism to deep despair - destined only to react to events. This is the ABC of communist politics.

Or so it should be. Unfortunately, the two largest organisations on the revolutionary left - the SWP and the Socialist Party - eschew the revolutionary programme. They prefer mechanical schemas and the worship of spontaneity. In the case of the crisis-ridden SP its What we stand for is distinctly left reformist. Something which has led this organisation to embrace nationalism, strikeism and mundane campaignism. So while women members concern themselves with women’s issues and Scottish members propose a Scottish breakaway, workers should properly confine themselves to trade union politics like wages, conditions and workplace rights.

Not surprisingly then, in his endeavours to put forward a coherent line on the May 1968 events in France, comrade Garret Mullen, a Newcastle student and SP member, gets hopelessly confused. He begins by stating: “There had been a period of consistent healthy growth of the French economy. Living standards had increased on average by five percent year on year” (May 8). This should indicate that increased economic confidence and better living conditions can actually bolster political daring and radicalism - not diminish it, as some left groups imagine. Particularly in the case of the students, cultural and political horizons were expanded dramatically. The popularity of American and British ‘underground’ music, new fashion and dress codes, drugs, breakdown of the old sexual mores, etc were integral to this ‘awakening’. Even more so was the inspiration - and horrors - provided by the Vietnam war and the excitement generated by the Cultural Revolution in China. All this made the students and some young workers feel part of a worldwide struggle against repressive and authoritarian political systems. The French educational system was the representation par excellence of a regimented consumer society, its petty sexual segregationalism and crass conformity conspiring to stifle individual and collective creativity.

But the comments of comrade Mullen on the ‘May days’ and the build-up to the May 13 general strike betray a fatal inability to really understand this essential point. The comrade even manages to make it all sound a bit dull, telling us:

“The general strike movement was not just a movement of sympathy for students, although that sympathy helped in linking up the workers and students. The movement represented a desire on behalf of the working class for economic change” (my emphasis).

Comrade Mullen has firmly grasped the wrong end of the telescope. In France we saw the possibility of workers - by transcending the narrow economic struggle - making themselves into a political classwhich wins the battle for democracy and becomes the hegemon of society. For a few brief moments, when they aligned themselves with the protests of the student radicals, the workers threatened to break out of the ‘economic’ straitjacket imposed upon them by capitalist society and become a universal class. In so far as the workers’ movement remained“a desire for economic change”, it was a sign of defeat. The spontaneous upsurge had been diverted into the safe conduit of ‘bread and butter’ politics and economic reforms.

Comrade Mullen evades this core political question. He prefers to develops his circular economistic thesis:

“Expectations had been rising as a result of the long economic upswing. Some theorists believed that because working people had cars, washing machines and televisions, meant that they had been bought off by the system. However, inflation and mass unemployment were potent threats to living standards. Workers on average worked longer hours in 1968 (45 hours) than they did in 1938 (40 hours).”

The simple fact is that people will move mountains if they are inspired by ideas - by an alternative vision of society. This might come as an astounding revelation for the SP, which believes that socialism will result from winning workers to a dishonest programme and, stage by stage, taking them through trade union-type struggles inexorably to the realisation that they need to elect a socialist government - ie, classical economism.

By a wonderful and also rather stupid irony, comrade Mullen criticises the French Communist Party for diverting the movement into a set of demands ... “for economic change”. The PCF-led CGT union negotiated large pay increases and greatly improved working conditions. The party told workers to end their strikes and vote in a new government. Effectively it was carrying out the left reformist programme of the SP. In that sense, to criticise the opportunistic PCF leadership is to criticise Taaffeism and the SP.

Oblivious to the eclecticism of his words, comrade Mullen goes on to lecture the PCF on the necessity for revolutionary initiative and - gasp - revolutionary programme: “The possibility was there for a revolutionary transformation of society. This could have been very quickly internationalised, given the huge movements taking place in other countries.

“But the Communist Party did not want power. De Gaulle saw that the Communist Party wanted to dissipate the movement and he took the initiative. He dissolved parliament and declared an election. The Communist Party turned their attention to the elections declaring that they were the party of law and order ... In reality, the Communist Party had failed to act as a revolutionary party and to put forward a programme that could take the working class to power. At no stage did they give the workers a sense of their power. Their lack of activity can be explained by their inability to act independently of the Soviet Union. A revolution in France would have had a massive effect not only in nearby countries but also in the states east of the Iron Curtain.”

In other words, the PCF behaved like a typical right-centrist Menshevik organisation - eager to come across as a ‘responsible’ (and patriotic) candidate fit for government. It had no inkling of the necessity of fighting for a democratic sixth republic using revolutionary methods. As a result it handed the slogan of democracy to de Gaulle and the forces of reaction. Comrade Mullen may point his accusing finger at the Soviet bureaucracy, but we can easily think of a home-grown centrist organisation that is and always has been organisationally independent of the Soviet Union but still reproduces - at an even lower level - the same parliamentary cretinism as the PCF leadership. Yes, the Socialist Party of England and Wales. Nowhere in SP literature will you find something that “could take the working class to power” or “give workers a sense of their power” through revolutionary methods. If it has any such perspective, it has kept it a well guarded secret.

The real lesson of May 1968 is of the primary and overriding importance of programme. Without a minimum-maximum revolutionary programme to guide us, we will be magnetically drawn to the pitfalls of either leftism or rightism - towards opportunism and ultimately counterrevolution.

Don Preston