18.06.1998

Don’t rock the boat

Around the left

We are most definitely not living in the ‘red 1990s’, contrary to the confident prediction of Militant Labour/Socialist Party in 1990. In this period of reaction - the big freeze of working class politics - communists welcome any development which creates forward movement. Anything that gives us an opportunity to intervene with our programmatic perspectives. To do otherwise would be to condemn ourselves to impotency and sectism. Marxism is a guide to action, not a dogma or speculative ideology.

We did not moralistically condemn the Socialist Labour Party on the grounds that it was “premature”, and fought from day one to influence it in a positive direction - and still do. We actively participate in and struggle to shape the political contours of the Socialist Alliances. The internecine warfare between the ‘English’ SP and Scottish Militant Labour/proto-Scottish Socialist Party has received the full glare of publicity in the pages of the Weekly Worker. Now we welcome the ‘shock’ decision of the Socialist Workers Party to stand in the forthcoming elections to the Scottish assembly, thus breaking from its longstanding auto-Labourism.

This is not the case with Workers Power. Its response to the SWP’s ‘new turn’ is indifferent, if not hostile. Just as we saw with its confused, but essentially horrified reaction to the newly born SLP, the comrades in WP seem to prefer the ideological ancien régime which prevails amongst the revolutionary left to any bold initiative. To this end, WP is fond of quoting ‘orthodoxy’ in order to prop up its ‘don’t rock the boat’ conservatism.

We see this propensity in the latest issue of Workers Power in an unsigned article entitled, ‘Where do they stand?’ It sententiously states: “Workers Power believes there is nothing in principle wrong [sic] with revolutionaries standing for parliament or any other bourgeois elected body. But the reasons why revolutionaries stand for parliament should be clear. We do so to use the election and, if possible parliament or council itself, as a platform for revolutionary propaganda. There is no parliamentary road to socialism in Scotland or anywhere else.

“The reformists do believe in the parliamentary road. The problem for the SWP is that they don’t have a clear analysis of reformism, let alone a means by which to challenge it, especially at the polls where it is at its strongest” (my emphasis, June).

The words ‘kettle’, ‘pot’ and ‘black’ come to mind. In abstract, WP may have “a clear analysis of reformism”. But in reality, WP has far more in common politically with the SWP than it would like to admit. The new realities - and hence understanding - of the period ushered in by the collapse of ‘official communism’ and the rapid de-Labourisation of Labour under Tony Blair have unsettled and disorientated WP just as much as the SWP. After all, WP is firmly convinced that Blair’s decisive victory last May in the general election represented “a major shift to the left in Britain” (Workers Power April). This is a viewpoint identical to that of the SWP’s. We have been told both by the SWP and WP to ‘vote Labour’ at every election - even if they do have their own separate and different reasons for doing so. WP’s derives from its economistic Trotskyism; the SWP’s from its Cliffite economism. The theoretical overlap between these two organisations is large (hardly surprising - WP began as a split from the SWP).

Workers Power goes on to comment that in the hands of the SWP, the slogan ‘socialism from below’ has been translated into “ritual calls to vote Labour at election time, combined with a studious abstention from any election work”. Very true, no doubt. Then again, when has WP done any real election work, “studious” or otherwise? Its “election work” has consisted overwhelmingly of “ritual” front page headlines saying, ‘Vote Labour’ - just like the SWP in fact. Even when that meant backing the ex-Tory MP Alan Howarth against Arthur Scargill.

For all its hard ‘revolutionary orthodoxy’ WP actually exposes its soft reformist underbelly. Explaining how the SWP is against a “party programme”, our faceless author writes:

“As long as you can keep out of electoral tactics a programme can be represented as trying to impose an ‘unnatural’ (and usually ‘too far advanced’) blueprint on the spontaneous struggles in the workplace. But in elections, the first thing workers want to know is what you stand for. Platitudes about the socialist future will not suffice: workers want to know what you plan to do if elected” (my emphasis).

In the usual bourgeois-electoral sense, communist do not promise to “do” anything. We do not see ourselves sitting in Westminister or Whitehall juggling with interest rates or experimenting with tax changes. We use elections - local, national and European - to make communist propaganda, the central message being that human liberation can only come from the revolutionary self-activity of the masses. Or is WP suggesting that communists and socialists should not stand in elections until they are in a position to “do” something? Is there a sort of electoral ‘critical mass’ that we have to reach before we stand at all?

Well, yes, this appears to be the message. The SWP “suggests that when and where the Labour vote is shaky the SWP may not stand because the key task is still to get rid of (or keep out) the Tories. But a sizeable revolutionary party would not use the relative health of the reformists’ vote as a criteria for standing. It would actually go out and challenge the reformists for leadership of the working class - at the polls, as in other spheres of class struggle.” WP is talking tough ... when gazing into a future Britain where there is a “sizeable revolutionary party” (an enlarged WP?) to challenge Labour. But in the dismal here and now the tough-talking WP says ... vote New Labour. Apparently we should stake all our hopes on Labour dissidents, who “will become more vociferous and much more organised over the next period” and “will over the next two years position themselves to the left of Blair in such a way as to take advantage of the first serious crack in the alliance between Blair and the unions” (Workers Power April). Naturally, this raises the serious and important question of whether WP in the Scottish elections will call for a Labour vote against SML/SSP, CPGB, SLP or SWP candidates.

The article seems to answer this question:

“Even if a large section of the organised vanguard of the working class is prepared to break electorally from Labour - and that is not the case at present - the problem remains what to do about the majority of workers’ allegiance to Labour. The united front tactic, in which revolutionaries call for a Labour vote and organise to put demands on Labour, remains the key to breaking [sic] workers from Labour under present conditions”.

Only a dogma-encrusted sect could call a vote for the ever right-moving New Labour an example of the “united front tactic”, let alone “breaking” workers from Labour. Tony Blair’s project is to transform Labour into a British version of the US Democrats - and he is undoubtedly on the road to success. To give electoral support to Blair’s New Labour is in essence no different from ‘critically’ backing Bill Clinton or Paddy Ashdown. WP’s electoral pro-Labourism seem to be based on a peculiarly timeless interpretation of VI Lenin’s Leftwing communism, with a sprinklingof Leon Trotsky added.  

The article concludes:

“Now that the SWP is committed to standing for the Scottish parliament, it will have to deal not only with Scottish nationalism, but also with the remnants [sic] of SML and the SSA. Will it make an electoral pact with these already established centrist and left reformist forces or add its name to the growing list of fringe candidates? And will it transfer votes to Labour or tell workers not to vote Labour? And how will all this aid the building of a revolutionary party?”

All this agonising about the SWP’s possible opportunism or sectarianism misses the point. As we have emphasised in the Weekly Worker, for communists the real significance in the electoral ‘new turn’ lies in the fact that it opens up the SWP to debate and political intersection - the previously hermetically sealed political environment of the SWP is now vulnerable to ‘alien’ intrusion. The SWP central committee decision may have been motivated by nothing more than opportunism. Perhaps this is a move to the right for the SWP. Then again perhaps not. But this is an entirely different question and at the end of the day only time - and the effectiveness of communist intervention - will tell.  

Unlike the SWP though, WP’s dogmas and political practice seem frozen. The world changes, WP remains the same. “There is nothing in principle wrong with revolutionaries standing for parliament,” says WP ... so long as you never do anything about challenging New Labour.

Don Preston