25.06.1998
Like it or lump it
Around the left
Sometimes real life can be a wonderfully corrective. Just take a look at the SWP. After decades of ‘anti-electoralist’ dogma, which went hand in hand with (automatic) electoral pro-Labourism, it has finally decided to contest elections. One year of Tony Blair’s ‘New Britain, New Labour’ has had a very sobering effect. Good.
It is well known that comrade Lindsey German has argued for many years within the SWP for such a course. In the latest issue of Socialist Review comrade German provides the ‘justification’ for the SWP’s new turn - and outlines the extent of her and Chris Harman’s victory over the old majority on the central committee. As far as communists are concerned, this new line is excellent and should have been adopted a long time ago. But for your loyal and possibly bewildered SWP member, brought up since they were knee-high to a grasshopper to believe that all and any election work was a naked example of left reformist ‘electoralism’, such a development must come as a severe shock to the system. Some sort of explanation - and ideological defence - is therefore required. (Some out-of-touch SWP members we have come across are still hotly denying that their organisation plans to stand.)
The fact that comrade German has gone into print on such a crucial issue for SWP members is welcome. Let us hope that it presages a full, free and open debate in the organisation’s publication.
Having said that, the SWP has to squeeze the camel of its new electoral politics through the eye of its economism. This means, amongst many things, reassuring the troops that the “class vote” thesis stands firm - it was okay to vote New Labour on May 1 1997.
Comrade German comments: “Often in recent years supporters have called on us to stand and we have always resisted such calls. Why should we change now?” Of course, if you got all your information from Socialist Worker or Socialist Review you would have had no idea that “such calls” had been made at all. Indeed those who advocated election work were liable to SWP discipline, if not expulsion or exclusion (nowadays Chris Bambery and the like do not bother much with formal procedures such as control commissions). Will it now be an offence to oppose election work - ie, maintain the old party line?
Comrade German claims:
“There is a major paradox in the gap between the radical leftwing mood which caused Labour’s landslide and which has certainly not diminished since then, and the very low level of class struggle which is a frustrating feature of the present period” (my emphasis).
This then is the “political situation”, argues the comrade, which “has led the SWP to consider the question of standing in elections, something we have not done since the 1970s”. In other words, the SWP wants to fill the “gap” and tap into the “radical leftwing mood” which exists - apparently - in society.
One valuable aspect of the article is that it provides clues at to the current political mood within the SWP - something which is normally a well-kept secret. Comrade German states:
“There are times when to ignore elections would appear as abstaining from the questions concerning workers. The SWP is a sizable organisation. All sorts of people look to us to give a lead. It would be a mistake to refuse point blank to extend our intervention to elections when there is an ideological crisis of Labourism.”
After all, like it or lump it, “it is undeniable that elections form a fairly important part of political life in capitalist society. Most people, including many quite militant workers, define ‘politics’ in terms of what happens in parliament and elections, rather than as activity in which they themselves take part [like voting Labour?]. It has therefore frequently been necessary for socialists [but not the SWP] to stand in parliamentary or local elections - in order to advance a form of socialism which relies on neither and which believes that the parliamentary structures are a sham. To not participate in these elections would be to leave socialist organisation on the sidelines, having nothing to say while many workers are looking to the parliamentary arena.” This is all very well. But surely comrade German is actually arguing for the need to contest elections in general?
The SWP has identified Scotland as the place where this “radical leftwing mood” - or “gap” - finds its highest expression. Next year’s elections to the Scottish parliament, writes comrade German, are “going to dominate Scottish politics for the foreseeable future, as Labour’s inability to deliver is increasingly under criticism and the SNP is gaining ground. The SNP’s success is much less to do with overt nationalism and much more to with the generalised discontent at the Blair government’s failure to deliver; SNP policies on issues such as public spending, the minimum wage and union recognition are all to the left of Labour’s official position. It is a mistake to see the only alternatives facing Scottish workers as rightwing Labourism or nationalism. There is a space here for a revolutionary alternative which argues class politics. There may also be a case for standing in other elections” (my emphasis). Obviously the comrade has an economistic inability to grasp the national question. Hence, it should be noted that she actively downplays the growing tide of nationalism in Scotland and the reactionary nature of the SNP. In the Weekly Worker we long ago observed that Scottish Militant Labour’s project - now crystallised in the move to a Scottish Socialist Party - was to constitute itself as the ‘left wing’ of the SNP. Perhaps the newly ‘electoralist’ SWP is looking at the political space currently occupied by SSA/SML with greedy and envious eyes ...
Fully aware that she is straying into very dangerous waters, comrade German rushes to reassure the party faithful, and ideologically zealous, that the SWP leadership has not dumped the old credos, stating: “Of course to socialists a big political strike or general strike has 100 times more impact than a parliamentary election.” Naturally, “Parliamentary activity is never going to be our most important form of political intervention; rather it is a tactic that we can employ to gather round us a bigger periphery for the class struggles ahead.”
In the most interesting passage, comrade German warns of those socialists who “have lost sight of the tactical side of standing in elections and have elevated them into a principle” - picking out Lutte Ouvrière for particular criticism. This is almost tantamount to a polemic. A very rare commodity in SWP literature. The comrade complains that LO “which has polled nearly 800,000 votes in the recent regional elections, has a politics which is evenly divided between a form of syndicalism (obsession with factory bulletins and small strikes) and an electoralism which itself takes an ultra-left form. It takes a dismissive line to the struggle against Le Pen’s Nazis and concentrates its fire on the Socialists and Communists rather than trying to engage in a united front with them. Its election results therefore become self-justifying rather than being used to build wider struggles. A recent edition of the party’s magazine was entirely devoted to the election results [how terrible]. In Britain we have seen a similar obsession with elections from the Socialist Party, formerly Militant, which has used a handful of relatively small successes to prioritise its electoral work.” She adds: “Since the downturn in class struggles from the mid-1970s, some of the biggest groups have retreated into electoral politics”, which has “led them to judge their success inside the working class movement by the number of votes they receive, rather than by their underlying strength in the factories and workplaces”.
Comrade German suffers from a self-inflicted ideological blindness. The origins of LO’s - and the SP’s - politics lies in the fact that neither organisation has a revolutionary minimum-maximum programme, not because they “prioritise” election work as such. (The Trotskyist-inspired ‘transitional politics’ of LO, whether engaging in elections or not, means it is organically incapable of articulating truly independent working class politics. The SP on the other hand is trapped in an utterly wretched ‘lesser of two evils’ methodology.) But it is hardly astonishing that comrade German glosses over an embarrassing little fact. The SWP does not have any sort of programme - indeed it positively avoids adopting one, almost boastfully. Free-floating theoretically, adrift politically, the SWP could itself easily drift into the very electoralism for which it criticises LO and the SP.
Hence the conclusion drawn by comrade German:
“The move towards electoralism by many revolutionary socialists dovetails with the more common position of left reformists in believing that electoral gains are the way forward - the GLC experiment under Ken Livingstone or the ‘socialist republic of South Yorkshire’ under David Blunkett in the early 1980s. Today the Labour left is weak electorally, but we can see the same sort of politics in, for example, the strongly electoral orientation of Arthur Scargill’s SLP (with constituency wards, etc).
“We want to avoid both these positions. We should also enter any electoral fight with extremely realistic expectations. Even if we get a good vote we will look small compared with Labour. That is, however, realistic when you look at our level of support inside the working class movement as a whole, and considering how shallow our roots are and how many areas where we have little or no influence. This tactic should be seen as part of beginning to sink roots in new areas, widening our influence in the working class locally and using elections so that they give us publicity and a platform for other activities.”
As I pointed out last week in this column, “the previously hermetically sealed political environment of the SWP is now vulnerable to ‘alien’ intrusion”. It is one thing to think you are ‘small mass party’ when you deliberately eschew contact with other left groups and shelter under the electoral umbrella of Labour. But quite another when you are out there testing your support.
The next few years could be momentous for the SWP - it will never be the same again. Its self-image will take a serious denting. Communists need to be there to make sure that for SWP members and the left in general the electoral turn is channelled in a positive direction - towards communist politics.
Don Preston