22.04.1999

Crisis of perspectives

Party notes

According to Lindsey German - one of the top leaders of the Socialist Workers Party - Blairism is beset with crisis “in every major area of government policy” (International Socialism No82, spring 1999, p3). This is no objective observation. It is the official line which is parroted no matter what the evidence to the contrary. Hence in response to polls showing Blair enjoying historically unprecedented ratings, Mark Steel feels duty-bound to turn reality onto its head: “Blair must be the most unpopular ‘most popular person’ ever,” he insists (The Guardian April 14).

The real questions which require sober answers are blithely ignored. Why, in mid-term, does the government face so little opposition, and why has the Blair honeymoon taken on an air of permanence?

The gulf separating SWP theory from reality stems directly from Tony Cliff’s 11th-hour reconversion to Trotsky’s celebrated 1938 ‘Transitional programme’. Till recent times the SWP peddled dire pessimism. In 1985 Chris Harman described the miners’ Great Strike as an “extreme” example of the “downturn”. Misplaced pessimism has now given way to misplaced optimism.

Trotsky’s basic proposition was that capitalism could not develop the productive forces. As a result the state could neither grant nor concede meaningful reforms. Indeed mere defence of economic gains would spontaneously produce an apocalyptic collision with the rule of capital. Trotsky was wrong. But, given the paucity of his organised forces and the ominous socio-economic conditions of the late 1930s, he can be excused.

Comrade Cliff long distinguished himself from doctrinaire Trotskyism. He emphasised the non-applicability of Trotsky’s transitional demands. Only six years ago he wrote that Trotsky’s programme “did not fit a non-revolutionary situation” (T Cliff Trotsky: The darker the night, the brighter the star London 1993, pp299-300). Now the claim is made that things have qualitatively altered: “Capitalism in the advanced countries,” comrade Cliff writes,

“is no longer expanding and so the words of the 1938 ‘Transitional programme’ that ‘there can be no discussion of systematic social reform and raising the masses’ living standards’ fits reality again” (T Cliff Trotskyism after Trotsky London 1999, pp81-2).

Suffice to say, capitalism in the advanced countries is still expanding - the USA recorded a growth rate of six percent last year. The global meltdown is regional: ie, so far it remains confined to the far east and Russia. As to reforms, they are primarily the by-product of class struggle, not capitalism’s health. In the most difficult conditions, to save their system, the ruling class will enact the most far-reaching measures. As Rosa Luxemburg famously noted, in 1905 the workers in backward Russia “were, as regards the economic and social freedom of their movement, head and shoulders above the Germans” (R Luxemburg The mass strike London nd, p56).

The SWP is facing a crisis of perspectives. Blair’s de-Labourisation of Labour undermines auto-Labourism. At the same time the absence of any serious mass movement from below has forced SWP theoreticians and propagandists to make the most absurd and hyperbolic claims. It is more and more coming to resemble the old Workers Revolutionary Party under the raving and ranting Gerry Healy. In that sorry tradition comrade German seriously maintains that Britain can be pushed to the brink of revolution through a single economic struggle:

“It is increasingly obvious that even one major national strike or an all-out strike in one city would lead to a rapid crisis of Blairism and Labourism as society polarised along class lines” (International Socialism No82, spring 1999, p35).

On May 1 1997 the SWP enthusiastically voted Labour. After two decades the slogan, ‘Tories out’ was realised. But not in the way the SWP hoped. Blair and his shadow cabinet, it should be stressed, had done everything to steer Labour to the right and lower popular expectations to the barest minimum. Those who turned out for Labour did so in the main because they thought it would be no worse than the Tories. Despite that, not least in order to excuse themselves, the SWP - along with the whole auto-Labourite left - did their utmost to talk things up. In the months following Blair’s parliamentary landslide the SWP press carried daft articles on the theme that there existed a crisis of expectations. To state the obvious, there has been no explosion.

Important SWP leaders are opposed to the Cliff line. Claims of massive discontent are, they say, greatly exaggerated. The rearguard action by this faction accounts for the political committee’s three-week paralysis over June’s European Union elections. Eventually a narrow majority was won to pull out of the Socialist Alliance election bloc and not to test the mood for socialism by standing candidates. A factional compromise saw auto-Labourism go, but only to be replaced by a call to vote for Arthur Scargill’s red-brown SLP - in London half of his candidates are members of the Stalin Society. Surely this will provoke rebellion amongst the more independent-minded SWP branch and district cadre.

Neither majority nor minority faction are able to offer anything much beyond economism (democratic questions are downplayed or even dismissed as a diversion from the trade union struggle). Confronted with Blair’s constitutional revolution from above, the SWP’s ‘Action programme’ is silent: nothing on the monarchy, Irish unity, Scottish and Welsh self-determination and abolition of the House of Lords.

Here comrade German can speak for both factions. She actually echoes “ruling class worries about the piecemeal way in which Blair is approaching reform”, citing the “deal with the Tories over the hereditary peers” and how this has been done “without any real thought about the political or constitutional implications”. In the opinion of the comrade: “Blair is casually restructuring the state in ways which can create all sorts of problems of coherence and coordination” (ibid No82, spring 1999, p19).

Evidently her organisation’s inability to develop a programme which tackles politics at the level of the state is creating “all sorts of problems of coherence and coordination” for the SWP.

Jack Conrad