08.07.1999

SWP’s new-found modesty

‘Marxism at the millennium’ takes place at a watershed time for the left.

There have been fundamental shifts in British and world politics. Over the past two decades the working class has suffered a series of huge defeats. Capitalist hegemony is practically unchallenged. Yet from the left, while there has been self-doubt, in the main there have been no serious reappraisals.

Moreover, this neglect has had its organisational consequences. The ‘official communism’ of the Stalinites is dying; Healy’s cult-Trotskyism is gone; and Taaffe’s Militant/Socialist Party is a dwindling, sad husk of its former self. While the Socialist Workers Party is now the largest organisation on the British left, this is more by default, as other organisations have either faded or shattered.

For all except the most absurd Panglossian the working class movement and its revolutionary vanguard is in a parlous, fractured and desultory state. The ideological victories of our common enemy during the Reagan and Thatcher era, alongside the collapse of the USSR, have had their knock-on effects within social democracy. Blairism, and the strange rebirth of liberal England, demands a new approach to politics from the revolutionary left, if we are to turn the corner and put the working class back on the political map.

There are signs that some sections of the left may be moving towards a more realistic appraisal of our fortunes, including the normally hyper-optimistic SWP. Writing in Socialist Worker (June 26), leading SWP theorist Alex Callinicos struck a sombre tone: “It is true that there is currently no widely accepted, credible alternative to liberal capitalism. But that is no cause for celebration, but rather, as long as it continues, a source of despair for those who long for something better.” Presumably the lack of a “credible alternative” includes the SWP itself.

From an organisation whose cadre, such as Candy Udwin, have intoned faithfully that “there has never been a better time to be a socialist”, Callinicos’s new-found honesty is refreshing. And although this does not represent some road-to-Damascus conversion for the Cliffites, there is clearly movement underway.

Recent shifts in the Labour Party are the cause of the SWP’s unaccustomed modesty. Its self-appointed position as the real conscience of Labour has been badly shaken. Even on May 1 1997, divisions were apparent. So much so that Socialist Worker’s advice was to vote either Labour or socialist. Despite the obvious hopeless confusion of this message, the paper then went on to claim New Labour’s victory as “our victory”.

Finally entering the electoral fray in the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly elections, the SWP’s confused turn from auto-Labourism produced the paltry votes to be expected in present conditions. Forced into an electoral bloc as the junior partner in Scotland, the SWP could no longer dismiss the rest of the left as irrelevant.

Even so, the leadership hid its tentative entry into a European election coalition in London from the membership. Arthur Scargill’s nomination at the top of the Socialist Labour Party’s London list precipitated a crisis which paralysed the SWP political committee for three weeks. Eventually, the SWP withdrew in favour of Scargill’s Marie Célèste of an organisation, promising to return for the London assembly elections. We shall see.

At root is the failure of the SWP’s programmatic perspectives concerning the election of a Labour government. And on this point the SWP was not alone. Almost the entire British left predicted a “crisis of expectations” when Blair inevitably dashed the presumed illusions the working class had in the Labour Party. As the Weekly Worker said at the time, the illusions were not to be found in the class, but in the revolutionary left itself.

As Dave Osler of the soft Trotskyite Socialist Democracy Group admits: “Things are gloomy for socialists, all right. Yet this is certainly not where the bulk of the far left two years ago were predicting we would be now. There seems little point in dredging up optimistic quotes from the period ... Instead, we need to start looking for some explanations as to why thing haven’t panned out the way our [sic] theory expected that they would” (Green Left Weekly June 23). Comrade Osler should take more time to look at those who did expect us to be roughly where we are now.

While there is undoubtedly dissatisfaction and a sullen indifference towards the government from wide sections, while there are no doubt pockets of isolated anger, the SWP must explain why none of this has as yet taken any organisational forms. Although, for the first time, the SWP is owning up that strikes are at the “lowest level since the stone age” (Charlie Kimber), is it seriously explaining why?

We need to temper our Marxist optimism with sober realism. Not ‘carry on campaigning’ official optimism from a wiser-than-thou leadership eager to keep the troops’ morale up. This is no time for sectarian arrogance. We need a new culture on the left which allows for full, open and frank debate with a process of building unity in action. There can be no sacred cows in our debates.

Recently it seemed as though the SWP was calling for open debate on the left. An unsigned, centre page article in Socialist Worker said: “We need serious discussion. To be effective, the left must debate, and at times argue over, the situation we face and the way forward. Without clarity of ideas, we can face further examples of people changing sides when the going gets tough” (June 26). It is a pity that what was presented as a call for debate descended into a hype for ‘Marxism at the millennium’.

In its analysis of Labour’s June 10 election defeat, Socialist Worker said:

“What happened at the Euro elections is not just about Tony Blair and New Labour. It is a repeat of what has happened again and again with Labour. In 1945, 1964, 1974 and 1997, working people have elected Labour with great hopes that it would bring change. Yet each time those hopes have been dashed. The length of the ‘honeymoon period’ has varied, but Labour has always ended up attacking its own voters” (June 26).

While it is fanciful to claim that working people elected Blair with “great hopes”, the SWP points to a truth central to Labourism. It is a party of capital. Yet what Socialist Worker fails to point out is that every time disillusionment with Labour has led to an electoral shift to the right, to a credible bourgeois opposition.

While at the moment the Tories are not a credible opposition, the left is even less credible. The challenge for us is there.

Marcus Larsen