04.11.1999
SWP conference
Here we reprint short extracts from the first two of the SWP’s Pre-conference discussion bulletin. We have chosen the most interesting, or more accurately, the least dull, passages.
For an organisation that got the Soviet Union wrong - the USSR was supposedly the “highest” form of “capitalism” - that voted New Labour in 1997 and for Arthur Scargill’s SLP in 1999, which said it would never support Ken Livingstone for mayor because of his backing for Nato’s Balkans War, which fielded independent candidates in the Scottish and Welsh elections, the SWP is amazing for its lack of critical thought and theoretical self-examination. That there are no serious voices of dissent from below is a product of a stifling regime: ie, bureaucratic, not democratic centralism. The SWP conference meets over November 12, 13 and 14 in London.
New world disorder
The 1990s have been a decade of slow recovery in working class consciousness and combativity internationally. There has been no return to the working class offensive of the 1968-74 period, but by the same token there has been no repeat of the defeats of the 1980s. In Britain this recovery has largely been a question of radicalised consciousness, consisting of a more or less clearly anti-capitalist minority who reject Blairism in the name of reformism or left-reformist ideas ...
Blair too, as the council elections, Welsh assembly and Scottish parliament elections and the Hamilton South by-election show, is facing a powerful current of disillusionment. The nationalist challenge has exacerbated the crisis of Labourism in Scotland, but the creditable votes for the left, including SWP members, shows the potential for providing disillusioned Labour supporters with a socialist alternative ...
Disillusionment in the straightforward sense is only part of the crisis of Labourism. As well as union reps, Labour Party members and voters who are desperate to vent their frustration with the modernisers, there is also another reaction to the failure of the government. The movement against the Balkan War, the summer’s massive Cancel the Debt demonstrations, the weekday Carnival Against Capitalism, the anger around East Timor all point to a politicisation which does not necessarily take the failures of Labourism as its initial point of departure, although few on these demonstrations have much faith in Blair either. This reaction is particularly marked in the colleges, but many trade unionists and Labour Party members are among those who are filling the vacuum on the left with protests different in kind to the traditional Labour left organisation.
The shedding of illusions in Blair has mostly led to a leftwing consciousness - but it is far from inevitable that this will always be the case. Neither is it currently true that the generally leftwing mood means that there is a leftwing mood on all issues. The refugee scare is enough to remind us that the Labour right (and the Tory right and the far right beyond them) will want to use those issues on which their views command support to turn the general tide against the left. This was the pattern in Labour Britain in the late 1970s. This does not mean that it is inevitable it will happen again; merely that it will require active political intervention to create the socialist alternative which can block such developments.
The sporadic and partial nature of the revival in struggle, the often hidden degree of radicalisation in consciousness, presents a challenge to revolutionaries. On the one hand, there are great opportunities. To lead the rest of the left in three successive years’ lobbies of the Labour Party conference, to be the organisational and intellectual centre of the anti-war movement during the Balkan War, and to have led the way in solidarity for the Indonesian Revolution are all great achievements - but they simply would not be possible without the revival in working class consciousness which we have charted throughout the decade.
But in so far as this radicalisation does not result in a generalised upturn in struggle - and nowhere is this more the case than in Britain - the workplace struggle remains difficult territory and the trench warfare with the union bureaucracy remains a fact of life. Consequently, SWP branches must of necessity combine highly political intervention with a routine of organisation and politics which conserves the gains of one intervention for the next.
The nature of the period requires a great stress on subjective leadership and strong organisation. In the downturn emphasis on theory was combined with tight organisation. But the patterns of the struggle - and of course there were struggles - was almost universally in one direction. Whatever its other drawbacks, such a pattern allowed us to perfect a certain method of dealing with defeat. An upturn could provide a momentum to the organisation which would (as it did in the 1970s) cover all manner of faults, so long as we correctly related to the general struggle. But the mosaic nature of the current revival - more in consciousness than in struggle, more partial struggles than sustained struggles, more campaigns than industrial action - requires different strengths.
First and foremost it requires a high level of applied politics. Not just knowledge of Lenin and the national question, but also how it applies to the Kurdish PKK and East Timor. Not just permanent revolution, but also how it applies in Indonesia today. Not just the historic crimes of Labour, but a specific analysis of Blairism. Not just a general critique of the market, but how it imposes debt on the third world and neo-liberal austerity measures at home. Getting the analysis right and applying it in an anti-war meeting or at a debt demo is difficult in itself. But it becomes 10 times more difficult if the organisational structure of the branch is allowed to decay either during a campaign (because “there is so much going on”) or between campaigns (because “there is nothing to help us in the outside world”).
This is why the current perspective argues not only to combine a high level of politics with a high level of intervention, but also to combine both with a great stress on strengthening the organisational infrastructure of the SWP, most importantly the branch. In the first instance this means concentration on Socialist Worker sales and finance, but it also means fighting for sales of Socialist Review and International Socialism, for a good bookstall, for political meetings with good speakers who turn up, for looking after the new members, and so on. Without this combination of intervention, politics and organisation, the crisis of Labourism will continue, but it will not result in the building of a revolutionary alternative to reformism.
Central committee
How we build
In an upturn, like that of the early 1970s, we were able to pull people round Socialist Worker and then recruit them. In a downturn like that of the 1980s we were winning ones and twos - often that involved lengthy discussion.
Today we are in neither an upturn nor a downturn. There is not an audience out there for us on the picket lines, nor are there the big-single issue campaigns like those that dominated the first half of the 1990s, from the poll tax to the Criminal Justice Bill...
Once we establish that the way to build is through addressing the ideological turmoil out there, we have to set out ways in which we can build a bigger audience for our politics.
The way we keep and involve people in the party centres on two things - getting them Socialist Worker each week and getting them to make a commitment to the SWP by taking out a standing order to pay subs.
The sad reality is that too many people are not asked for subs. That means there is no sense of commitment, and too often they are not seen regularly or do not get Socialist Worker weekly ... Over the coming months we have to fight within the party for comrades to relate to the ideological crisis. We need to explain to comrades why, in September, petitioning round arms sales to Indonesia was the key to building in the workplace or anywhere else.
And we have to fight to rebuild the organisation of the branch. If that is not in place and not working, everything else falls. The branch is the key building block of the organisation. And key to the branch is the basic task of getting Socialist Worker to each member each week and getting every member to pay subs by standing order.
Central committee
Finance and membership
Every year we recruit hundreds of new members, who could be central to building more dynamic and political branches. Yet all too often their subs are not sorted out or, if they are, a nominal amount of cash subs is put down which is never collected.
The effect of this as that every year at re-registration time they end up on the list of unregistered members.
Something like 80% of unregistered members are down as cash subs payers. The reality is that cash subs = no subs = no member, but, more than this, it creates a cynicism about recruitment. When Lenin argued to “open the gates of the party”, he did not argue for a revolving door policy in which we lose the potential of this new layer of comrades by chucking them out the other end from the branches.
Most of thess people who joined wanted to see a different world. They would have seen our brilliant interventions and believed we were a well oiled political machine. The possibility of them seeing us as a real alternative will have been knocked by the fact that we do not take them seriously. We don’t even bother sorting out or collecting their subs, a simple process which makes them feel part of something. We therefore want to fight to get as many of our members onto standing orders as possible …
Central committee
Reformism and class polarisation in Europe
Ten years ago, at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of the far left in Europe agreed on one thing with mainstream social democrats and conservatives alike. The collapse of the old eastern bloc, they all agreed, was an enormous setback for the left and for the class struggle. This was, for instance, the perspective both of Ernest Mandel, the major theoretician of the Fourth International, and of Lutte Ouvrière in France.
We argued, by contrast, that we were entering a new period of instability in Europe and worldwide, characterised by radicalisation both on the left and on the right. This was already shown in the late 1980s by a then very limited revival of the class struggle and the left in West Germany and by a stronger growth of Le Pen’s fascists in France, as analysed in Alex Callinicos’s article, ‘Crisis and class struggle in Europe’, in International Socialism 63 (summer 1994).
The first half of the 1990s were a clear vindication of our analysis. ...
Conditions are easier for revolutionaries today than they were in the 1930s, but that does not mean that workers moving to the left are automatically going to come to a correct understanding of how to fight. Whether they do so or not depends on the ability of revolutionaries to agitate ideologically and politically as well as over economic issues. And the whole experience of the workers’ movement over the last two centuries is that there is a bitter price to be paid for not understanding how to fight ...
Central committee
Suggestions
I urge comrades reading this to do so with an open mind and not to be immediately defensive. I write these suggestions as a Leninist, not as a member of any ‘faction’, or anything else. This is not a critique of democratic centralism.
1) Any documents/bulletins produced prior to party councils/national meetings do not seem to give scope for the membership, in addition to the centre, to make contributions beforehand. Such a document, like the Pre-conference bulletin, should exist. This could also help the branches shape the actual agenda of national meetings, which appear to be limited to certain things.
2) The choice of who is actually allowed to speak at such events appears, at least, to be somewhat arbitrary. If this is the case, then a ‘first come, first served’ principle should be applied instead.
3) I have known of comrades in other districts who are not entirely happy with the behaviour of their district organisers. This is often the case, yet while the central committee is elected at conference, comrades are at best unaware of what they can actually do about this. Therefore, branches/districts should be entitled to take a vote of confidence/re-elect district organisers. The same principle should be applied to the likes of student organiser and similar posts.
4) Elections within the party in general should be on the basis of individuals and not slates.
5) As has previously been suggested, there should exist a ‘right to reply’ facility at conference for members who make contributions in the Pre-conference bulletins but who have not been elected to go to conference. Even if these members have not won the argument within their own branch, they should still have the opportunity - their arguments may strike a chord with comrades in other branches. In any case, without this opportunity, there is a danger that the voice of some comrades will not be heard.
Strong chairing and disciplined procedure should ensure that not too much time is wasted.
6) The party should issue an official statement concerning our attitude to other organisations on the left. Too often we seem to dismiss them as “sectarian” for no other reason than they are smaller than we are. This is wrong.
7) An end to the ‘top ten’ paper-selling branches list. Party members should sell papers out of political commitment, not to beat other branches. The impression the top ten gives is, I feel, the latter.
To comrades who are automatically defensive to these suggestions, please realise that it is possible to accept all these criticisms while keeping the party’s Leninism intact.
Paul Jenkins
Barrow-in-Furness
International fund
I have noticed from the list in International Socialism that our sister organisation in France is no longer listed in our tendency. Alex Callinicos, in his report to conference in 1997, suggested that revolutionary socialist organisations have to find the most favourable milieu to work in. It may be that this sister organisation still exists and is working within a milieu which makes it difficult to list its existence openly, or it may have ceased to exist. In the proposed report, issues such as this could be brought to contributors’ attention …
Ian Thomas
Newport branch