02.12.1999

Same method

Michael Malkin was puzzled about the uncertainty expressed by the Labour Party selection panel - after the first meeting with Livingstone - about Ken’s stance on the manifesto. Michael thought it was rash of the panel to conclude that Livingstone was not clear on the manifesto, since it was clear “he could not and would not stand on a platform that includes a plan for privatisation of the London underground”(Weekly Worker November 18).

But it was Michael’s comment which was rash. Livingstone did not take the opportunity to stand independently of New Labour on a platform against the privatisation of the tube. Before the second interview he was asked by John Humphries on Radio 4 this question: “So you are going to fudge the issue of the tube?” “Yes,” said Ken. “I believe that is the way forward. The Labour Party has dug itself a big hole and I hope to dig us out of it.”

And so it turned out. He rescued New Labour from the mess it had got itself into. But let ‘Red Ken’ speak for himself: “Let me spell it out. If selected as Labour’s candidate for mayor, I will stand on the manifesto agreed by the Labour Party, as must every candidate.” The manifesto will be decided by the leadership of New Labour. Blair has ruled out a membership ballot on the issue, so the odds are the manifesto will not contain any opposition to the so-called public-private partnership (privatisation).

Even if the manifesto contained Livingstone’s financial proposals to raise money by issuing bonds, this is not part of a left reformist or socialist proposal for state intervention against the market or against Blair’s presentation of the Labour Party as the party of business. Nor is it part of an attempt to build a independent anti-capitalist movement against Blair or his supporters. Ken has stated over and over that Frank Dobson (the hammer on healthworkers) and Glenda Jackson (useless to the working class) would make good mayors. Even Jack Conrad knows, “Livingstone is effectively standing on a New Labour programme” (Weekly Worker November 18).

But the CPGB turnaround or unacknowledged change of line on Livingstone is based on, and is in agreement with, the vulgarisation of Marxist tactics by the SWP, Workers Power, Socialist Action and the rest. In the past the CPGB always stood out from the ranks of auto-Labourism. Now Jack Conrad and his supporters have adopted the same opportunist method. Their attitude to a vote for Livingstone is indistinguishable from the dogmatic critical support for New Labour of the SWP and Workers Power. The CPGB’s previous principled position is denounced as hopeless sectarianism. The very charge made against the CPGB in the past by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the others.

Jack Conrad used to understand that the tactic of critical support depends on politics. The CPGB majority once taught the ‘vote Labour’ opportunists the Marxist ABCs. Communists do not support one side or the other in an organisational dispute in New Labour. Socialists do not support one personality against another in an election campaign. More to the revolutionary point, in the Livingstone campaign Leninists do not see Livingstone as the lesser evil. Lenin did not simply give critical support to the Labour Party to get a hearing from workers, but to persuade those workers inspired by the Russian Revolution and the classless society, who were not already fighting for socialism in their councils of action, that soviets were necessary and there was no parliamentary road to socialism.

Nor do Marxists crudely merge with the spontaneous movement and consciousness of the workers. In the phraseology of What is to be done? MarkFischer accuses his critics of using tactics to belittle the spontaneous movement. But the CPGB is passively adapting to spontaneity. Revolutionaries do not start from the mentality or illusions of the workers. As Trotsky explained to the American SWP, we begin from historical needs of workers and an overall analysis of class relationships. The political task is to develop the consciousness of the workers to find a bridge to the workers’ republic.

This is why until recently leading comrades in the CPGB argued that socialists could not support Livingstone unless he stood on a socialist or democratic minimum programme (depending on the Weekly Worker writer). Independently of Blairism. All this is now regarded as hopeless doctrinairism by Conrad (Weekly Worker November 18). But where is the self-criticism and the honest accounting for the change of position? The comrade owes this to his members as well as the readers of the Weekly Worker.

Now the Weekly Worker carries phrases and arguments straight out of the Brenner/Matgamna cookbook of tactical recipes. Michael Malkin writes with all due seriousness that as long as the Labour Party “retains its mass base in the working class and its reliance on workers’ votes, these class forces can and will make themselves felt”. Very mysterious. But how do we get from Conrad’s depoliticised, non-socialist working class in a reactionary period, with the left at an historical low point, to the class asserting its hegemony or collective interest?

When the working class does engage in mass anti-capitalist struggle it will not necessarily do this through the Labour Party or by voting Labour. Indeed, given the historical decline of reformism or Labourism, it is unlikely. New Labour voters are not reformists, nor are they voting for reformism. Nor is New Labour reformist. As Conrad concedes, the bourgeois aspect of the bourgeois Labour Party is becoming dominant. The timeless schemas of orthodox Trotskyism which underpin Michael’s comments are lifeless.

Workers do not always turn to their traditional political organisations or the Labour Party, as the poll tax and other issues show. The link with trade unionists is indirect, via the trade union bureaucracy. Any mass socialist involvement by trade unionists would entail a break with the bureaucracy. Historically and certainly in today’s reactionary climate the pressure in the trade unions and the Labour Party has been from the top down - bourgeois pressure. It was not for nothing that Trotsky once wrote that the two pillars of the bourgeois order in Britain were the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy.

When the CPGB denounced orthodox Trotskyists at the last general election for their tailism for ‘critically’ voting Labour, the orthodox response was to insist that, whatever the reasons for workers voting Labour, these did not matter, since whatever the illusions it was somehow a socialist step forward. Mark Fischer has adopted the same position. Writing in the Weekly Worker (November 11), he pontificates that, “Whatever foolish notions cluttered their [Ken’s supporters’] heads, they would be registering a left protest against the government.” So why did Mark not vote for Blair, shoulder to shoulder with New Labour voters, in the general election? After all he argues that the Livingstone campaign can become a focal point for millions and we must merge with any movement that might result from it.

The implication of these comments is the SWP ‘idea’ of the crisis of expectations. If Ken wins the nomination, Mark tells us, “In its own distorted and inarticulate way this will at the same time be a manifestation of the mass discontent and disillusionment with the Labour government” (Weekly Worker November 11). Comrade Malkin has a more radical version, stating that the Livingstone campaign “creates the possibility that a mass working class movement independent of Labour could rise and take very different political forms from the past”.

How can the Livingstone campaign, which is not independent of Labour, create a new socialist movement? And how can backing Livingstone’s campaign, dependent on New Labour, result in a mass break from Labour? This is pure fantasy. Recently ‘Red Ken’ has been cultivating his links with capitalists, agreeing the market is key for the British economy, supporting the bombing of Yugoslavia and arguing that bonds for the tube are sensible business proposals.

Ken had his best opportunity to stand independent of Labour at the second interview. All he had to do was say: ‘No, I will not stand on a manifesto for the privatisation of the tube.’ Ken’s fear of standing independently of New Labour was as great as the fear of the Blairites that he would stand independently. Even if Ken eventually gives Londoners the right to vote for him as an independent mayor, which now seems less likely, this bourgeois democratic right does not have socialist conclusions.

Michael says the democratic right of millions of Londoners to elect Ken as mayor and the democratic right of London Labour Party members to claim back their party (Weekly Worker November 4) is the central issue. This empties workers’ democracy of any revolutionary content. Why did Michael not make the democratic right of New Labour supporters to vote Labour the central issue of the CPGB general election campaign? As for the right of London Labour Party members to claim back their party, this is to repeat the SWP/AWL theme that old Labour is still strong and the Labour Party has not or is not going through dramatic historical changes and that old Labour reformism has not really declined. Part of the crisis of expectations ‘theory’ was the notion that old Labour would rise again and had never been really defeated.

But let us allow Michael to take up the Alex Callinicos argument:

“New Labour as an ideological construct remains an amorphous, superficial and largely elitist phenomenon, lacking any deep roots in the Labour Party and the Labour movement in general” (Weekly Worker November 4).

So we must have imagined the scrapping of clause four, the successful attacks on democracy and accountability in the party, the ditching of any kind of reformist, let alone socialist, politics. The leaving of the party by socialist activists. The support for the Blair project by the trade union bureaucracy and the adoption of partnership or class collaboration by the big unions.

But enough. For some years the Weekly Worker has stood out against the ranks of political opportunism, tailism and general adaptation to the Labour Party. Not anymore. Mark says: “Round one to Livingstone” (Weekly Worker November 25). Actually it is round one to the Labour Party. Why does the left not stand its own candidate to attempt to merge the communist programme with the masses?

Barry Biddulph