03.05.2000

Party notes

Important change

It seems clear that the Socialist Workers Party is in the process of change. We have previously remarked that, whatever the outcome of the Greater London Assembly elections on May 4, the SWP would not be the same beast after the experience of the London Socialist Alliance and its first serious foray into the electoral field.

This month's Socialist Review is significant in this context. It could mark an important turning point in the thinking of the post-Cliff SWP leadership.

Comrade Chris Bambery sets the tone in an article on "the deepening crisis for New Labour" (all quotes from Socialist Review May 2000 unless otherwise stated). Introducing a theme that will be taken up elsewhere in the same issue, he suggests that, "The success of the London Socialist Alliance has been its ability to move from being just an amalgam of the far left to becoming a real pole of attraction for disaffected Labour members and supporters."

Now this overstates the case somewhat. But it certainly points to a fundamentally correct idea - that in order to break sections of the working class from the Labour Party, a viable alternative is required.

Such an alternative needs to move far beyond a simple electoral bloc. Again comrade Bambery is correct to state that, "We need a party which can move quickly, as one."

Readers who have become accustomed to the SWP's sectarian self-absorption over the last 20-plus years would be forgiven at this point for assuming that the comrade is simply referring to the SWP and its prospects for growth. However, Bambery makes pretty clear that he is not thinking in such narrow terms. "What we are witnessing is a realignment of the existing left accompanied by the emergence of a new left", he states. "The SWP would be happy to be a smaller goldfish in a much bigger bowl. It is in our and everyone's interests that the left grows. For that reason we threw ourselves into building a broad campaign against the Balkan War last year and are central to building the LSA.".

The LSA format appears to loom large in the plans of leading SWPers. As many comrades will tell you, however, there is not the same level of enthusiasm in the SWP on the ground. Many rank and file members are in general far more equivocal. This tension will need to be addressed, especially since key SWPers have already suggested that the LSA is a "possible model" they may look to generalise nationally post-May 4 (Weekly Worker April 6).

Explicit corroboration of this comes in Bambery's article where he writes that up and down the country, "Socialists will have to build on the foundations built by the LSA in London. Next year we will face a general election which cries out for a socialist challenge against Blair. There exists too a real desire for unity against Blair and the liberal, free market consensus he represents."

This Socialist Review is a tribute issue to Tony Cliff. It contains personal reminiscences, articles espousing the continued political relevance of his political method and theoretical achievements and - interestingly - an interview with the man himself originally conducted in 1970. Of course, this was just around the time that Cliff embarked on a unity offensive aimed at the rest of the left.

The formulations Cliff uses to describe the nature of the political organisation the working class needs are in the main splendidly orthodox and Marxist. On the one hand, he describes a "vanguard party" which stands aside from the movement of the class and counterposes its particular ideological shibboleths. On the other, there is an entity that is "the most advanced sections of the class ... organised in a party". The first is wrong, the second right.

Such an understanding of 'party' necessitates that "it must be extremely democratic, because the only way in which you can reflect the mass of people is by having a great deal of internal democracy. It is not true that the working class has one cohesive point of view. The revolutionary party would reflect that lack of cohesion, of course. And therefore, if you speak in terms of dialogue with the class, the class itself has different views, and therefore this democracy is necessary."

This democracy is not simply confined to the internal life of the party: "There is no question about it; if a majority decides . the minority has to obey it, the minority of course has to have complete guarantee that it will have all the time the opportunity to express its views and influence the views of the majority - and not in secrecy, but in open debate in front of the class" (my emphasis).

Open debate, unity in action. We need a centralised party uniting different views in the class. However, there is no question that this implies the toleration of backward views, of wrong ideas or a laissez-faire/anarcho-liberal attitude to party actions. Cliff underlines this point with the analogy of a picket line - "If the minority decides to cross the picket lines the majority are absolutely right in trying to stop them."

With this nuance, or that caveat given our broader criticisms of the programmatic nullity of Cliffism, this pretty much accords with the view that supporters of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party have consistently defended in fierce polemics on the left and which - in the contemporary period - has become practically synonymous with our group. Truth is not trademarked, however.

This restating of the correct understanding of the nature of party points a route out of the sectarian impasse that halted the revolutionary left's progress for most of the 20th century. It needs to be theorised more rigorously and put into action of course. For a start, the constitutional ban on permanent factions (article 9c of the SWP constitution) must be overturned.

Writing in the What next? discussion journal two years ago, leading SWP member Ian Birchall boasted that in his organisation permanent factions were "rooted out with a degree of ruthlessness" (No8). Yet factions are nothing other that unofficial party organisations "united ... by a particular platform of views on party questions" (my emphasis, VI Lenin CW Vol 17, Moscow 1977, p265). A ban on the right to form long-standing factions is in effect a ban on SWP members thinking, a prohibition on them collectively developing their political viewpoints in collaboration with like-minded individuals. The spirit of what Cliff says in 1970 flatly contradicts this.

We wonder why the SWP has chosen to reprint this interview with Cliff, now. It cannot be without some political significance, given LSA developments. However, it poses some serious questions about the practice of the SWP as it has developed - under the tutelage of Cliff - over the last 25 years.

A couple of years ago, in the aftermath of the SWP leadership's non-theorised turn towards contesting elections, I wondered, "given its infamous authoritarian internal regime", how the organisation would resolve such contradictions "without blowing apart" (Weekly Worker May 28 1998). As I noted, "The turn has not been preceded by any debate. It is simply announced to an almost apolitical membership." The lack of substantive democracy in the organisation had produced a rank and file "atomised, befuddled and utterly confused" by the jarring discrepancies between leadership perspectives and their real experiences in society.

We are seeing extreme unevenness in the response of SWP members to the unity initiative that has been enthusiastically embarked on by the leadership majority. This may become even more acute if the organisation presses ahead with this orientation, something its most conscious members now seem determined to do. In the past, fiat and purge resolved such tensions. In the spirit of genuine democratic centralism, we hope that today this unevenness will be addressed using the correct method: "not in secrecy, but in open debate in front of the class" (Tony Cliff).

Such a development would be a major contribution not simply to cleansing the culture of the SWP, but to the fight for a viable revolutionary workers' party itself.