05.07.2000

For a Communist Party

A revolutionary party "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 ... 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 - interview with Tony Cliff, 1970; reprinted in Socialist Review May 2000).

Whatever else it describes, the type of organisation sketched out above by the founder-leader of the Socialist Review Group-International Socialists in discussing "the revolutionary party" looks nothing like today's SWP. To us, it describes the organisational/political culture which would prevail in a genuine Communist Party, an organisation uniting the advance part of the class itself.

The SWP is certainly changing. For too long, its members were synonymous on the left with surly indifference to serious debate or any other form of constructive rapprochement with other revolutionaries. Come election time, it automatically supported the Labour Party. Indeed, it had a half-theorised position as to why it did not present itself as an alternative in the ballot box - that real working class politics were to do with strikes, picket lines and the mundane concerns of the workplace. The very act of standing candidates was equated with 'electoralism', sowing illusions in reformism. In line with its opportunist tailing of spontaneity, here was an organisation that made a positive virtue out of not having a programme, claiming this anchorless state imparted 'flexibility'.

As thousands of revolutionaries gather on Friday July 7 for the start of the SWP's annual 'Marxism' school, a casual observer might be forgiven for assuming that little has changed. After all, the format of this event, an important one for the entire left in this country, looks identical to previous years. The standard, controlled format of SWP educationals is the same. Genuine controversy is absent, despite the fact that, for example, the British organisation has had a very recent acrimonious split with its US clone (the details of which are already widely available on the web). There are also hidden disagreements in certain branches with the London Socialist Alliance strategy and big doubts about joining the Scottish Socialist Party. In contrast to the educational events hosted by the Communist Party, the 'Marxism' organisers have tried to see to it that sharp clashes of opinion between counterposed revolutionary trends of thought around such living issues will be absent. The collective learning curve achieved by participants will thus inevitably be lower than would otherwise have been the case, whatever the talents of particular individual speakers.

Yet the SWP is in the process of profound transformation. It has started to contest elections along with ourselves and other left groups under the banner of the LSA. Its cadre are now mixing with and working alongside other revolutionaries - with varying degrees of enthusiasm or unease, it must be said. Inevitably, this poses the question of programme, of what type of politics the organisation presents to the world. Thus, we have seen the semi-rehabilitation of Trotsky's Transitional programme (hailed by Cliff in his Trotskyism after Trotsky) and even the assurance to SWP cadre that the manifesto of the LSA for May's Greater London Authority elections was indirectly derived from Trotsky's action programme for France in the mid-1930s. (Very indirectly, it was admitted.)

Moreover, the new turn places a huge question mark over the internal regime of the SWP, the way the organisation has been built as a bureaucratic centralist sect moulded and manipulated according to the whim of an autocratic leadership, centred for many years around Cliff himself.

The fact that the SWP is moving into the arena of electoral politics and close work with other trends poses the need for it to allow the space for its comrades to develop as genuine organic leaders rather than the kind of routine paper-sellers its members have been required to be in the past. In an interview with this paper shortly before last month's Tottenham by-election, Weyman Bennett of the LSA and SWP suggested that "the tradition of the socialist movement is one of polemic and debate". More accurately perhaps, it would be correct to state that the healthy traditions of our movement certainly involve open polemic and debate - the kind of approach that informed Tony Cliff's comments on a genuine revolutionary workers' party made in 1970.

On the other hand, SWP comrades currently only have the right to form internal factions, and then only once a year, for the brief period in the lead-up to national conference. Writing in the What Next? journal three years ago, leading SWP member Ian Birchall noted somewhat gleefully that in his organisation permanent factions were "rooted out with a degree of ruthlessness" (No8, p18). Yet factions are nothing but unofficial organisations "united ... by a particular platform of views on party questions" (my emphasis, VI Lenin CW Vol 17, Moscow 1977, p265). Thus, their circumscribed, restricted term of life in the SWP amounts to nothing less than a constitutional ban on the right of the membership to seriously think, 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.

The unpalatable truth is that the left of the workers' movement in the 20th century - in both its Stalinite and Trotskyite manifestations - has in the main been characterised by crassly anti-democratic internal regimes, by bans on the open expression of differences and of critical thought. The SWP has been as guilty as the rest and it will take time - and struggle - to change this bureaucratic culture.

In the spirit of Cliff's 1970 interview, we call for a return to the best traditions of the workers' movement. In the here and now, we must commit ourselves to building a unified revolutionary party organised on the principle of genuine democratic centralism - open debate, unity in action. A genuine Communist Party, in other words.

Such a call in no way implies a toleration of backward views, of wrong ideas or a laissez faire anarcho-liberal attitude to party actions, as some of our disingenuous critics on the left have tried to imply. Our organisation has a distinctive minimum-maximum programmatic approach that stands in stark contrast to the majority of the left in contemporary Britain. Unity in a single party would be an opportunity for those who think like us to do battle with other trends. But far from this 'disrupting' the work and unity of the party, this would have the positive effect of educating a layer of the class itself, of drawing them in as partisans of particular platforms and leaders of the party. Only in this way could we move beyond the position of today, where the organisations of the left define themselves as sects by their almost confessional approach to politics - differences being seen as a private matter and a danger to the creed/organisation.

As the 1970-vintage Cliff put it, if the revolutionary party is to have a genuine dialogue with the class of which it claims to be the vanguard, every organised trend or faction within it must have "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".

Contrast this healthy, transparent attitude with the 1995 diktat by the SWP leadership - including Cliff, ironically - banning SWP members from certain sections of the internet. Justifying this monstrous move, it was explained that this global means of potentially anonymous debate might lead to the situation where others could "take part in discussions that do not concern them", perhaps over the character of the ex-USSR, the nature of the epoch, the lessons of Bolshevism or other such 'internal' matters that should only be the preserve of SWP tops (see Weekly Worker July 11 1996).

Cliff's untheorised comments in 1970 hint at a more profound understanding of the nature of 'party'. In turn, this points a route out of the sectarian impasse that halted the revolutionary left's progress for the most of the 20th century. As a matter of urgency therefore, the constitutional ban on permanent factions (article 9c of the SWP constitution) has to be overturned if the group is to develop in a healthy, revolutionary direction.

For, despite the continuing upbeat spin of the leadership, the new departure comes as a result of a failure of SWP perspectives. The world has not unfolded as predicted in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR, or the election of Blair's New Labour three years ago. Partially recognising this, leading SWPers have spoken of the need to get more 'political', of the fact that simmering discontent cannot be automatically expected to seek expression through workplace upheavals. Thus, the turn to elections.

There are big dangers, however. The undercurrent in mainstream society remains strongly to the right. Having frightened its members off electoral contests for years by warning darkly of a slippery slope to reformism, the SWP now risks beginning the slide itself. This instability is exacerbated by its lack of a programme by which an informed membership could hold the leadership majority to account. Like much in the group's history, this new turn was simply announced with no preceding debate or struggle. The lack of substantive internal democracy has produced a rank and file that is largely atomised, rote-educated and often confused.

Thus, the fight for genuine democratic centralism, for a healthy open regime in today's SWP, is an urgent corrective to these rightist pressures. The working class needs a mass, revolutionary party. Without democracy and openness, the SWP could constitute itself as a barrier to the achievement of such a body.

With it, it will surely form an important element of its core.