30.11.2000

Growing cancer of reformism

Humour has long been used as a political weapon. We have received the following polemical document under the title 'Statement of the International Socialist Movement minority faction'

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shift to the right by the social democratic parties, the left internationally has entered a period of flux. With the traditional workers' parties, either social democratic or Stalinist, embracing the market, there is a tremendous vacuum to be filled. For the past decade, the international capitalist class has been triumphalist, and policies of cuts and privatisation have been carried out in the west, the former Stalinist countries and in the third world as globalisation has spread across the globe.

In recent years, there has been a re-alignment of the left, with new alliances forming out of ex-communist parties, Trotskyist, Maoist, green and left splits from the social democratic parties. Therefore, there is the LO-LCR slate in France, the Left Bloc in Portugal, the United Left in Spain, the Red-Green Alliance in Norway, and so on. Some on the left even put forward the position that they are the potential building blocks for new mass parties.

However, it is the position of the Committee for a Workers International that this is a fundamentally false premise. These so-called 'left alliances' are in fact a rag-bag of sectarians, Stalinists and assorted oddballs who form a cover for a more insidious breed of reformism. The Scottish Socialist Party is a case in point. The decision of the Scottish section to form the SSP is a backward step, a dilution of the Leninism and democratic centralism of Scottish Militant Labour. The decision to abandon daily meetings is a serious breach of revolutionary discipline, as is the abandonment of caucuses before every SSP branch, secret hourly meetings at conference over every motion and amendment, and the mandating of every comrade to vote the correct way on organisational procedures.

All this represents a winding down of the ISM's organisational structure. The SSP is a left reformist, nationalist party with no Marxist perspective. The argument that a growth from 200 members and three branches to 2,000 members and 52 branches is a tremendous step forwards is beside the point. Fifteen steeled comrades such as the members of the faction in Dundee are worth 200-odd ISM members who have become centrists or left Mensheviks. The growth of the SSP represents a disintegration of the forces of Marxism in Scotland.

The CWI faced a similar situation in Pakistan, where the Labour Party was comprised of 1,000 so-called 'workers' - in actual fact paid agents of the Swedish Social Democracy. The Pakistan Labour Party was therefore excluded from the CWI and replaced with a steeled revolutionary cadre of two men and a dog.

Similarly, the comrades in the Scottish section argue that the LO-LCR slate getting five percent of the vote in France, about a million votes, represents a step forwards. In fact, these organisations consist of nothing more than petty bourgeois degenerates who would not know a worker if they saw one. The fact that the French section of the CWI has fused with the LCR is a similar dilution of Leninism as has occurred in Scotland.

The character of the new left formations is thus extremely suspect. The decision of the Socialist Party of England and Wales, criticised by some comrades, to support the slate put forward by the Society of Hand-Loom Weavers instead of the London Socialist Alliance in the London Assembly elections may seem strange. While it is true that the SHLW has had no members since 1889, this does not change the fact that it is part of a militant tradition going back to the English civil war, and that with the impending global financial crash, such industries could re-emerge, providing the basis for a new mass workers' party. The LSA, by contrast, is a rag-bag collection of petty bourgeois sectarians.

Similarly, the 150,000 votes gained by the supposedly Trotskyist group Partido Obrero in Argentina constitute a phantom army. The real revolutionary epicentre of Latin America is in Trinidad, where we have three comrades.

The present climate, 10 years after the collapse of Stalinism, is bleak. While it is true that there are class struggles taking place against the effects of globalisation, they are being led by reformists, and are inevitably doomed to failure. The forces of Marxism internationally are disintegrating; the only genuine hard core are gathered around the banner of the CWI, the only organisation capable of understanding the present situation - indeed, any situation. The perspective is that the international working class will play no role for the next 300 years. It is proposed, therefore, that the entire membership of the CWI be placed in suspended animation and awakened when the situation is more favourable.