01.03.2001

AWL contradictions

On February 22 the Alliance for Workers' Liberty hosted a round-table discussion on their recent call for revolutionary unity (see Weekly Worker February 8). Sean Matgamna addressed the meeting on behalf of the AWL, while Mark Fischer and Steve Freeman spoke for the CPGB and the Revolutionary Democratic Group respectively. The Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party had also been invited, both organisations failing, rather predictably, to send a speaker.

After listening to the debate I am sure I am not alone in wondering who writes AWL statements and articles. Judging by the interventions at this gathering - which in some cases were fuelled by a liberal consumption of alcohol - they are not the work of the AWL majority.

Take Sean Matgamna's opening. Many fine sentiments on the sort of open, democratic, critical, thinking working class party we need. But surprisingly - astoundingly even - the comrade failed to mention the Socialist Alliance. As Mark Fischer of the CPGB told the meeting, the encouraging thing about the AWL's recent published thinking is that its starting point is the SA: the concrete arena in which the democratic unity of the revolutionary left is being forged. Comrade Matgamna chose to revert to the AWL's earlier, abstract musings on the question.

Unfortunately AWL members present reinforced this error by providing ample evidence of ingrained sectarianism toward the alliances. Contributions ranged from anecdotal "the SAs don't do much", "there is no debate in my local alliance", "why don't they do more work in the unions?", etc to those of Paul Hampton, who disingenuously suggested that comrade Fischer was holding the SA up as "a model" for revolutionary unity.

As both comrade Fischer and Tina Becker of the CPGB pointed out, this merely shows how passive the AWL are in relation to the living reality of the Socialist Alliance. As with our past intervention in the Socialist Labour Party (academically dismissed as a "waste of time that achieved nothing" by comrade Hampton and co), the question for revolutionaries is not what the alliances imperfectly are, but what they can become through our activity.

By the time comrade Matgamna felt sufficiently prodded into engaging with the Socialist Alliance in his closing remarks, he treated us to a rhetorical emphasis on how shocking the Socialist Workers Party's political culture is. True, but this observation alone is hardly the basis for uniting the left.

Strangely, for all the store that the AWL sets by 'action', the comrades seem frankly incapable of developing any sort of concrete mediation between their formally correct theory of revolutionary unity and the practice needed to arrive at that destination.

Jill Mountford (AWL) suggested there is a deeper reason for her comrades' reticence. She appeared to counterpose the idea of a 'broad workers' party', where reformists could happily coexist with revolutionaries, to the more specific project of the unity of revolutionaries. Steve Freeman (RDG) also collapsed himself into this perspective, seeing in it support for his category of a 'communist-Labour party'. As Mark Fischer argued, such an approach holds up the present-day impotence of revolutionaries as fixed: the best we can do is hope to be tolerated in a broad grouping. Yet the idea that a united revolutionary organisation would have no impact on reformists is an absurd one, he suggested.

The AWL call for a new Labour Representation Committee, which was given such prominence over the last few years, has recently been quietly pushed into the background. The group stands formally for work in the Socialist Alliance, and it has now given the need for a revolutionary party more emphasis with its appeal for unity. But the LRC, it seems, remains the preferred idea for some comrades. Tensions inside the organisation are obviously running deep.

Another contradiction was highlighted by Sean Matgamna's remarks on the CPGB's prioritisation of democratic demands. He referred to this as representing an "extreme rightwing" tendency culled from Comintern's degeneration in the late 1920s (the comrade has suggested this on a number of past occasions without once providing any evidence). When Mark Fischer and Steve Freeman pointed out that the AWL itself has now adopted the position of a federal republic, the comrade gave us a bashful smile while AWLers cat-called, "That's only Martin Thomas!" Very strange.

Some of the contributions from my own comrades left a lot to be desired. Tina Becker came close to dismissing completely agitation around the AWL's NHS slogan for 'state-of-the-art healthcare at the point of need', while Darrell Goodliffe inaccurately stated that during the recent London tubeworkers' dispute the AWL saw the strike as "an end in itself". Such comments reinforce the AWL's erroneous perception that the CPGB is composed of crazed sectarians. As Marcus Larsen (CPGB) and Steve Freeman (RDG) forcefully asserted, a revolutionary democratic approach requires the working class to master the struggle for democracy in all spheres of society. CPGB comrades should beware of constructing themselves one-sidedly as the negative mirror-image of the contemporary left's economism.

Not that Sean Matgamna has gained any understanding of Lenin's critique of economism. Ignoring recent copious documentation in the Weekly Worker, the comrade suggested that an economist was someone who did not address politics. Of course, the AWL was not guilty of this. In fact, Lenin's critique of economism was aimed at comrades who were subordinating political practice to existing movements in society, not ignoring it altogether. I am sorry, Sean: the AWL remains guilty as charged.

Nevertheless, the organisation that has made great strides in the last two years. Auto-Labourism has been ditched, it has begun to adopt some semblance of addressing democratic demands and the comrades have an understanding of what a genuine, democratic, working class party would look like. However, to paraphrase Lenin, organisational questions cannot be mechanically separated from political ones. The AWL must address its half-hearted attitude to the Socialist Alliance. Otherwise its project of revolutionary unity will wither on the vine.

Phil Watson