12.09.2001

Adopting a party perspective

Mark Hoskisson of Workers Power addressed last month?s Communist University on the issue of the Socialist Alliance. His remarks reveal both the advances and continued limitations of Workers Power. Nevertheless there obviously exists much common ground with the CPGB. This is an edited version of his comments

I n examining what sort of regime the Socialist Alliance ought to have, it is important to situate the question within its political development, and within a political context.

It seems to me that the Socialist Alliance has gone through a number of stages, and potentially could go through many others. I for one would say that our objectives in Workers Power are to carry the fight for a revolutionary party into the Socialist Alliance - a revolutionary party with a revolutionary regime, of democratic centralism. However, at the moment there are a number of different possibilities, depending on the evolution of the alliance, for reasons that are largely beyond the control of the smaller organisations like ourselves.

In the late winter/early spring, Workers Power adopted a clear party perspective for the Socialist Alliance. But this did not arise from a schema that said, ?We want a party. The Socialist Alliance exists. Therefore let?s try to make that the party.? There is a danger of reducing the party question to the coming together of the Socialist Alliance.

What gave an edge to that perspective is the way in which the Socialist Alliance developed in the period roughly from around the time of the Greater London Authority election through to the general election itself. It developed from an initially conceived, extremely loose federal alliance - the Socialist Party is still arguing for the maintenance of that sort of alliance. But under the impact of a number of events, the Socialist Alliance began to change its character, and that is the context within which you have to understand any arguments for a party perspective.

In my estimation there were two factors that really gave weight to a party perspective in that period. Firstly, the entry of the largest left-of-Labour organisation into the Socialist Alliance. The participation of the Socialist Workers Party gave the SA a different character, increasing the size and scope of the activities it was able to undertake. Even though, for example, the oft-quoted piece from The Financial Times, which suggested that the Socialist Alliance was responsible for unofficial strikes in Royal Mail, was wide of the mark, it is certainly true that the SWP played an important role, and by dint of association the SA was able to appear, at least to the fevered minds of Financial Times journalists, to be the driving force behind those strikes.

The SWP gave the alliance a real weight inside the working class on a whole number of questions - a weight that the Socialist Party had frankly been unable to give it in the preceding period, when the SP had been undergoing a long period of decline and loss of influence, and had been through a number of splits and so forth. So the entry of the SWP did change the centre of gravity of the Socialist Alliance, and, certainly from the point of view of Workers Power, gave it an increased and added importance in terms of general developments on the British left. Specifically, it opened up the possibility of a party and raised questions about the sort of party it would be.

The second factor that lent weight to the perspective was the experience - completely unprecedented on the British left - of a range of organisations, more used to exchanging polemics, coming together, and, in the context of very clearly defined common goals, carrying through a united struggle. Despite quite important political differences - and I would be the last to underestimate the scale of them - it was nevertheless possible to cooperate, first of all for the GLA elections and then for the general election. The common goal that was established through those external events brought people together and created the momentum that opened up the possibility of arguing concretely, not just in the abstract, for a party perspective; and within that argument for a revolutionary programme.

Those two factors are very important. They mean that the possibility of a party could be seen - at least in its initial phase, in an embryonic form. By party I mean something significant and specific. One frequently reads in the Weekly Worker the counterposing of the party perspective to ?sect-building?: the building of the individual groups. Sometimes there is a danger of seeing the building of a party as simply the coming together of the groups. Now, for me, that is not what will constitute an important breakthrough in terms of creating a real party on the British left, or indeed the international left.

For me, a minimum definition of the party has to be that it represents, and has organised within its ranks, not the majority, but an important minority - and indeed it can be quite a small minority - of the working class itself. That is, the party is a fraction of the class organised for the pursuit of common goals and common objectives. I would recognise a small cadre party as such, providing it had serious roots inside the working class. I actually think the early CPGB was such a party. It never became mass and always remained a small cadre party, but its roots in the class were serious enough to designate it as a party.

As a result of the SWP acting as an important pole of attraction, as a result of the attractiveness of a previously bickering, hostile and unwelcoming left coming together, and working together in the context of elections, real possibilities for the development of a party have been opened up: a party that could actually bring important sections of the working class towards it.

The experience of the general election demonstrates the potential. It was not just a case of us all agreeing to bury our differences, because differences clearly came up in the course of the election. In fact, within the alliance as it is presently constituted there are no satisfactory means of resolving many of those differences - which is one of the things that make the question of structure and of the SA regime important.

But far more important, I think, was the fact that the Socialist Alliance was able to play a role in the important developments that took place in the trade unions in the run-up to the general election. That is, in circumstances where there was manifest discontent inside the unions over the policies which the Blairites were quite brazenly pursuing, sections of the rank and file pushed the union bureaucracy towards a position where they were forced to rattle sabres - over the political funds, over organisational links with Labour - and began to talk about the possibility of an alternative.

The Socialist Party has claimed credit for this development, because two of its members moved the successful resolutions at the Fire Brigades Union and Unison conferences. I do not want to detract in any way from the work the SP did, but those resolutions would not have got the resonance and the support they did had it not been for the existence of the Socialist Alliance project, and the possibility of the SA acting as a rallying point for people who were deeply discontented with Labour. The pressure of the rank and file found an echo in the bureaucracy - later in the form of John Edmonds withholding GMB union money from the Labour Party.

Those developments showed the momentum and strength of the Socialist Alliance, and did point to a real possibility. As indeed did the election campaign itself. I would defy anyone, including those who were opposed to the formation of any sort of new party - principally the SWP - to deny the reality that during the election campaign, by force of circumstance, the Socialist Alliance operated like a party in the localities. That was the reality for most people. There were branches, teams of officers, weekly meetings. Nationally too the executive was meeting on a far more regular basis - indeed supplanting the old structure of the Liaison Committee at one point - in order to expedite the election work and issuing directives. (These were sometimes somewhat confusing, and that produced, among other things, the great row over canvassing.)

Taking all this into account, I wrote an article for the election issue of Workers Power, putting the case for the building of a party, and arguing that it should be a revolutionary party. Because of the atmosphere of the election more people were buying and reading left papers. And the arguments that were opened up, in particular with comrades from the SWP, over the relationship of our united work to the building of a revolutionary party, was wide open in that period. Not so much, it has to be said, in formal meetings, but in the bars afterwards.

The important question for us is: how do you get from an alliance - a rather loose coalition built on peaceful coexistence between formerly fractious elements - to a revolutionary party? The SWP and the International Socialist Group had weakened their ability to give an answer to this question by embracing an essentially minimalist position - built on language acceptable to reformists - in the debate over the Socialist Alliance?s election manifesto.

One of the most remarkable examples from the policy conference - both comical and tragic - was the vote over disarming the police: not a revolutionary demand, but a basic democratic one. Armed police are dangerous to the public. A reformist, Mike Marqusee, wanted to replace it with the demand to ?end armed policing policies against vulnerable people?. I have no doubt that we won that vote first time round. The majority of the SWP instinctively voted with us. But when Dave Nellist, in the chair, said that we needed to count the vote, we had the spectacle of seeing the SWP full-timers demonstrating quite clearly that what was going to go through was that which was acceptable to the reformists.

However, the situation as regards perspectives for development in the Socialist Alliance is changing as we speak under the influence of a number of factors.

First, looking at the election result itself - whatever the arguments as to whether it was good or bad - one thing we can all agree on is that the Socialist Alliance, unlike the Scottish Socialist Party, has yet to consolidate and solidify a real sizeable break with Labour by a significant minority of the working class. This has temporarily undercut the argument about the viability of a genuinely meaningful party.

Secondly, it was important for the development and forward momentum of the alliance that the SWP should embrace the SA. In the election period one can say that the SWP almost turned itself into the Socialist Alliance. Since then, however, we have seen a real shift in the SWP?s perspective, and that will have important repercussions. I think we are going to see a diminution of its investment in the SA as a key area of work. The SWP has developed a perspective that sees the possibility in the next period of struggles on many fronts. The anti-capitalist movement first and foremost; industrial struggles amongst the trade union rank and file; the anti-racist upsurge and the possibility of anti-fascist struggles; and we could go on.

Notwithstanding the degree to which it involved itself in the alliance during the election, the SWP?s attitude towards the SA is coloured by its belief it is the revolutionary party. Therefore it sees its own role in the coming period as relating to the different areas of struggle through different fronts, so that it can capitalise on them and grow as a result. The idea is to act as the lightning conductor for the struggle - in a way that will undermine the ability of the Socialist Alliance to present itself as the starting point, or nucleus, for a revolutionary party. The danger is that the Socialist Alliance will be reduced to what I think the SWP has always wanted it to be: a sort of electoral Anti-Nazi League.

What tasks does this situation pose? In the first instance, I do not think it poses problems of regime. The prospect of the wrangle that is going to take place at the December 1 conference over constitution leaves me stone cold. At the Liaison Committee meeting, I argued for a two-day conference and the primacy of politics - something quite unlike the Coventry conference, which was pretty awful and revolved around haggling about electoral protocols. We want the Socialist Alliance to be a real pole of attraction for workers and for youth, and they will not be inspired by internal wrangles about what happened in Hackney or about questions of structure.

This tendency must be fought and the way to do it in the next period is not by reducing the question to simply one of ?for or against a party?, but by giving the struggle for a revolutionary party some content within the Socialist Alliance. That is the line of march for revolutionaries within the SA. It means fighting on all fronts against compartmentalisation. That is the reason we move resolutions on anti-racism and on other questions. The idea of reducing the SA to the ?fag end of the fronts? until the next election is a desperate scenario, which we have to fight by saying: ?No, the Socialist Alliance has to put itself at the forefront of struggle. We must capitalise on the momentum that was evident in the election.?

Likewise, I think we have to emphasise the question of direct action. The argument for or against a revolutionary policy finds its reflection in the argument for or against direct action, as opposed to a purely electoralist orientation. It was quite clear that when Liz Davies spoke at ?Marxism?, she was talking about the whole future development of the SA in terms of it becoming an effective electoral machine. I would emphasise by contrast that we also need to be on the picket lines, organising and fighting for workers? solidarity on the demonstrations in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley and so forth.

Thirdly, we must organise inside the unions in order to develop and extend the break from Labour that has already begun. The FBU decision will be coming under attack during the next year. Campaigning around that issue will enable us to avoid being outflanked by the SWP, which will launch a series of rank and file papers to capitalise on any upsurge in trade union struggle. These moves will sideline the Socialist Alliance.

The sobering thing we have to bear in mind is that the balance of forces within the Socialist Alliance, given the weight of the SWP, is against us. The difference between now and the period leading up to the general election is that we face a far more uphill struggle as regards the question of taking the project forward and building a party.

What I am against is any sort of schematism that sees the revolutionary party in this country as coming only through the Socialist Alliance. That is not necessarily the case. It may well be that the SWP or other forces, despite our best efforts, tone down and weaken such developments. I am not in any way suggesting we should be passive in the face of that - not at all. But we may end up losing. On the other hand, over the next period there may be a range of struggles that mobilise forces for whom the Socialist Alliance is not initially attractive, but who constitute the raw material for revolutionary politics. Indeed, the Socialist Alliance?s current political limitations might well put such forces off. I am thinking primarily of anti-capitalist youth. We need to orient to them and through one means or another rally those people to a revolutionary, socialist, Marxist banner. The Socialist Alliance is not necessarily going to be the best means. We could work to try and make it do that, but we may not succeed.

This brings me to the question of regime. To me there appear to be three options, three models which will determine what the regime is, depending on the outcome of the struggle ahead. The model I favour is at the moment the least likely to come about. The policy conference showed that we could not yet win a majority for revolutionary positions - workers? government, abolition of the army and police, and so forth. We won a reasonable minority of the vote, but we should not be under any illusions. If we were able to attract serious forces, the model I would favour is one that fights for a revolutionary programme - by which I mean a transitional programme along the lines of Trotsky?s 1938 programme. This starts with and does not exclude any minimal day-to-day struggles, but seeks to find a way of taking them beyond today towards the struggle for power. That for me is the essence of revolutionary politics in programmatic terms.

If we were to win such a programme, the regime I would positively espouse in those circumstances would be a democratic centralist, revolutionary regime. By that, I do not mean the liquidation of all differences or of all factions. But I do mean a far tighter regime than exists at the moment or is likely to exist as a result of the December conference. For me, democratic centralism on the Leninist model decrees a distinct limitation on factionalism. I am absolutely in favour of anybody who has a distinct political platform being able to argue for that within the organisation, and under certain circumstances and at the discretion of the party itself, being able to carry that out publicly. The degree of openness is not a fixed or closed question, but is dependent on a whole series of factors.

Questions of regime and structure flow inevitably from the question of programme. While we place a quite sizeable and significant emphasis on programme, we do not fetishise what we have written above all experiences and developments in the class struggle. We are prepared to learn through a dialogue with the class. We are prepared to develop and refine the programme. The reason we place such an emphasis on programme is because of what we believe it is: ie, above all else a guide to action. There is no separation between programme, theory and debate, and action, tactics and strategy. The creation of Chinese walls was a feature of the degeneration of the communist movement over many years - the reduction of the programme to a totem pole. Programme is so important to us because it defines what the party does, it defines what it says to the class. I am quite happy to say, ?If you don?t do this, you will go down to terrible defeat.? Communists attempt to engage the class in dialogue over their programme.

Dialogue is the key point. No worker is going to thank you if you go up to them and say, ?Excuse me, I?m a communist and I?d like a dialogue with you. I believe in a society where there should be ?from each according to his ability; to each according to their need?. What do you think?? The dialogue has to involve something real. It, like the programme, starts from what the class is fighting around, what the key issues are. This neither involves a reduction of everything to the economic nor an elevation of everything to the democratic and the political.

This is where perspectives come in. A perspectives discussion is necessary, in which the most politically important questions are identified and the programme and cadres are oriented towards those. None of that is programme fetishism. It is recognising the programme as a tool, as a living thing that can be used as a weapon of intervention to rally the class to revolutionary solutions. That is why, for me, all questions of regime flow from programme.

If a revolutionary party has laid down a political line embodied in a programme - which embraces as well major tactical questions - then necessarily, for political, not administrative reasons, there is a limit on the nature of factionalism. If somebody completely rejects the entire programme, not just this or that part of it, then they should not belong in that party. That, in my opinion, is crucial to our understanding of regime.

Trotsky stated that factions are necessary, an ever-present part. But after defending absolutely the right to factions, he wrote: ?The revolutionary party presents a definite programme and definite tactics. This places definite and very distinct limits on the internal struggle of tendencies and groupings in advance. The very fact of membership in the Fourth International cannot but be contingent upon observance of a certain body of restrictions which reflect all the experiences of previous working class movements.? I think that is absolutely correct. Once you have recognised that the revolutionary party has a programmatic basis, then you have recognised a level of agreement that precludes the rights of factions on certain questions.

The question of the public expression of differences is, for me, a completely fluid thing. That members should have the right to conduct discussions of differences inside the organisation privately is elementary. But there is no point having a distinction between members and non-members if every dispute is public property. The only criteria you apply are those concerning whether the party itself thinks that it is acceptable in particular circumstances to conduct debate in public or, even if it does not, whether it is acceptable for minority members to express their views, write about them, and so on. Take the well known controversy within Workers Power about the nature of the Soviet state. It would be absolute madness if I, after being the most forceful defender of the old majority position, suddenly started saying, ?The new position is wonderful, and it?s marvellous that I got defeated.?

The point is that we can judge all these questions on an expedient basis, as to whether or not it aids or detracts from the tasks in hand. In any event, you make a distinction between factions, internal democracy and the right to discussion on the one hand and the level of unity in action on the other. Unity in action is absolute. Once a decision is made, it must be carried out absolutely. No disagreement. If factions are actually hampering unity in action - which can happen when political disagreements are substantial - then the minority will have to part company: it is as simple as that. That is why the history of the communist movement in its healthy period was a history of splits and fusions. There was no simple, uninterrupted rise of Bolshevism.

I am a friend, a passionate friend, of the concept of democracy within the party, with absolute guarantee of the right to form factions. But I recognise that may lead to splits. Otherwise a Tower of Babel may result, with people all speaking different languages and getting nowhere.

A revolutionary party based on democratic centralism is, however, not the likely model. I do not think we are going to win one or other version of a revolutionary programme when we have the next policy conference of the Socialist Alliance, unless the big groups pulled out and we were able to cobble something together - though this would hardly be desirable, as a party would not be likely to emerge.

Another model would arise if a majority of the Socialist Alliance embraced a centrist and reformist programme - essentially the ?80-20? method, fixing on things with which all sorts of people could agree. Such a party would be open to a vast array of rather nebulous petty bourgeois forces such as the Green Party or whatever. I do not particularly want that, but I recognise it as a possibility. In order to prevent the formation and crystallisation of a reformist bureaucracy on the basis of such an organisation, I would be in favour of having a much looser, more factional regime, as a means of preventing the right wing from dominating the new party and treating it as a Labour Party mark two in embryo.

This is not just a formal question: the reformist French Socialist Party in the 1930s was the only party in either the Second or the Third International that enshrined the right of factions and their representation at all levels of the organisation. This fooled a lot of people into thinking that Leon Blum was a great democrat. Yet the minute the Trotskyists gained influence among the youth, they were kicked out unceremoniously. Despite the party?s constitution, it was still dominated by a reformist bureaucracy.

So if the Socialist Alliance manifesto, People before profit, remains the political basis, then I am in favour of recognising that we are far from a party politically and therefore more like a patchwork quilt. Such an outcome is not what we want, what we fought for, but if that is what results we will accept it, on the basis of factions with organised platforms being a permanent feature - with the right to representation, the right to stop the bigger forces driving out and blocking our ability to advance a revolutionary perspective. There is a possibility that this could emerge in the form of a party.

The third model is the continuation of an alliance form, where quite simply the constituent elements agree to differ and come together only on the most limited programmatic basis. The reality at the moment is that we are probably in transition between the alliance form, which we have at present, and model two that I have just described. In terms of the actual constitutional proposals for December 1, we would certainly be arguing at the moment, unlike the CPGB, for the preservation of the rights of the constituent organisations, and fighting for maximum democracy and the maintenance of factions, though I would be calling them the affiliated organisations.

We will be fighting against two things: against a retreat by the Socialist Party into a utopian - in fact dystopian - dream world of federalism, which is simply an excuse for the SP to do its own thing and use the Socialist Alliance as a marriage of convenience. At the same time we will be fighting to prevent the SWP from imposing what it means by an individual membership-based Socialist Alliance, which actually liquidates and marginalises the ability of the left, of revolutionaries, to organise and argue for their politics.

A party regime, then, is not something written in stone, but proceeds from certain principles, of which democratic centralism is one. Democratic centralism should itself be viewed in terms of a principle rather than of an exact form of organisation. That principle is maximum debate prior to a decision, maximum unity in its implementation, but its actual translation into structures, into organisational forms, differs enormously depending on circumstances in the class struggle. The regime question is therefore one of flexibility.

For revolutionaries, that means that we do not put all of our eggs into the basket of the Socialist Alliance. Revolutionaries remain, under current circumstances, obliged to continue building themselves. That is not sect-building: it is recognising the importance of winning people to revolutionary politics so that within the SA the left will carry greater weight and demonstrate the relevance of revolutionary politics. It means trying to orient all the forces we come across to the class struggle and to direct action.

So the question of regime, for me, is secondary to the question of a fight for a revolutionary programme. The fate of the programmatic struggle is what will determine the regime.

In conclusion, there is no such thing as a party project in the abstract. Our only goal is a revolutionary party. We do not want an SSP to come out of this process. We are not like the ISG comrades, who say they want a revolutionary party, but then state that objective circumstances make it impossible, so they will settle for something less. We say no, we do not want that. We want a revolutionary party, because anything else either will be, or has the short-term potential to become, a brake upon the working class at best and a foe of the working class at worst.

Revolutionaries who say that the goal is just a party - separate from its political content - are making a profound mistake. We in Workers Power do not want to be implicated in any way with the creation of a party that turns on the working class. Rifondazione Comunista, for example, has voted for budget measures that represent a material threat against the working class in Italy.

However, if, despite our best efforts, we are unable to achieve the revolutionary party, and it is a question of creating an SSP or nothing, then do we work to maximise the break from Labour while retaining as far as possible our position and rights as revolutionaries within such a formation? The answer is yes. We would, if it attracted serious working class forces, be prepared to act as a revolutionary minority within it: ie, we would not consciously strive to block the creation of such an organisation.

Obviously, even within this framework there is the possibility of transitional developments. In a situation where the scales are falling from the eyes of the working class as to the true nature of the Blair project, yet the workers are far from revolutionary, do we simply counterpose the revolutionary party? No, we can operate and work with a version of the workers? party and say, ?Yes, we are in favour of the working class coming together in order to create a political voice for itself? - within which we would argue that voice should be a revolutionary one. That is a variant which could come about.

A final point on rapprochement and the road to party. There are different routes. Ought we to see rapprochement and the coming together of the groups as a catalyst? For a period I believe the Socialist Alliance was such a catalyst; for the period ahead, it may not be. Therefore attaching the building of a revolutionary party to the Socialist Alliance as a sort of definite line of march - something I do get from the Weekly Worker - smacks of schematism.

That is why the posing of a pro-party bloc in the abstract points to disagreement. Notwithstanding that, people know that Workers Power and the CPGB collaborate and we will continue to do so.