01.11.2001
Rearguard structures and vanguard politics
On December 1 the Socialist Alliance will be deciding what sort of organisation it aspires to be. In the first of a short series of articles Jack Conrad discusses what sort of ?aims? and ?structures? we are burdened with at present and argues that we must move on as a matter of urgency
Structures possibly seem a dull, convoluted and an altogether third rate subject. Especially to demagogues and the determinedly naive. But not to those who consciously inhabit history. Leninists inevitably recall the debate about membership criteria at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1903. Unexpectedly for all concerned, the Iskraists suddenly found themselves cleaved into two, bitterly opposed, factions - the Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority). The earth shattering fault line lay hidden in what at first appeared to be a minor, structural, detail - membership criteria.
What sort of structures the Socialist Alliance adopts, or aspires towards, reflects our programmatic goals and will likewise materially shape the future. By taking a wrong course, or leaving things as they are, which actually amounts to the same thing, the whole Socialist Alliance project is in danger of losing all momentum.
Our majority faction in England certainly seems content to have the Socialist Alliance in the rearguard and ambling along to the slow, debilitating, beat of routine election contests. Yet by adopting the right structures - backed as a matter of urgency by further programmatic invigoration - the opportunity exists whereby the left can be solidly united and through successive stages built into a viable mass alternative to Labourism.
When the Socialist Workers Party decided, at last, to throw its weight behind the Socialist Alliance with the June 2000 Greater London Authority elections, this gave us a vital qualitative boost in terms of resources, cadre and reach. The SWP?s entry cemented the Socialist Alliance as an alliance of socialists; principally Britain?s main left organisations. Something, it should be stressed, the CPGB consistently advocated and tenaciously fought to achieve. There was what might be called a price to pay. Insubstantial elements fell away. However there were, in both material and political terms, big gains.
In every respect this enlargement has reoriented the Socialist Alliance towards an altogether more worthwhile destination compared with the shore hugging venture planned by the original Liaison Committee. Objectively things point towards a party, though it cannot be denied that the pro-party bloc still forms a minority.
The Welsh Socialist Alliance benefited in no small measure too from the SWP?s turn away from its unsplendid isolation. Numbers and political impact have grown markedly. As for Scotland, the Scottish Socialist Party gained a valuable addition when the comrades finally secured entry on May 1 2001 ... as proved by the relaunch of Scottish Socialist Voice as a 12-page weekly. Nevertheless despite these overwhelmingly positive developments, the burning question of ?ultimate destination?, and therefore organisational ways and means, has been left hazy or gone completely unanswered by us collectively. The general election fixed our priorities for the first half of 2001. Since then though, and from almost every quarter, there has been a dawning recognition that ?something must be done?. Good.
The Socialist Alliance has grown by leaps and bounds - above all with the 2001 general election. There were 98 candidates in England and Wales and some 57,000 votes. Many hundreds of recruits signed-up. Scores of new branches sprang into existence. Garnering trade union support is now within our grasp. Yet the structures of the Socialist Alliance act like a dead weight. Our elected officers operate as a body of rank amateurs and wield hardly a jot of authority. The absence of our top officers from London and from the platforms of our rallies over the country is noticeable. And for ongoing publicity and propaganda the Socialist Alliance is expected to rely on Socialist Worker, Weekly Worker and The Socialist. These small circulation rivals ... and our web site.
Ramshackle
Organisationally the Socialist Alliance is an ineffectual, ramshackle, not to say Ruritanian affair. We have two national addresses. One in London, the other in Coventry. Applicants for membership can write to either of these two addresses. They have to have their details sent to Walsall and comrade Dave Church our membership secretary. He then informs the appropriate local Socialist Alliance, if he knows of one. Cheques, on the other hand are posted to comrade, Declan O?Neil the outgoing treasurer. The whole rigmarole takes at least a week.
Micawber-like finances are as squeezed as they are precarious. Local and regional finances remain a complete mystery to our leading committees and officers. The many-tiered membership system is bizarre. You might have to join four separate times in order to take a full part. There is no single membership system. We are an officially registered political party but employ no full time staff. We have a national office but most aspects of the Socialist Alliance are still run in spare time from spare bedrooms. Scotland and Wales are, perversely, treated as foreign countries in no small part due to an inverted English chauvinism. And as long as Tommy Sheridan occasionally nods in the direction of the Socialist Alliance, nationalism is said to be a purely a Scottish and Welsh concern. Unless you are Chris Bambery who pokes his nose in any time he wants! What of trade union work? Despite a rash of disputes on the London underground and the crisis ridden rail network the Socialist Alliance has still not taken up the CPGB?s call for a railworkers fraction or the AWL?s generous offer of handing over their Tubeworker bulletin? What goes for the RMT, Aslef and TSSA applies no less to the CWU, FBU, Unison, etc.
Simultaneously the six principal supporting organisations patrol the ideological seas with six rival flagship publications. Besides that, they employ a posse of full time workers and four of them run commercially viable print shops. So the Socialist Alliance still operates more as separate parts than a single whole. This semi-unity, fledgling, stage is itself endangered from within by the misjudged actions of one of our six principal supporting organisations - namely the Socialist Party in England and Wales. It has been systematically diluting or wilfully sabotaging common efforts: eg, running a semi-detached general election campaign; eg, there is an effective boycott in place across whole parts of the country. Serious involvement is almost entirely at the top. Worse, far worse, in the London borough of Hackney, Socialist Alliance candidates found themselves opposed by supposed allies. Such a state of affairs makes us a laughing stock. It was never tolerable. We must end it forthwith on December 1 as an integral part our structural revolution.
The structural alternatives on offer for December 1 frequently overlap but essentially revolve around two basic models - federalist and centralist. Proposals come from the SWP (supported by the International Socialist Group, John Nicholson, Mike Marqusee and Nick Wrack), the Socialist Party in England and Wales, Pete McLaren, Dave Church, the Revolutionary Democratic Group, Alliance for Workers? Liberty, Workers Power and the Communist Party of Great Britain (five of whose members are also founding signatories of the ?For a democratic and effective SA? platform). We shall touch upon all of the submissions, but I think it will be most useful if our discussion concentrates on, or broadly follows, the SWP?s draft. Not because it is the best. Not because it is the worst. The reason is straightforward. In all likelihood the SWP?s proposed constitution is set to become the substantive one on December 1, which is then subject to debate, negotiation and amendment.
The SWP - the majority faction in England - argues that ?one of the major weaknesses of the general election campaign nationally was that lines of responsibility and accountability were blurred and this also meant less coherence, more caution and weaker responses to changing events? (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p3). In other words there was no clear chain of organisational command. Definitely true. But surely the localist make-do and lack of an authoritative leadership, the disconnected and uninspired propaganda and technical shortcomings have deeper causal roots. In the last analysis everything goes back to programme. While there are some valuable nuggets to be found in the SWP?s proposals, eg, the election of executive officers, a single membership system, it does not surprise me at all, that taken as a whole the SWP cannot produce what is required. Neither the programmatic positions the SWP defends within the Socialist Alliance, nor the sum of their organisational proposals meet the needs of the day.
Let us take an initial, exploratory, foray into the programmatic thickets. Instead of taking as its point of departure the Socialist Alliance?s general election manifesto, People before profits, the SWP prefers to keep one foot firmly in our pre-history. There is a passing reference to our general election manifesto and how our policies will be ?the matter for continual debate and refinement? (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p19). However the bulk of the SWP?s ?delete all? amendment actually endorses and entrenches the clumsy, unedifying and syrupy formulations that introduce A fair society, social justice and ecological sustainability; ie, our antiquated, standing constitution which was agreed, despite stiff CPGB opposition, at the March 1999 conference in Birmingham (perhaps this dubious continuity represents the price exacted by John Nicholson in return for his support?). Speculation aside, for all its limitations, People before profit is an altogether superior document. It was the result of skilled compositing and intensive debate. Moreover it involved a much wider, and no less germane, a far more politically sophisticated membership.
Embarrassing
Frankly the programmatic formulations that validate A fair society, social justice and ecological sustainability as a whole - and by default the SWP?s subsequent structural proposals - are deeply embarrassing. They owe everything to Proudon, nothing to Marx; everything to the abstract, nothing to the concrete; everything to petty bourgeois protest politics, nothing to working class self-liberation. The less the original - disillusioned Labourite - drafters had to say, the more banal the content of their proclamations (the only other active defender of the March 1999 ?statement of aims? is Pete McLaren - seemingly a true believer - who as a corollary urges the ?re-establishment? of the antediluvian ?Network of Socialist Alliances? title). That the SWP decided not to dump the entire sorry mess demonstrates once again that the comrades fail to take programme seriously. They should have replaced the longwinded existing aims and methods with a much simpler, more pointed, statement.
The SWP?s ?delete all? constitutional amendment expects members of the Socialist Alliance to ?broadly? agree with its inherited ?statement of aims?. What are these aims? Practical proposals and goals are absent and substituting for them we find a string of grandiloquent sentimentalities and empty phrasemongering.
Where there might have been crisp, historically established principles and demands for definite rights and freedoms, there are instead good intentions about a ?fair and sustainable society?, ?social justice?, ?a popular republic?, ?peace?, ending ?discrimination? and ?economic exploitation?, etc. Take the call to promote ?peace nationally and internationally?. This soggy nonsense can obviously serve all manner of political evils - eg, the promotion of peace is also in presentday official society a cynical cover for the preparation of war.
Another obvious problem - when has a society proclaimed itself unsustainable or under the protection of injustice? Equally half-baked is the formulation that ?economic exploitation? will be replaced by a society which secures for the people ?the full return of all wealth generated by industries and services of society by means of common ownership and democratic control.? No society can do away with the necessity of putting aside reserves for emergencies or using surplus product to maintain, or augment, overall productive capacity. Similarly the SWP promises that ?where necessary? we shall restore ?such biological diversity as is essential to the viability of both global and local ecosystems.? Could that require the depopulation of London and allowing the Thames to regularly flood low lying areas in the name of restoring the ?local ecosystem? to its supposed pristine glory? Who knows?
State power
From lack of real content there logically flows empty methods. Hence the transition to a ?fair and sustainable society? will, it is said, require ?fundamental social, political and cultural changes? (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p19). There is no concept of state power or a revolutionary rupture. ?Change? will come through a ?variety of avenues? we are vaguely told and changes must be ?valuable in themselves? and ?stages towards greater change?, etc. In exactly the same, inane, spirit, the SWP?s ?statement of aims? informs the reader that the Socialist Alliance aspires as an objective to ?offer organisation, facilitation and encouragement? to whatever efforts are ?contributing to that process?.
Such barren formulations are verbose ways of saying precisely nothing - which is always the prime purpose of moralistic terminology. No one can really disagree with the slippery phrases. They have the great virtue of not frightening off liberal radicals, greens and reformists, and not committing their authors to anything serious by demanding revolutionary deeds.
Blair and New Labour are roundly condemned as a matter of routine. Labour has abandoned ?whatever aspiration? it had toward ?socialism? and is now in partnership with ?multinationals and media tycoons?. Yet - ironically - ?socialism? as a positive goal is entirely missing from the SWP?s proposed ?aims?. Amazing but true. Yet though the ?s? word hardly rates a mention, the SWP is, of course, peddling what we call ethical or sentimental socialism. Like state power and revolution, the working class and the class struggle too is entirely absent. And as Karl Marx sharply observed: ?Where the class struggle is pushed to the side as an unpleasant, ?crude? phenomenon, nothing remains as the basis of socialism but ?true love of the people? and empty phrases about ?justice?? (K Marx, F Engels SW Vol 3, Moscow 1975, p92). In practice, we must add, socialism without the rule of the working class only exists as its opposite: eg, Stalin?s USSR, Attlee?s Britain, Pol Pot?s Kampuchea, Olaf Palme?s Sweden.
Clarity is needed - especially when it comes to the greens. Every genuine socialist is, of course, an environmentalist but the problem is that very few greens even formally adhere to socialism. Terry Liddle, speaking from first hand experience - he was coordinator of Greenwich Green Party and is currently treasurer of Greenwich Socialist Alliance - insists that there is a definite element in the Green Party which is ?actively hostile to socialism? (Weekly Worker October 11). Greens occupy a petty bourgeois class-political position and contain within themselves a wide spectrum ranging from the critical-utopian to the semi-fascist: eg, David Ike, Third Wave, Green Anarchist, etc. Its best thinkers have written savage indictments of capitalism which supply wonderful ammunition for revolutionary socialists and communists. Despite that, most green ideas are confused, naive and at the end of the day reactionary.
The solution to the world?s ecological crisis lies for the greens in nature itself - now, of course, humanised. Deep greens and those of a similar hue oppose global capital. But they do so in the name of an imagined self-sufficient past, not a future of freely associated producers. There is an underlying prejudice against economic growth and technological progress. In parallel the Green Party programmatically insists upon a thoroughly inhuman - Malthusian - reduction of the number of people in Britain from 60 to 20 million; presumably along with draconian ?non-racist? immigration controls in order to prevent ?overpopulation?. Africa, China, India and the ?overpopulated? ?third world? are viewed with the same bilious eyes. People, not alienated capitalist social relations and production for its own sake, are for them the fundamental problem. Follow that route, and you eventually reach the jaws of hell.
What the Socialist Alliance must get to grips with is the task of constructing our own, Marxist approach to ecology. Grafting greenism onto socialism always fails, motivated as it is by a vain opportunist search for popularity not intellectual rigour. However, John Bellamy Foster, amongst others, has shown beyond doubt that Marxism alone makes possible ecological ways of thinking that are both thoroughly materialist and thoroughly human.
For example, in The German ideology Marx and Engels explain that: ?As long as man has existed, nature and man have affected each other? (quoted in JB Foster Marx?s ecology New York 2000, p226). Men - and women - are part of nature and as such rely on nature. In other words there exists co-evolution. Attempts by humanity to arrogantly rule over nature like a conqueror over a conquered people, like something standing outside nature, results in dire, totally unforeseen, consequences. Drought, soil exhaustion, erosion, flash floods, desertification.
Nature ?revenges? itself, writes Engels, and shows in no uncertain terms that ?we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage of all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly? (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 25, London 1987, pp460-61).
Capitalism has, though, alienated humanity from nature. There is a profound metabolic rift between humanity?s productive activity and the ecosystem. All progress under capitalism is bought at the expense of the worker and nature. The task of socialism and then communism - associated humanity - is to bring about a return of humanity to nature and nature to humanity and through that establish a sustainable balance and interchange between the two.
For a - Victorian and low-tech - picture of the communist society we envisage pick-up a copy of William Morris?s futuristic novel News from nowhere. The distinction between town and country has vanished. England is a garden scattered here and there with airy workshops. Nothing is wasted. Nothing despoilt. Production is organised not for profit but genuine use. Humanity lives in harmony with humanity therefore humanity lives in harmony with nature. Maybe the Socialist Alliance has its apprentice William Morris in China Mielville. Either way let us have an ecology commission, which beginning with first principles, painstakingly takes us from mere good intentions to a fully rounded programme.
Still hankering after a red-green popular front, comrade Pete McLaren, editor of the Socialist Alliance?s defunct The All Red and Green, actually warns of the danger of ?direct clashes? between ourselves and the ?Green Party? in elections - as happened on June 7 2001. In the same manner, Ian Birchall fantasised a while ago - as an SWP ?exercise in political science fiction?- about a ?possible? reformist ?coalition? government consisting of greens, the Socialist Alliance and independent Labour leftists (Socialist Review December 2000). His ?science fiction? served not to sound the alarm but was supposed to inspire. Heaven help us. Nevertheless those siren voices that seek ?positive links? with the likes of the Green Anarchist or who would turn the Socialist Alliance into a rainbow coalition are nowadays increasingly marginal. The Socialist Alliance unites reds as reds. Excellent.
The reader is bound to ask whether communists actually want green socialists to join the Socialist Alliance? Absolutely - as long as they accept democratically agreed aims and policies as the basis for united action and abide by our rules. Socialist greens should be offered the hand of friendship and positively welcomed: eg, the resounding vote by the Green Socialist Network to ?affiliate to? the Socialist Alliance - at its October 6 2001 AGM - is cause for celebration (Weekly Worker October 11). Not because of its claimed 300 membership, but because its represents a distinct socialist viewpoint which has been won to put its efforts into the bigger Socialist Alliance project. Naturally this unity does not put an end to polemical exchanges. On the contrary unity for us is premised upon constant political debate.
Labour reinvented
The ?background and aims? proposals drafted by the Socialist Party in England and Wales in their alternative constitution have, in comparison to the SWP?s, the decided advantage of being compact, and actually upholding the goal of ?a socialist transformation of society.? True, the approach to the Labour Party is rigidly closed-ended, but then the same goes for the SWP and the standing constitution. We are told with absolute certainty that the Labour Party cannot reverse its embrace of the ?free market?. The idea that presentday monopoly capitalism has anything in common with a ?free market? is a complete fallacy, of course. Furthermore, the Labour Party - be warned - would quickly repaint itself deepest red if socialism once again grew in popularity.
There is, however, a definite sub-text in the ?aims? which, by rather plodding implication, seeks to legitimise Peter Taaffe?s altogether problematic, not to say hostile, dealings with the Socialist Alliance. The Socialist Alliance ?will attempt to support groups of workers who take steps towards ... independent representation? (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p21). Eg, SPEW standing against us under the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation umbrella or Hackney shop stewards? The Socialist Alliance could just about live with the comrades? cut and paste ?background and aims? but we would argue for something along these lines:
?1. The Socialist Alliance aims to build a political alternative to the Labour Party. We do this by fighting elections, supporting all workers in struggle, taking a lead on all democratic questions and building support for the Socialist Alliance within the working class.
?2. Our goal is the creation of a new working class political party dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and achieving socialism, ie, the rule of the working class, and through that general freedom.
?3. Until a full programme is adopted, the manifesto, People before profit, agreed by the March 10 2001 Birmingham policy conference, and as subsequently amended, will function as the programme of the alliance?.