15.11.2001

Socialist alliance

Factional rights cannot be denied

One notable lacuna in the Socialist Workers Party?s proposed constitution for December 1 is the ?right to form distinct temporary or long-term political platforms? (?For a democratic and effective Socialist Alliance?).

This right is supported under a variety of guises by just about every other faction and prominent personality. Eg, ?caucuses?, ?members? platforms?, ?affiliated organisations?. Sectionalism should not be encouraged, but if black British or Asian British, female or gay comrades wish to form distinct platforms/factions, so be it. That should be their right. (We distinguish between such platforms and formally established Socialist Alliance committees with a special remit to promote our agitational and propaganda work amongst women, youth, homosexuals, the black Asian and black British, etc, sections of the population.)

Such a right needs to be emphasised, especially given the often appalling anti-democratic regimes that have marred the internal life of the sects. As to the sects themselves, Dave Church is quite right when he argues that the Socialist Alliance should ?not require? the dissolution of the existing supporting organisations. For Socialist Alliance purposes they can transform themselves into ?affiliated/confederated? national organisations. Put another way, there must be the right to continue in the form of factions, platforms or caucuses in the constitution.

Unlike Workers Power, the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Alliance for Workers? Liberty, communists do not propose any automatic representation for these or any other parts. Consistent democracy would surely see those factions/caucuses that commanded any degree of serious support - judged politically, not by an arbitrary mathematical formula - included on the executive committee.

As a fallback we have suggested that recognised platforms - set at an extremely low limit of 20 paid-up Socialist Alliance members - ought to be entitled to send a representative to the executive with speaking but no voting rights. These platforms ought also to have the constitutional right to submit motions to the executive and conference under their own chosen name.

The SWP has flatly rejected all such proposals. Outside the frame of the constitution it is prepared to admit the existence of the factions and the need to incorporate them into the executive committee, especially those who have ?successfully collaborated in the building of the Socialist Alliance? (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p28).

But why not go the whole hog and recognise the right to form factions? The answer is not hard to find. The SWP has no desire the lead the transformation of the Socialist Alliance into a fully-fledged party. Factional rights being, of course, an organic feature of a party, not a ?united front?, which our Procrustean SWP has as its chosen ideal for the Socialist Alliance. Here, in this category, is to be discovered the theoretical origins of the SWP?s misplaced opposition not only to factions, but to a Socialist Alliance political paper, serious internal political debate and education, a rounded revolutionary programme, etc. Evidently the SWP is at one and the same time our biggest asset and our biggest problem.

Officially the SWP designates the Socialist Alliance as a united front between revolutionary socialists and left Labourites. The International Socialist Group and the Revolutionary Democratic Group have echoed this warped view.

What is a united front? In the canon of Marxism - eg, the 4th Congress of the Communist International - a united front refers to a particular tactic, or set of tactics, designed to win over the working class to the side of communism. By entering into negotiations and agreeing to jointly campaign with social democratic misleaders, communists gain the ear of their followers. The aim is to put us, the communists, at the forefront of the workers? day to day struggles and in the process secure mass support. So the united front is an initiative whereby communists actively fight alongside the mass of workers in order to defeat and replace reformist traitors.

That hardly describes the Socialist Alliance. The unity we have achieved is between a range of overwhelmingly Marxist or at least Marxian individuals - often former members of extinct and extant groups - and the revolutionary groups themselves. The largest being the Socialist Workers Party, of course, which still counts its membership in the few thousands, not tens of thousands ... certainly not the millions necessary for a decisive socialist breakthrough in a country like Britain.

It is not a matter of abstruse theory. By designating the Socialist Alliance a united front, the SWP implicitly limits us in terms of tempo and scope to what it reckons is acceptable to left reformism. Apart from the historic bankruptcy of left reformism, the unsoundness of the argument is immediately apparent. Where are the left reformists? Mike Marqusee hardly fits the bill. Nor does Nick Wrack, Dave Osler or Anna Chen.

Social democracy        

The Socialist Alliance has never contained anything more than a smattering of groups and individuals the SWP and co might care to define in terms of the tradition of social democracy: eg, Leeds Left Alliance, Democratic Labour Party (Walsall) and the now defunct Independent Labour Network. Even then we would do well to actually listen to these comrades and their accounts of why they broke with Labour.

Dave Church, former leader of Walsall council, tells how the rightwing Labour bureaucracy used to label him a communist. Within the Socialist Alliance the comrade freely talks of his politics using Marxist categories. The Socialist Alliance must encourage Labourites to finalise their break from Labourism. Not perversely attempt to keep Labourites as Labourites - albeit in exile - for the sake of an abstract schema.

Of course, the comrades have their sights set upon the mass of Labour voters. And to ensnare those who are becoming disillusioned with New Labour and to provide them with what appears to be a comfortable political home, the SWP bloc desperately tries to adulterate or tone down our commonly held principles and would-be programme. This is done so as to fashion us into a trap.

The Socialist Alliance is privately visualised as a transmission belt into the SWP - supposedly the revolutionary party, but in actuality a state capitalist confessional sect. Today they join the Socialist Alliance. Tomorrow the SWP. That is the plan. So instead of thrashing out our own common ideas as Marxists and revolutionaries and then unashamedly and confidently presenting them to the working class, the SWP et al do their best to ensure that we routinely stand on priority pledges which, taken as a package, can best be described as warmed over social democracy. Stop the closure of X. Cut spending on Y. Don?t privatise Z.

Not that we should belittle or ignore such matters - the role of revolutionary socialists and communists is, however, to generalise, to raise and integrate all grievances and demands and immediately direct them towards the overthrow of the existing state.

Mistakenly there is no recognition that militants - and in time the broadest layers, having fallen out with Blair?s Labour Party, and establishment politics in general - can be won to full blown Marxism by a direct course, or leap, as opposed to some dishonest and programmatically unviable halfway house. Real people and real change are absent from the schema. Of course, as a rounded body of historically accumulated knowledge, Marxism can only be grasped through painstaking, extensive and ongoing study.

However, Marxism?s straightforward insistence on the reality of classes and class struggle, consistent promotion of extreme democracy and heaven-storming mission of universal human self-liberation means that millions of so-called ordinary men and women can quickly, easily and passionately come to see Marxism and its ?big ideas? as their own. Individuals invariably have their Damascene conversion, the decisive moment when they suddenly see the light.

In Prague, Nice and Genoa SWP contingents chant flamboyant, anarchist-style anti-capitalist slogans. But that heady brew is not for the consumption of the mass of electors in Britain. Here, through the Socialist Alliance, the SWP ventriloquist speaks on behalf of the dead body of old Labour and offers a series of emaciated priority pledges that in their totality fail to transcend the system of capital or even the constitutional monarchy system.

High politics     

Democracy and high politics, which alone can forge the workers into a potential ruling class, are only to be found tucked away in the nooks, crannies and crevasses of our 2001 general election manifesto. Put another way, the SWP - and the wider Socialist Alliance majority - is still yet to break with economism. At this juncture the SWP cannot therefore properly lead the Socialist Alliance, despite the welcome flexibility and initiative displayed by the post-Cliff quadrivirate of Chris Bambery, Alex Callinicos, Chris Harman and John Rees.

What of SPEW? Peter Taaffe is galled by the prospect of his rank and file mixing with other forces on the left and being contaminated by the dangerous ideas of unity. He is also blindly searching for a prophylactic formula that will magically restore the fortunes of his rapidly declining and fragmenting organisation. Incapable, it seems, of putting the interests of the whole to the fore, his sole concern has been his survival as general secretary of an accidentally but appropriately named sect. Rumour has it that if the SWP?s structural proposals go through at the December 1 Socialist Alliance conference, SPEW will declare that it will no longer consider itself involved. What that concretely means for a semi-detached organisation which deliberately stands candidates against its allies in elections is hard to fathom. Possibly various individuals will stay as individuals. That is up to them. But brinkmanship and threats of splits must now be squarely faced down.

Politically, it hardly needs adding, SPEW constitutes the right wing of the Socialist Alliance. Under the banner of Marxism it advocates a completely bombastic and apocalyptic version of left reformism. Note: SPEW?s hopes for socialism rely on a cataclysmic economic slump. As an opportunist chameleon SPEW colours red everything that suits - Kier Hardie, the Labour Party, Stalin?s five-year plan, Assad?s Syria, Gorbachev?s counterrevolution within the counterrevolution, Burma, the black separatism of Panther (UK), Scottish nationalism, feminism, the petty bourgeois fuel protests, etc.

Obviously the Socialist Party in England and Wales fears being swamped by the SWP. Peter Taaffe?s ?Ken Livingstone and a new workers? party? article which appeared in the April 2000 issue of Socialism Today ended in an anti-SWP diatribe. Interestingly it earned a stinging rebuke from the Scottish Socialist Party?s international secretary, Frances Curren. She accuses SPEW of making a number of big ?mistakes? in London and a ?yearning for a return of the glory days of entrism? in the Labour Party. Instead of engaging in idle chatter about a new mass party she rightly urges SPEW to throw its weight behind the living Socialist Alliance project (CWI Members Bulletin May 2000). Quite right.

The CPGB is convinced that the best way to overcome fear of SWP (or anyone else?s) domination is to consistently strengthen democracy and, yes, build a strong common leadership through inclusion (that is why we advocate an election preparation committee and a recommended list which draws upon all talents).

What of the CPGB itself? Inevitably, as we think of ourselves as amongst the most far-sighted, consistent and selfless components of the Socialist Alliance, the CPGB has tried to present radical, ambitious and yet fully realisable and coherent proposals. It may be said without exaggeration that what the Weekly Worker proposes invariably finds confirmation in the grain of events which we have helped to direct and shape.

Though SPEW likes to peddle the myth of a long and undeviating involvement, it was the CPGB that took the initiative in establishing the London Socialist Alliance in January 1999. SPEW hardly lifted a finger. Our comrade Anne Murphy subsequently broke the SWP?s two decades of auto-Labourism and in a small way helped to edge the comrades towards the strategic-tactic of revolutionaries standing together in elections. She secured active SWP support, standing as the Socialist Unity candidate in the North Defoe ward (Hackney). Having a fully theorised understanding of the agitational purchase and educational importance of the election tactic in the present period of reaction sui generis, we did everything within our power to stand slates of Socialist Alliance candidates in local, regional and European elections. From the start we argued for and in due course won a full list in the GLA elections.

On the Liaison Committee our delegates were, to begin with, alone in flagging the target of 50-plus candidates for the June 7 2001 general election and calling for a London headquarters. Some wanted six candidates. Others 20. Nothing more could be afforded. We were also determined to provide practical means whereby coordination between ourselves and the Scottish Socialist Party and the Welsh Socialist Alliance could be democratically facilitated. The CPGB proposed that election committee seats be reserved for the SSP and the WSA and that, together with these comrades, we set the target of 100-plus candidates on a UK-wide basis and thus secure the right for a nationwide TV party political broadcast (the election committee is now our executive committee). And thankfully what began as CPGB madness now finds acceptance as the bottom line of Socialist Alliance common sense.

Furthermore the CPGB has also distinguished itself by steadfastly championing an ever widening and ever deepening democracy in the Socialist Alliance. That is why we champion the freedom to dissent: it creates the best conditions to centralise agreed actions.

Coventry         

At the Socialist Alliance?s Coventry conference in September 2000 the CPGB and its co-thinkers were able to act as ?king makers? and score a string of successes which advanced the mutually compatible principles of democracy and centralism. The shameful Mike Marqusee-SWP ban on selling partisan literature was reversed. A body blow against bureaucratic centralism.

Yet, as we freely admit, in terms of numbers the two - conservative - blocs dwarfed us. It should also be pointed out that our motions, recommending that the Marxist vision of socialism as an act of working class self-liberation be included in our 2001 election manifesto, were soundly, but revealingly, defeated by their combined votes.

Our SWP and SPEW partners voted in that regressive way as a direct corollary of their self-serving perspectives. Opportunist narrowness either holds them back or actually throws them back. The CPGB?s intention, as authentic Leninists, is in contrast to pull everybody and everything forward. That explains our desire to give form and breathe life into the forces of pro-partyism - hence the ?For a democratic and effective Socialist Alliance? platform.

Since its launch this pro-party bloc has won an impressive and steadily expanding body of support. Diffuse though we still are, everything suggests that our forces have now overtaken SPEW in terms of support within the Socialist Alliance Through this bloc must come a hegemonic Socialist Alliance majority that is committed to the positive supersession of the sects.

If the SWP led majority refuses to carry out their duty and launch a Socialist Alliance paper perhaps this bloc should consider the viability of a minority paper - a paper not primarily directed at criticising the SWP and SPEW but which is aimed at building the Socialist Alliance and equipping it with the most advanced politics and theory. We are neither anti-SWP nor anti-SPEW. Their tireless dedication, cadre and undoubted achievements command our respect. Yet the age of the sects has passed. The time has arrived when energies and resources must be devoted to an immeasurably more rewarding task. The building of the Socialist Alliance into an all-Britain combat party of the working class.

Jack Conrad