04.09.2002
Essential shadings
Are there divisions in the Alliance for Workers' Liberty over the Socialist Alliance or is it all just a question of "personalities and superficialities"? Mark Fischer attempts to dig below the surface
Mark Osborn and Gerry Byrne of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty have featured recently in these pages pushing the idea that I and other comrades in the CPGB are essentially sectarian fantasists (Weekly Worker August 1, August 29). For our own nefarious purposes - a sneaky attempt to ferment, in the words of comrade Byrne, "a hoped-for split" in the happy ranks of the AWL - we are accused of conjuring differences out of the ether. Concretely, our crime is that we have pointed to a manifest tension that exists between those who have a generally more sympathetic attitude to the Socialist Alliance and the CPGB, on the one hand, and those mired in a dismissive, even actively hostile attitude to the rest of the left, on the other. Oddly enough, AWLers blithely admit to not having rigorously explored the "differences of emphasis and assessment" (Gerry Byrne) that exist in their ranks. The organisation has not held a serious discussion of its SA perspectives. Comrade Sean Matgamna tells me that "as it happens, a, so far smallish, discussion on the SA has recently started in the AWL" (my emphasis, email, September 2). In fact, the lines of demarcation we have pointed to - although still fuzzy - are real. Of course, by applying two categorical poles - the 'economists' and the 'politicians' - to the shades of opinion, we probably assign a degree of purity and hardness to them that they do not yet have. In that sense, we are one step ahead of the inevitable unfolding of what exists. But that is all. I shall briefly run over the evidence we have presented for the divisions that are plain - it all seems to me pretty uncontroversial. Then, more importantly, I want to start to discuss what this tells us about the culture of the AWL and how this contrasts with genuine democratic centralism. First, are comrades Jill Mountford and Mark Osborn generally more hostile to the Socialist Alliance project? With admirable candour, comrade Mountford describes herself as markedly "cooler" than other AWLers on the alliance. End of argument on that one, then. Comrade Osborn describes the SA as nothing more than an "SWP electoral front", an organisation towards which he expresses deep antipathy (Weekly Worker July 18). In the comrade's recent letter to this paper - while he generously conceded that "organisations can change" - he mostly took it upon himself to warn us against "wish-driven hopes" about the SA. He reminded us that the SWP leadership "are responsible for the SWP's sterile, repressive internal regime "¦ and for the SWP's continuing sectarian orientation to the labour movement". Now, "just because the SWP have made a turn to the Socialist Alliance "¦ does not mean all this has changed" (Weekly Worker August 1). This, presumably, is precisely the sort of bunker mentality that comrades such as Pete Radcliff - a candidate for this "SWP electoral front" in last year's general election - criticised at the AWL's March conference as an "immediate hostility" to the SWP and all its works. He explicitly warned that "too many comrades are too easily repelled by the SWP" - a narrow mindset, as "we can now relate to SWP members, some of whom are sympathetic" to the AWL's message. In the same debate, another comrade warned against a "culture of anti-SWPism", after someone had baldly stated that "we cannot unite the left in the SA" and that the primary purpose of AWL engagement was to "break off sections of the SWP" (Weekly Worker March 14). Clearly, an important difference of emphasis amongst the comrades. Is it too presumptuous of us to take an educated guess about which position comrade Osborn would have more sympathy for? It would also be interesting to learn what the comrade feels about Solidarity's self-definition as "a paper of the Socialist Alliance", which appears on its masthead every two weeks. If the SA is nothing other than just the latest cynical front by the vile sectarians of the SWP, how does he regard the regular mini-'SA paper' insert in Solidarity, which reports "unofficial news, debate and campaigns" of the SA in a partisan and engaged style? Is it simply a ploy to "break off sections of the SWP"? Is that how you view it, Mark? Is that how all AWLers view it? I doubt it. So surely it is worthwhile exploring precisely why this organisation actually is in the SA? If it is nothing more than an "SWP electoral front", then the AWL's allegiance simply lends credibility to an essentially disreputable project. Yet what are the AWL's perspectives for the SA? Comrade Byrne assures us that there are no "pro-SA party elements within the AWL" (Weekly Worker August 29). So do the majority believe that it is simply a site where AWLers can engage with and win "sections of the SWP"? Sean Matgamna appears to believe so, as he criticised some AWL members at the March conference for not going "aggressively" after SWPers - after all, "for the first time in decades it is possible to talk to them" (Weekly Worker March 14). Unsurprisingly, AWLers express a range of attitudes towards the SA as a project. In his email to myself, Sean Matgamna tells us: "You observe that we are not all equally enthusiastic about the SA, or equally involved in it, or equally happy to be linked to the popular frontist SWP "¦ Truth. Matter of fact. No dispute!" (September 2). OK, we have identified - from what we have seen and read - comrades Osborn and Mountford as more hostile than most. Perhaps this is incorrect. The comrades have the opportunity to make their attitude clearer in the course of discussion. The omens are not good as far as comrade Osborn is concerned, I fear. In the letter quoted above, he concludes his litany of SWP atrocities with the (indisputable) observation that its involvement in the SA "doesn't mean that all this has changed". Of course, everything has not changed - but something has, hasn't it? The adherence of the SWP to the SA made it a viable project. In SA ranks we now find the vast majority of the revolutionary left - excluding only the Socialist Party of the serious groups - united to contest elections. This revolutionary left has collectively debated the politics that informs its intervention in an open and democratic manner. It has - again democratically - elected a leadership charged with fighting for these politics. This leadership meets and the different positions of the contending trends (ie, political currents that involve more than one of the constituent groups) are openly reported and criticised, primarily by the Weekly Worker. The logic of creating such a leadership and pooling resources for united actions bumps up against the cramped limits the SWP has tried to impose. There is ongoing debate about forming a working class party, what sort of party that should be, its relationship to Labour, the need for a common newspaper, the open expression of differences in its pages and so on. In a parallel development in Scotland, the SWP has actually entered the Scottish Socialist Party as a permanent faction - with all the contradictions that implies for the group's oft-stated hostility to 'factionalism'. The notion that the SWP - as the main active agent in this sea change on the British left - is simply the same politically as it was 10 years ago when it was giving Mark Osborn a kicking is just nonsense. The organisation could end up worse, of course. It will not be the same, however. Comrade Osborn is determined to keep the SWP trapped in a template of 'sectarian monstrosity'. Our more positive attitude has nothing to do with "wish-driven hopes". Of course, the SA project could end in grief. It almost certainly will without a positive and whole-hearted engagement by the healthier forces of the left. This active approach guides our whole work. In contrast, comrade Osborn seems to radiate a passive sectarian haughtiness. To varying degrees, this attitude clearly infects wider swathes of the AWL. Gerry Byrne - giving a cost-benefits analysis of the CPGB and AWL uniting to produce an unofficial SA paper - writes that the CPGB "already have all their eggs in the SA basket; we're involved in lots of other work which could be disrupted by the change" (Weekly Worker August 29). This is precisely the problem. For the AWL, the SA is simply one arena of work alongside its student work, its trade unions, its anti-war work, etc. In this way, they replicate the work practices of the sects, of course. So there is a marked lack of engagement by the bulk of the AWL in SA work. Essentially, it seems to be viewed as part of the AWL's ongoing turf war with the SWP for many. For others, it is perhaps more. Next, the allegation that this sort of informed speculation is nothing but a petty "concentration on personalities and superficialities" (Mark Osborn Weekly Worker August 1). On the contrary, for us taking seriously what individual comrades in organisations like the AWL think and say means that we take seriously the category of working class politician. Not as an ego-massage for members of small groups, but in the same spirit that Lenin replied to comrades who complained about his ruthless openness: ""¦ there can be no mass party, no party of the class, without full clarity of essential shadings, without an open struggle between the various tendencies, without informing the masses as to which leaders are pursuing this or that line. Without this, a party worthy of the name cannot be built "¦" (my emphasis, VI Lenin CW Vol 13, Moscow 1977, p159). In contrast, comrade Matgamna writes that "these implicit differences of approach [in the AWL towards the SA], it is true, may at a later stage become important: it is one of the characteristics of the sectarian pedant in politics that he tries to anticipate such possible future differences in a pre-emptive, artificial, and usually destructive way" (email, September 2). Of course, we do not stand for "destructive" debates between 'artificially' counterposed positions. However, we suggest that what so far has maintained the AWL's fragile unity on this central question is the fact that it has not been properly addressed. What we advocate is that the "essential shadings" in the AWL on this - the concrete manifestation of the party question in Britain today - are explored in serious open debate which allows "the masses" to see which leaders are "pursuing this or that line". We believe it is an aspect of genuine democratic centralism that an organisation - and its leadership in particular - should display a degree of energy in going after ideas, in exposing what is backward both in its own ranks and outside them. While such ideas may not have solidified into hard, discernable factions, their existence - even in half-developed form - is important. This is why Martov commented that the editors of Iskra - a paper with a rather honourable pedigree in our common tradition - "strove to make sure that 'all that is ridiculous' appears in 'a ridiculous form'" and to "expose 'the very embryo of a reactionary idea hidden behind a revolutionary phrase'" (my emphasis - cited in M Liebman Leninism under Lenin London 1985, p29). To reiterate, comrade Matgamna is correct. A sense of balance and common sense needs to be maintained. Comrades know that not every meeting of CPGBers is a polemic gore-fest, with participants taking turns to jump to their feet denouncing the person next to them in a sort of foam-flecked Mexican wave. However, it is a characteristic of our group that we do take our own differences seriously and, when we discern one judged potentially important, we take time and expend effort to open it up (see our recent discussion on democratic centralism, for example). In a different political context, Sean Matgamna made the same essential point himself at the time of the fuel protests in 2000. A sharp division had arisen in the ranks of the AWL over this question, with a section of the leadership around Mark Osborn essentially tailing the petty and small bourgeois elements who were blockading oil depots, etc. Justifying why he was "not 'letting it go'", comrade Matgamna wrote that "other things being equal, it might be better to let the nonsense at the national committee go - to regard it as inconsequential chicken shit - and move on". This would be wrong, as "there is a limit to the quantity of apolitical chicken shit that can be allowed to accumulate in the central political machinery of the AWL before the machinery becomes "¦ clogged up". Indeed, without such a sorting out, "this could be an NC waiting for the 'issue' that will blow it apart" (email, December 29 2000). Thus, comrade Byrne may be correct that what exists at present in the AWL are "differences of emphasis and assessment" over the SA. But, as our common history should teach us, differences of emphasis - as was the case between the 'hard' and 'soft' Iskraists, for example - can anticipate rather more dramatically opposed positions.
Worker