11.09.2002
Respond to documents
Mark Fischer claims that the Alliance for Workers' Liberty "has not held a serious discussion of its Socialist Alliance perspectives", and therefore we are an unstable amalgam of "economists" (people immersed in the economic class struggle and its direct extensions, to the neglect of broader politics) and "politicians" (Weekly Worker September 5). His evidence? He started this whole line of argument on the basis of titbits from his private conversations with my comrades Mark Osborn and Jill Mountford at our summer school, notably Mark describing an SWP leader as a "sectarian pig" (Weekly Worker July 18). Damning evidence of "economism", that! Mark Osborn replied that "political people assess political divisions through political documents, speeches, etc" (Weekly Worker August 1). Does Mark Fischer take the point? No. His new full-page article repeats his private chats with Jill and Mark Osborn and his speculations about their demeanour. On Mark Fischer's Geiger counter, apparently, "comrade Osborn seems to radiate a passive sectarian haughtiness". Aside from that, mostly Mark Fischer has tiny excerpts snipped out of context from Sean Matgamna's 'Critical notes on the CPGB/WW' (on our website, www.workers liberty.org). Example - Mark quotes Sean: "We [AWL] are not all equally enthusiastic about the Socialist Alliance or equally involved in it, or equally happy to be linked to the Popular Frontist SWP ... Truth. Matter of Fact. No dispute!" Following sentences in Sean's notes, not quoted: "Neither in [our] conference [which Mark Fischer attended by invitation], school nor paper, nor in speeches, writing, or whispered comments, have you seen, heard or read any evidence of Jill's and Mark Osborn's 'syndicalist opposition' to AWL involvement in the Socialist Alliance ... How do you get from your observation of different degrees of AWL enthusiasm for, and involvement in, the SA to the nonsense you published in your paper about a 'syndicalist' 'opposition' around named leading members of AWL?" So Mark thinks that there is a "secret" AWL, behind the profane and visible one of conferences, documents and decisions? Why? Is it that your culture takes it as normal that organisations always have "secret" internal calculations and disputations behind their public deliberations? Is there a "secret" CPGB/WW? For all the CPGB/WW's talk about "openness", you have never reciprocated our invitations to you to attend our internal conferences. You were rather upset when we acquired a copy of your perspectives document, which did indeed contain "secret" calculations. But we do not work that way. Mark fills out his page with a disquisition on how Lenin teased out political differences. What Lenin did for the Russian revolutionaries a century ago, Mark does for us now? Hmmm. To borrow a comment from Sean's notes, this "delusory omniscience ... imaginary virtue of the kibitzing village gossip, expert at everybody's business but his own" is to Lenin's authentic politics what karaoke is to proper singing! Lenin wrote no articles of freewheeling speculation based on what (for example) Martov said in some private conversation, or what attitude Martov seemed to "radiate". The real Lenin, when he judged that the party was "sick" and in "a fever", wrote: "a demand [must be] made for the most exact, printed documents that can be thoroughly verified. Only a hopeless idiot will believe oral statements ..." Quoting Sean out of context again, Mark Fischer suggests "discussion on the Socialist Alliance" has only "recently started" in the AWL, and is "so far smallish". Debate in the AWL about what would become the Socialist Alliance started in earnest with a discussion article by "John Nihill" (Sean) in Workers' Liberty of September 1998. Critical comment followed in the next Workers' Liberty (October/ November 1998). In January 1999 we published a full special issue of the magazine on left unity. At our February 1999 conference there was much debate. Some comrades opposed our involvement in what was then called the United Socialists coalition for the Euro-elections. We published the resolution passed by the conference, and two defeated minority texts. In March 2000, a coalition campaign was underway with the banner 'London Socialist Alliance' for the Greater London Authority elections, and we had another AWL conference debate. The differences were smaller. Again, we published both conference decisions and defeated minority texts. In September 2000 we drew together our ideas on 'Issues and directions for the Socialist Alliance' in a special broadsheet. In early 2001 we produced a broadsheet with proposals for left unity; in June 2001 another, 'After the [June 2001] election: the future of the Socialist Alliance'. Workers' Liberty of September 2001 carried a compressed version of our assessment of the alliance after the election, and an extended discussion of the evolution of the Socialist Workers Party. In February 2002 another AWL conference discussed a resolution reprising the reasoning we had developed from 1998 onwards, updating our assessment of the Socialist Alliance after its December 2001 conference, and summarising directions for our work. That time, the only minority submission was one that fell because not a single comrade was willing to move on it on the floor of conference (we still printed it). Life continues. Things develop. The Socialist Alliance has its ups and (since May this year, rather markedly) its downs. Our discussions continue. Maybe our discussions will widen into clear political differences, as in 1999. Maybe they will level out today's different degrees of feeling about the alliance into effective consensus, as in February this year. I don't know. What I do know is that we will proceed by writing down ideas, studying documents, and voting on resolutions, not by speculating about each others' offhand remarks and body-language. And that if Mark Fischer wants to contribute usefully to the process, he should do it by responding to our documents. Or, at least, that he would do it better that way. For, underneath all the gossip-column speculation and Lenin-posturing in Mark's article, there are two serious strands of argument. One is on 'areas of work'. "For the AWL," Mark claims, "the SA is simply one arena of work alongside its [AWL's] student work, its trade union [work], its anti-war work, etc. In this way, they replicate the work [worst?] practices of the sects." Guilty as charged. We argue for the SA to develop towards a party which does serious student, trade-union and anti-war work. We make specific proposals for SA activities. But for now, and for tomorrow, we succeed in only a few of those proposals. In the meantime, student, trade-union and anti-war struggles exist. What do we do about them? Content ourselves with publishing proposals about what the SA should do? Or take our responsibilities and be active ourselves, do our own work in those struggles? Mark's claim that by doing our own student, trade union and anti-war work we replicate "the worst practices of the sects" makes sense only if the proper "partyist", non-sect line is to confine oneself to advising or imploring the Socialist Alliance. And that takes me on to the second strand: the SWP. Mark contrasts those (bad) AWLers who are in the Socialist Alliance only to "break off sections of the SWP" and the others (better ones) who have more generous "partyist" motives. Our February 2002 conference document is pretty clear on what we think about the SWP and the Socialist Alliance. One: the SWP's "turn to the SA is no more a 'break with sectarianism' than (all qualifications and differences granted) was the Communist Parties' turn in the mid-1930s from the Third Period to the Popular Front". Two: "the turn to joint work has meant a cultural change for many members of the SWP. To speculate about SWP evolving gradually into open, democratic, pro-unity, revolutionary politics would be foolish; to neglect the opportunity to develop dialogue with... SWP members would be foolish." Three: "On a cold calculation, the prospects are not good either for the SA being able to present wider electoral challenges to New Labour, or for it becoming the natural home for working class activists who want to fight Blair ... The SWP [will] prevent the SA gaining sufficient political life and activities." Four: "Even if we calculate that our maximum result from the SA, realistically, is likely to be discussing with and convincing individuals and small groups, we must be in the SA as activists with policies, proposals and perspective for the SA as a whole, fighting energetically for the SA as a whole to adopt them". Five: "Probably not tomorrow, maybe not for years yet, but some day before too long, the SWP will go into crisis. And then a lot will depend on how many activists can be recycled from that crisis." In short: we fight for the Socialist Alliance to develop a full political life. We calculate that struggle cannot succeed fully without a crisis in the SWP. We fight anyway. If our work can achieve no more, in the short term, than to "break off sections of the SWP", that will be because of the inertia of the SWP, not because of any prejudged sectarianism of ours. No contradictions there - but a different approach from the CPGB/WW's. Mark Fischer's claim that proper "partyist" politics are politics centred on exhortations to the Socialist Alliance is actually a claim for politics centred on admonitions to the SWP. "The adherence of the SWP to the SA made it a viable project ... the SWP [is] the main active agent in this sea change on the British left." To bolster this approach he needs a false "compulsory optimism" about the evolution of the SWP. Thus, Mark Fischer claims that Mark Osborn must have a "bunker mentality" if he thinks that the SWP still has a "sterile, repressive internal regime" and "sectarian orientation to the labour movement". No, Mark Fischer insists, the SWP is not "the same politically as it was 10 years ago". By scorning "comrade Osborn ... determined to keep the SWP trapped in a template of 'sectarian monstrosity'", Fischer indicates that the SWP is not just different from 10 years ago. It is seriously better. Suitable "partyist" remonstrations from the CPGB/WW can make it better and better. You are forever at pains to play up the "good sides" of the SWP, and to play down their faults as no more than being "economistic and soft" (Weekly Worker September 5). The facts say different. Of course many SWP members are good socialists - today as 10 years ago. It is excellent that more of them are now willing to work and talk with other socialists in a civilised way. But the SWP as a whole, today's SWP which deliberately angles its self-presentation on Israel-Palestine so as "not to appear antagonistic" to islamist demonstrations, and which switches its line on the euro, right over to advocating alliance with the nationalist CPB, without even a blip of internal debate, is not "better" than the SWP of 10 years ago. In some ways it is worse. Mark's approach comes down to "building a revolutionary party" by proxy, by way of advice and remonstrations to the SWP. We reject that. The difference of approach here is probably what lies behind, for example, the dispute we had at the December 2001 Socialist Alliance conference, where on supposed "partyist" principle you opposed our advocacy of guaranteed rights for minorities in electing the alliance executive, and supported 'winner-takes-all' first-past-the-post. In any case, it is a real political difference, worthy of discussion - discussion in the actual spirit of Lenin, based on "exact documents". You could start, maybe, by printing the whole of Sean's 'Critical notes' in the Weekly Worker, not just titbits, so that readers puzzled about what's been going on in your pages since Mark's first leap into speculation on July 18 can have some rounded statement of the issues. Martin Thomas
Worker