30.04.2003

What is 'sectarianism'?

Comrades who have been around the left for longer than a week will have certainly heard the word 'sectarian' applied to this or that group in the movement. It functions as a generic insult and will have different content depending on who is saying it about whom.

Here are a few variations: "The SWP is sectarian".

As used by groups such as Workers Power or the Socialist Party, this should be taken to mean - 'The SWP is bigger and more successful than us. It treats its smaller rivals on the left with contempt and appears to regard little other than recruitment to itself as of importance - ie, exactly the same way that we would like to act if only we were big enough.'

"Workers Power and the Socialist Party are sectarians" - in the lexicon of the SWP this means, 'They're smaller than us'.

"The CPGB is sectarian". Actually quite a common charge, what this actually means is - 'When the Weekly Worker criticises other political groups and trends in the workers' movement, I read it with interest, generally believe the facts it cites and - indeed - will myself often use the information it supplies in my political work. When it attacks my group, it is a sectarian smear, an inaccurate, malicious and thoroughly despicable fabrication by a disreputable gossip rag that no one in the workers' movement gives an ounce of credibility to.'

Actually, sectarianism entails putting the narrow interests of your particular group - whatever its size - above the general interests of the working class. Communism is the product of the conscious movement of the class itself; it is not the outcome of the victory of this or that little group organised around this or that ideological article of faith. The CPGB regards the general culture of the left to be sectarian.

Just look at the common themes that have emerged in our survey: Almost all treat politics as conspiracy, something that takes place behind the backs of workers. Thus, most groups do not report the political debates that take place in their ranks, still less the controversies and differences that animate the broader movement. I was once told that this would only "confuse the workers" - and we wouldn't want to do that, would we?

So the deadly dull press of the majority of the left consists of variations on the dull themes of 'Life is hard if you're a worker'; 'Imperialism is a very bad thing - look, here are some foreigners suffering'; 'Tony Blair is not a friend of the workers.' Scoop! This necessitates not simply the centralisation of the agreed activities of the members of these groups. It entails the centralisation of the ideas of the organisation. It becomes a matter of discipline for sect members to defend the views of the majority in public, whether they believe them or not, whether they are on an agreed action such as a demonstration that would require a degree of self-effacing discipline or sitting, half-cut, in a pub with you.

In contrast, we agree with that well known 'sectarian', Lenin, when he said that "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, and we are building it." And - in the course of the battle against debilitating sectarianism of the left in Britain - so are we.