07.04.2004

Communist tactics, not sectarian subjectivism

Manny’s Neira’s article, ‘No unconditional support for Respect’, published in this issue and bearing the name of several co-signatories, is riddled with inconsistencies and faulty logic. He puts forward his case for a course of action that in reality would cripple our attempts to fight to “win Respect to a revolutionary perspective” - the aim he claims to be fighting for.

I suppose one slight saving grace of Manny’s article is that he does not seem to be pushing the idea that Respect somehow constitutes a ‘popular front’. This confused notion of what Respect is about was not entirely unreasonable initially because of the public musings of some Socialist Workers Party leaders in the period before the formation of Respect about the possibility of dropping elementary demands for women’s and gay rights as “shibboleths”. But it has now been revealed to be erroneous - no wing of the ruling class is involved in Respect, nor are there any signs of aspirations to bring in such ruling class forces. Respect is simply a reprise of many of the features of the Socialist Alliance, albeit with the dilution/removal of the quasi-revolutionary positions the SA adopted particularly in its most leftwing period in the run-up to the 2001 general election.

Manny claims to be driven by some kind of principled programmatic intransigence in opposing a critical vote for all Respect candidates in the upcoming European, GLA and local elections this coming June. All through his article he makes illogical claims, such as “the resolution passed at our aggregate … breaks with the essential strategy of winning Respect to a revolutionary perspective”; or that this position “is mere electoral populism - and not socialism”. Yet such claims are not backed up by any concrete argumentation. Nowhere does Manny even begin to put forward any coherent evidence that calling for a vote for Respect candidates in this election - which by a terminological sleight of hand he dubs “unconditional” support - amounts to “giving up” any aspiration to win Respect to a “revolutionary perspective”.

In fact, the support of communists for Respect in these elections is certainly not unconditional - it is perfectly obvious to any intelligent observer that our support is conditional on Respect maintaining basic class demands in its programme - such as opposition to privatisation, anti-union laws, the persecution of immigrants and asylum-seekers, imperialist war, etc. Those are our conditions for support for Respect - and I can confidently postulate that in the extremely unlikely event that Respect abandoned these basic tenets of a minimal pro-working class political stance, we in the CPGB would not be alone in withdrawing our support from it. However, what is also true is that there is little point in making such ‘conditional support’ into a formulated tactic - since the chances of such a political transformation are rather less than overwhelming.

The particular ‘principled’ tactic Manny is advocating is not support that is conditional in this way, but rather support conditional on the acceptance by Respect candidates of a series of demands that would constitute elements of a revolutionary programme - ie, republicanism, workers’ representatives on a worker’s wage, and opposition in principle to all immigration controls. But making these conditions for support for a leftwing/working class political formation against the parties of opposing classes is a clear sectarian break from the communist tradition. If these kinds of conditions had been insisted upon throughout the history of the communist movement, it would have been unprincipled to ever call for votes for the Labour Party in an election (it has never stood for these things); for the Socialist Labour Party; for Militant Labour/Socialist Party candidates; for Ken Livingstone in 2000 - and no doubt there are other examples of such critically supportable election campaigns which did not stand for these particular demands.

Manny’s explanations of why we should adopt his tactic, in seeking to insist on revolutionary demands as a precondition for electoral support to Respect, are completely subjective. What little attempt Manny does make to motivate and theorise his position is very weak indeed.

He states near the end of his article that “Some comrades have … pointed out that we have not always demanded a minimum platform before endorsing candidates of other parties: and this is perfectly true. We have called for votes for some left unity projects unconditionally, such as the Socialist Labour Party. The reason, though, is clear. No Marxist examines any political force ripped from its context. The SLP represented a move left from Labour: perhaps towards a real prospect of a revolutionary, partyist perspective. Respect is a move right from the SA. It is driven by an increase in opportunism …”

Manny’s is a completely inadequate form of reasoning - a one-sided and therefore wrong analysis of the basis of Respect. It takes one component of Respect, the Socialist Workers Party - an important one, to be sure, with its pre-existing collection of activists - and applies logic that really concerns the evolution of that organisation alone to the whole Respect project. But, in case Manny has not noticed, there are other elements involved in Respect who have some real political following, and were never in the Socialist Alliance. Such as George Galloway MP. Such as four RMT branches, from two major cities (London and Manchester) and two rail networks (London Underground and Network Rail) that have now voted to endorse the Respect campaign for the European and GLA elections - more are almost sure to follow - and quite likely not just from the RMT but also possibly the FBU. Then there are people like Salma Yaqoob, and potentially other left-moving elements among muslim anti-war activists, from the Stop the War Coalition - who were also not involved in the Socialist Alliance. Are all these forces ‘moving to the right’? Was George Galloway expelled from the Labour Party for being too rightwing? Is the public association and candidacy of at least one prominent former leading activist from the Muslim Association of Britain with a formation dominated by avowed communists and socialists a step to the right? To ask this question is to answer it.

Manny claims that the position of critically supporting Respect candidates in the coming elections “takes the Respect leadership’s intermittent claims to be ‘pro-working class’ at face value, rather than testing them”. Thus even Manny admits that Respect claims to be “pro-working class” in terms of its public propaganda and political profile. Quite how it is only ‘intermittently’ so defeats me, however. As far as I can see, the statements in its propaganda opposing privatisation, anti-union laws, attacks on asylum-seekers, opposition to discrimination on grounds of ethnic origins, gender or sexual orientation, or opposition to imperialist intervention in the Middle East, etc have not been ‘intermittently’ retracted or contradicted by Respect. These pro-working class positions are not ‘intermittent’. Respect’s ‘pro-working class’, anti-imperialist public profile is what this new and unconsolidated formation has been propagating since its foundation.

The core of Manny’s argument, insofar as it has a logical core, is thus exposed as nonsense to begin with. Yes indeed, it is correct to say that “no Marxist examines any political force ripped from its context”, and it is also true that the tactic of selectively supporting some candidates as against others, based on some sort of minimal programmatic test, is a correct tactic in some circumstances. We favour applying this tactic to the Labour Party, for inducing differentiation between those candidates who claim in some real way to stand for the interests of the working class, and those who do not, who are loyal to the openly pro-capitalist, openly imperialist Blair leadership. We also advocated the Socialist Alliance use this tactic; it would also be correct to advocate that Respect does likewise. The adoption of some concrete pro-working class position, representing a break from the neoliberal/bourgeois mainstream, must be a precondition for support to individual Labour candidates.

But the problem with applying this to Respect is that simply by virtue of the statements in its founding declaration (opposition to imperialist wars, privatisation and anti-union laws, defence of asylum-seekers, its vision of “a world in which the democratic demands of the people are carried out”, as opposed to the current “chasm between ordinary working people and the political establishment” - a downbeat but unmistakable aspiration to represent the independent interests of “working people” against the bosses) any candidate standing on this minimal basis would pass this test anyway, hands down.

For me, this means that Respect’s candidates in general are supportable, albeit critically, where they confront the bosses’ parties - on the basis that, while the positions it puts forward are sufficient to indicate subjective commitment to working class interests, they are qualitatively insufficient as a programme to advance the real, historic interests of the working class. Furthermore, since Respect, at this point in time, is not a closed sect but rather an open-ended formation which does not demand exclusive agreement with its overall platform in order to join, it is possible to fight within it to improve its politics. Indeed, I consider it our duty to do so.

It would be irrational, and also incomprehensible to both the membership of Respect, as well as the wider working class movement, to use fundamentally different criteria in confronting the candidates of one leftwing organisation (Respect) with a minimum programme, than those we simultaneously use in confronting the would-be socialist and leftwing candidates of another erstwhile working class party (Labour) standing in the same elections.

Manny is actually advocating his own particular idiosyncratic version of ‘conditional support’ in the wrong place: in reality it would be perfectly principled to use such criteria for support to candidates in elections for office, candidate selections, etc, within Respect, and it is indeed conceivable that such a tactic or something similar could be of use to us in the future within Respect or some successor organisation if such a thing comes into being. But the ‘conditional support’ tactic using the criteria Manny is advocating in bourgeois elections is subjectivist sectarian idiocy: it is a Spartacist-like non-tactic. It would render us correspondingly impotent and irrelevant, and would be a priceless gift to the most backward and opportunist elements in the SWP in seeking to rally Respect against a supposedly ‘disloyal’ opposition that was incapable of committing itself to supporting Respect candidates in elections.

And there is no other political explanation, as far as I can see, for such a stance other than a sectarianism linked to a subjective dislike of some of the forces involved in initiating Respect. But when subjective dislike clouds political judgement, and is allowed to determine policy, one is actually involved in beginning to transform one’s own organisation into a sect. If the CPGB adopted the policy advocated by comrade Manny, then as far as I am concerned it would not be the reassertion of some kind of ‘principled’ policy for our organisation, but a real milestone of our sectarian degeneration - something that would itself require a serious struggle to reverse and defeat.

And that is the core of Manny’s reasoning - that the undeniable rightward motion and capitulations undergone by the SWP leadership in order to cement the alliances that got this project off the ground should be equated with the project itself. For Manny, a precondition for any support to the project as a whole is that the SWP reverse the capitulations on matters concerning its own, quasi-revolutionary world outlook, in the process of initiating the project. This is a very narrow view of our tasks: it reduces our activities around Respect to a war of words with the SWP around these capitulations. It is a purely reactive approach, which in reality excludes any real initiative on our part in the broader movement. While the methods the SWP used to get this bloc off the ground are not ours, nevertheless I would argue that, given the concrete conditions of the anti-war movement in 2003, were we in a stronger position and able to initiate blocs with forces drawn into that movement, we would also have sought some sort of political alliance with the likes of George Galloway, and many of the radicalised petty bourgeois elements the SWP have sought to ally with.

Not by means of the methods of the SWP, of actively opposing positions that it could have won wider support for, in the interests of unity with absent but broader forces. These are unprincipled tactics, that involve the surrender of positions already won - I believe that if the Socialist Alliance had had a better leadership than was provided by the SWP, particular during the crucial war period, many of the forces now gathering around Respect, and indeed much more, could have been pulled towards and incorporated into the Socialist Alliance as it evolved into the beginnings of a genuine working class party. But that did not happen, and now communists have to take account of the new situation represented by the eclipse of the SA and the advent of Respect - and draw the correct tactical conclusions with the aim of maximising communist influence in this new situation.

The subjectivist, irrational and sectarian positions put forward by Manny must be firmly rejected by the CPGB because they are an obstacle to the growth of communist influence in Respect that Manny claims to want to see come about.