14.07.2004

A Marxist party without deformations

At the CPGB's Marxism 2004 fringe, Hillel Ticktin, editor of Critique, argued that material conditions have opened up wide opportunities for the left and new organisational possibilities

In the years since Stalinism came to an end we have witnessed a series of spontaneous uprisings - in Albania, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere. Sometimes they threw up soviets, but they led nowhere. It was clear that the majority of workers and peasants had no conception of the alternative - and even less of an idea of the strategy needed to achieve their goals.

Anarchists, spontaneists and council communists often argue in terms of the need for the working class to achieve its own emancipation without the use of any party, However, historical practice has proved them wrong. Without a party, the working class lacks the organisational centre, the educational and theoretical leadership and the necessary tactical and strategic leadership required. It may well be the case that in 300 years, as Jack London saw it, capitalism will be so rotten that it will be pushed aside by the majority of the population, without any need for leadership or strategy, because everyone will want to do so.

However, we cannot wait 300 years for millions to live and die either in poverty, or in sub-human conditions even if they are not poor. There is a real alternative where everyone can for the first time be true individuals living in a truly human society instead of one where dog eats dog. Production today can easily reach the level where machines make machines, where medicine extends people’s lives considerably and where everyone can employ their talents to the full.

In this respect, everything depends on one’s analysis of the period down to the downfall of the Stalinist parties. I take the view that Stalinism dominated the workers’ movement with the tacit approval of the bourgeoisie. In a sense, the overall, if largely unconscious, strategy of the bourgeoisie was that of collusion with Stalinism, even if in an inchoate and often antagonistic way. Put another way, Stalinism prevented the emergence of any genuine left in a series of ways.

In the first place, it was so awful that workers in many parts of the world turned against it. It provided a real basis for an anti-communist ideology. In the second place, Stalinism directly and indirectly fought and often killed, betrayed, victimised or eliminated the left in many countries from Greece to Vietnam - not to speak, of course, of those people who were on the left in Stalinist countries. In the third place, Stalinism provided the basis for the cold war and the stability of modern capitalism.
An indirect effect was the marginalisation of the left, such that it turned in on itself. Unable to maintain contact with the class, in the best cases small groups became guardians of the Marxist legacy (and for that they have to be saluted, given the difficult conditions). However, the cost was that they ceased to relate to the society around them and became extremely sectarian.

While some analysed their failure in the same way as above, others began to despair and sought alternative modes of breaking out of their isolation. Many compromised with nationalism and hence with the bourgeoisie - but you cannot be a nationalist and a Marxist: it is simply impossible; some compromised with Stalinism and others compromised with reformism. Still others, like the Socialist Workers Party, reduced levels of democracy to avoid splits - inevitable when you have no real relationship with the working class. Others retained their principles without any analysis of the modern world.

Every group could find some principle that they would stick to and be superior to every other group. All, however, were undemocratic in their essence because such relatively small groups probably cannot be anything else in a hostile capitalist environment. It is not enough to have full democratic forms to make a party democratic. It is necessary that the elected leadership maintain a close relationship with its base and that is only possible where there is a large, active membership with leaders whose personal ambitions are subordinated to the needs of the party.

With the end of Stalinism, the controls over the formation of genuine left parties are no longer there. The basis for sectarianism is more limited. But it is taking time for the old groups to reform or die. It is no accident that the Workers Revolutionary Party imploded or that the Militant group removed Ted Grant from his own organisation, or that the SWP has shifted markedly to the right.

The second aspect of the ending of Stalinism is that it has intensified the political and economic crisis of capitalism. Capital today is in a genuine classical crisis precisely because its basis of stability is no longer there: Stalinism and the cold war. The economic crisis is clear. The political crisis follows from it, with massive levels of unemployment, the rich growing richer and the poor poorer. There is no room for reformism once the goal of industrial growth is removed and hence there is a fiscal crisis for the state. With the end of reformism, parliament appears anachronistic and useless. People do not bother to vote, unless there is a clear-cut, one-off issue like the Iraq war. Politicians are seen for what they are and hence are correctly mistrusted.

There is, therefore, for the first time since the 1920s, a clear opening for the left. Everyone can see the vacuum on the left. Unfortunately, given the long history of failure on the left, existing groups like the SWP and the Scottish Socialist Party leadership have assumed that only an opening to the right can succeed. If my analysis is correct, they will fail and deserve to fail. They will fail because the working class needs a party of principle which will promise what the working class needs - a socialist society - and not what is irrelevant to its aims.

How they will fail is another matter - it is possible that they will get many votes and then be shown up as reformist politicians; or it is possible that the working class will see through them before they get off the ground.

As regards the Labour Party, there is no point any more talking about its betrayal of the working class. Labour is now the party of big capital and the Tories of small capital.

In this new situation, we need a party of principle, which makes no compromises or concessions in its demands - what Respect has done. There is no reason for it. There never is. Our demands are for the replacement of capitalism by a socialist society, in which labour becomes humanity’s prime want, where the market and so money is abolished, where the economy is planned and where the division of labour is overcome and subordinated to the needs of humanity. That is, a Marxist party.
Given my analysis, it follows that it is now possible to form a Marxist party without the earlier deformations. There are two crucial questions: what form should this party take, and how do we get there? Clearly they are closely connected.

Given the appalling history of the left, it is clearly necessary that the Marxist party be as open and democratic as possible in a hostile capitalist environment. It will have to start on the basis that difference of opinion is to be welcomed and maintained, provided that the differences remain within Marxism. There will also have to be a series of rules to both maintain democracy and prevent factionalisation. The latter can only be prevented if different viewpoints are accepted and encouraged with full representation on the necessary bodies, but also if such groups are not a means of advancement for individuals, so that such groups will dissolve when they are proved right or wrong. In the end, this depends more than anything else on the culture of such a party and its ability to educate its membership in the requirements of a Marxist party struggling for socialism.
There is now a long and unfortunate history of personalised antagonism within the left. This will have to be discarded. A socialist party can only be built if honesty and loyalty to the goals of socialism, rather than personal advancement, are maintained.

Even if we have a dedicated band of Marxists, we are still left with the question of how such a party becomes a party of the working class. Do we need a front in the form of a workers’ party, which would differ from a Marxist party in being open to all who support the overthrow of capitalism? The Socialist Alliance was something like a workers’ party formation. Respect is not even that. Or does it itself have to become a workers’ party?

It seems to me to be clear that we need a Marxist party, which is clear about its goals, its strategy and its educational programme for its members and in its ability to act flexibly and in time. Only a Marxist party can do that. However, it can still be argued that a workers’ party is needed now in order to act as a halfway house to Marxism. This is a question of tactics and strategy. If the Marxist party cannot break through except by having such a halfway house, it may be necessary to form it. But in principle it will only be necessary if the Marxist party cannot advance beyond a certain point.

The issue, however, arises in another form. There are as many different conceptions of Marxism as there are varieties of baked beans. Some schools which claim to be Marxist have to be excluded immediately. Stalinists of different kinds such as Maoists, the Communist Party of Britain and supporters of socialism in one country, along with anarchist ideas, have to be excluded. The concept of socialism in one country is the hallmark of a Stalinist and no supporter of such a view can be included. However, beyond these exclusions everyone else ought to be welcome, whether they are critical of Luxemburg, Lenin or Trotsky (or all of them), provided only that they accept that those three were Marxists, so demonstrating their own non-sectarianism.

I think we have to begin in a small way by forming a network of individuals and of groups, if they will join, and proceed step by step. The previous attempts - that of the Socialist Alliance and Respect - both died before they were born. The Socialist Alliance was not a party, but a formal alliance of a number of groups plus independents - so-called. It was dominated by the SWP, who never had any intention of turning it into a competent party. The same is true of Respect, except that it is no more socialist than the Labour Party. It is simply a disgrace to the name of socialism that there can be a party which allows its leading members to oppose abortion and be homophobic and misogynistic.
If my analysis is correct, we do not have to worry about the need to adapt to the backward consciousness of sections of the population. In the end, the reason for the failure of the left was an objective one, which then reflected itself in consciousness, not the other way round. Some on the left calling themselves Marxists believe that consciousness is something that could be implanted in people’s minds, rather than proceeding from the material base. That is not Marxism at all.

It follows then that with the destruction of Stalinism, an objective barrier, socialist consciousness becomes something increasingly easy to foster. In the short term, of course, any kind of consciousness is possible, but over a decade or two things will be very different. We, therefore, ought to make no concessions to religion, although we must be polite and respect people’s customs, and it is our duty to argue and fight against religion itself, as a form of backwardness reinforced by capitalism.

However, the basis of my argument rests on the changing political environment. There is a second aspect to that. Trotsky points out that when the revolution was approaching in the Russian empire, the old left groupings began to change, reform and dissolve, because their tasks had changed. As we know, Lenin had to fight for his own party when he returned to Russia and it changed both its programme and its nature by incorporating other groupings and indeed becoming more democratic.

The point, however, is not that revolution is around the corner, but that we are in a new political situation. It demands a genuine working class party and that can only be a Marxist party. Hence the existing groups are bound to lose their coherence unless they adapt. At the moment they are adapting to the right, but that is more likely to lead to their dissolution than to their growth.