13.10.2004

Sectarian pose

Phil Hamilton reviews the website of the American Socialist Workers Party

Another week and another presidential debate full of hot air and hypocrisy has once again underlined the pressing need for a strong and united socialist alternative to Bush and Kerry’s neoliberal consensus.

One candidate organisation seeking to fit this role is the Socialist Workers Party (no relation to our own SWP): the group made famous by its close association with Leon Trotsky in the years shortly before his murder by a Stalinist agent. Since that time the romantic allure of the Cuban revolution has proved too much for the SWP, and the main Trotskyist shibboleths such as permanent revolution and degenerate/deformed workers’ states have been traded in for uncritical adulation of Fidel Castro.
Unfortunately you would not know any of this colourful history from a quick glance at their website.
Acting in a manner not dissimilar to the Morning Star’s relationship with its Communist Party of Britain, the SWP’s website is actually that of its weekly paper, The Militant. The party itself - at least as far as its internet presence is concerned - appears little more than a support group of activist readers.

The leading item, titled ‘We stand with workers trying to organise unions’ argues that it is not enough to vote Kerry whilst holding our noses. Instead it is what you are for, rather than what you are against, that should define the correct attitude to the elections. Quoting SWP presidential candidate Roger Calero, what you are for begins with analysing the global situation and exposing the imperialists’ hypocrisy over nuclear proliferation and electricity generation. It means recognising the problem of unionisation amongst the most oppressed sections of the working class, particularly the experience of migrant workers, and building a position on these foundations. What shape this alternative takes is hinted at in the appended links to a subscription drive for The Militant, an article on campaigning in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of the fire-bombing of the SWP’s campaign hall, and a couple of other reports on candidates’ speeches.

The links beneath ‘Support the Socialist Workers Campaign for 2004’ is probably the weakest dedicated campaign site seen so far. We are treated here to a picture of comrade Calero and his running mate, Arrin Hawkins, and the list of 14 states where the SWP has managed to get itself on the ballot. The campaign downloads carry the details that really could do with being prominently displayed, as opposed to being tucked away. Nevertheless short biographies of the candidates can be viewed alongside the campaign priorities (a list of anti-imperialist and economistic demands, with the welcome addition of a women’s right to choose). But there is nothing here that is not offered by other socialist challenges.

The most interesting piece on the site is the editorial for the October 19 (?!) edition. ‘Support SWP ticket in 2004’ immediately strikes a sectarian pose. Attacking the Bush-Kerry debates, the anonymous writer sums them up as “nothing but rehearsed shows to dupe working people into thinking they have a choice between one gang of predators and another”. It goes on: “The candidates of third bourgeois parties, and above all the working class alternative to all the parties of capitalism … are excluded.” No prizes for guessing who this “working class alternative” is.

The piece then moves into the dangerous waters of polemic. Of course it cannot bring itself to attack the Socialist Party USA or the Workers World Party. That may raise too many questions about its ludicrous claims to being the sole alternative to the capitalist parties. Instead the target for its ire is the hapless Communist Party, because it is “trying to portray John Kerry’s America first, pro-imperialist and anti-labour record as ‘progressive’ for working people”. These charges are not without substance, but do nothing to address the need for a strong, united socialist ticket. For example, the other straw man the editorial sets up to knock down is the Freedom Socialist Party, a small heterodox group heavily influenced by the so-called new social movements. While acknowledging the FSP’s sensible call to vote socialist where possible, the faceless scribbler goes on to discard it, preferring to attack its orientation to the left, as opposed to the working class.

The implication of this seems clear: the sturdy proletarians of the SWP are too busy getting out amongst the class to bother relating to other groups of socialists doing the same thing. This may be all fine and dandy from the SWP’s blinkered perspective, but falls far short of the kind of anti-sectarian socialist party the American working class desperately needs.