10.03.2005

Fighting for party

The annual conferences sponsored by the magazine Critique have in the past had a somewhat 'academic' feel to them, with very little by way of practical application arising from the featured debates. However, last year Critique editor Hillel Ticktin issued his call for a Marxist party and, what is more, it looks like he and the magazine's supporters will be amongst the forces actually trying and bring such a formation about. That is why this year's conference, aptly entitled 'The future of the left', was significant despite its small size - around 25 comrades were present at the London School of Economics on March 5. In his speech to the afternoon session, comrade Ticktin said it was essential, in view of the new possibilities that have arisen following the collapse of the Soviet Union, that our debates must be centred on the needs of our class, not on "Marxist scholasticism". And those possibilities, he went on, "have never been so high". Whereas before 1991 a genuinely Marxist party was "impossible" - small groups were all that could be achieved - today "both the subjective and objective factors are in our favour". The existence of the USSR meant, in comrade Ticktin's view, that only the Stalinist parties were credible, despite the horrors they were responsible for covering up or excusing. But now the "objective marginalisation" of genuine revolutionaries had come to an end - at the very time it was clear that capitalism "wasn't working" for more and more people. For that reason, "if we stand on principle, we'll get the members", so long as the Marxist party we form is democratic. It is, of course, an excellent thing that comrade Ticktin is fighting for what is necessary. We can only welcome the fact that the Critique group is now participating in unity initiatives and looks set to be on the side of those, like ourselves, who insist that such unity must be based on a Communist Party, not some centrist or reformist halfway house or, worse, Respect-type left populism. Of course, we in the CPGB will take part in whatever formation is thrown up, however inadequate, that provides a site for struggle for partyism. Let us hope the Critique comrades will be alongside us. Hillel Ticktin However, comrade Ticktin's speech was in my opinion marked by a degree of overstatement - in relation to both the previous and current periods. I do not accept that the establishment of a credible Marxist party capable of making an impact on the movement was objectively "impossible" before 1991. Comrade Ticktin had a similarly fatalistic attitude towards working class organisation in the USSR itself. Nor do I accept that things are now so much "in our favour" as the comrade makes out. While communists are of necessity optimistic, it is important, if we are not to succumb to eventual disillusionment, that such optimism is accompanied by a solid grasp of current political conditions. It is true that the removal of 'official' communism as a hegemonic force on the left has opened up a space for the genuine article. But we should not overlook the fact that the bourgeois triumphalism produced by the demise of the USSR has not only left Stalinism ideologically bereft, but also made our own job more difficult. While the so-called re-establishment of capitalism in Russia has, as comrade Ticktin argues, hardly been an overwhelming success (although elsewhere in eastern Europe things have not been so gloomy for the bourgeoisie), the notion that 'there is no alternative' to capital is still an extremely potent one. Opening the morning session, Mike Macnair of the CPGB pointed to the fact that the failure of 'official communism' was also a failure of Trotskyism, which, almost without exception, did not foresee the collapse. Comrade Macnair argued that the inadequacy of Trotskyism can to some extent be traced back to the weaknesses contained in the documents of the early Communist International, to which Trotskyists adhere, between 1920 and 1923. He stated that the Comintern retreated from the practice of the Bolsheviks in allowing full freedom of public criticism and adopted instead the Hegelian notion of the part representing the whole - the 'unified' will of the class being expressed by the party, or by the party leadership. If revolutionary parties are built upon such a basis, then dissent inevitably produces splits. Comrade Macnair concluded by stressing the need for both the discipline that comes with centralism, but also the right of factions to operate openly. He was followed in the morning session by Savas Matsas, a comrade from the Trotskyist tradition who put forward a series of theses on the kind of left we need - one that rejects class collaboration, faces up to the question of the state, confronts its history while ceaselessly revolutionising its theory, and upholds internationalism and universal human emancipation. Although comrade Matsas did not tackle the practical issues of organisation, his speech represented a useful restatement of Marxist principles. The school ended with a session addressed by the leftwing Iraqi academic, Sami Ramadani. Comrade Ramadani is a clear and interesting speaker, although it cannot be said that his contribution attempted to grapple with the issue before conference, the 'future of the left'. Instead he dealt with the reasons for the war on Iraq, before looking at the effects of the occupation and the resistance to it. The occupation "promotes sectarianism, opposes secularism," he said - the longer it continues, the more Iraqis will be divided along sectional or religious lines. In fact, in order to sow division, imperialism itself, he believed, was directly sponsoring small groups of terrorists - gangs which the US directs "almost at will". However, he said, there are thousands of locally based "cells of resistance", which unfortunately lack national coordination (the only nationally coordinated groupings are the highly publicised "internet terrorists", which he did not regard as representative). Comrade Ramadani had not favoured the immediate taking up of arms, which he thought had been premature - it would have been better to organise a mass, national campaign, "particularly amongst the working class". The fact that the armed resistance had started "too quickly" can be put down to the aggressive, brutal nature of the occupation. Comrade Ramadani doubted very much that any part of the resistance (apart from the "internet terrorists", presumably) could be called reactionary. Why would reactionary elements oppose imperialism, which had invited them to share power? Yes, religious militants have a reactionary programme, but in the context of fighting the occupation they were progressive, he implied: "We can disagree with their programme for the way Iraq will be run", but it was wrong to "have a knee-jerk reaction" to islamists. It almost seems that comrade Ramadani is unaware of the type of regime that has come to power in neighbouring Iran. The islamists there certainly opposed US imperialism, yet the republic they established oversaw the slaughter of the organised working class and the imprisonment of women. We can agree with comrade Ramadani, however, that "someone who has had their door kicked in has a right to resist, whether or not they are religious". The question is, under what programme? The main way in which we can encourage the kind of resistance that can both move beyond spontaneity and unite under a democratic, secular programme is through the building of a working class-led movement in Britain and the US to oppose the occupation from within the imperialist beast itself. Such a movement would provide a powerful alternative pole of attraction to that of the islamists. And this is where we return to the central task posed by the Critique conference - how to build a party that can not only place itself at the head of the movement, but defeat the system that produces war itself. Peter Manson