05.01.2006

Why I intend to stand

The SWP's John Molyneux explains why he is standing against the Central Committee's recommended slate

I have decided to stand as a candidate for the CC at this year’s party conference in January. I intend to stand on a simple platform with two main planks:

(1) The need to face reality: I want to see more realism, more honesty and more balance in our political perspectives and in regard to the state of the party.

(2) The need for a more democratic culture in the party: I want to see more open debate and more involvement with the national committee and party members in decision-making. This document sets out the background to this decision and elaborates on these points.

A paradox

The reality is that we face a somewhat perplexing paradox. Since the end of the 90s, in particular since Seattle, we have argued that a process of political radicalisation was occurring internationally and nationally. We have responded to this radicalisation with three major strategic initiatives: enthusiastic participation in the international anti-capitalist movement, the Stop the War Coalition and Respect. Moreover, each of these responses has met with remarkable, at times truly spectacular, success. Yet after all this the fact is that the SWP not only hasn’t grown (despite innumerable urgings to do so), but is now numerically and organisationally weaker than it was in the 90s.

How do we explain this paradox? Unfortunately we do not have a coherent explanation because we have not really faced the fact that the problem exists.

Precisely because we have not so far squarely faced the facts, it is probably necessary, at this point, briefly to justify the assertion that we are “numerically and organisationally weaker”. At some point in the 90s - I think about 1994 - we announced that we had 10,000 members. We stuck to this claim, reiterating it again and again, into the new century. However, at the last conference in November 2004 we were told that we had 4,000-plus registered members and 4,000-plus unregistered members.

Unless the last year has seen a mass registration of the unregistered (and if so, why haven’t we heard about it?) this means we have about 4-5,000 members. So somewhere during this period of radicalisation and outward success the party appears to have lost up to 5,000 (50%) of its membership (without ever acknowledging that this was happening). In addition to this there is the evidence of one’s eyes of attendance at successive Marxisms, party conferences and councils and NC meetings, the anecdotal evidence about the state of the branches and the figures for Socialist Worker sales (about 7-8,000 per week or less).

Facing reality

It was Trotsky who said: “It is the first duty of a revolutionary party to look reality in the face”.

It was Tony Cliff who made this principle central to the International Socialist/SWP tradition from its foundation. It was crucial to the theory of state capitalism, to the non-catastrophist economic perspective of the permanent arms economy, to our attitude to the pseudo-Fourth Internationals and to the analysis of the downturn in 1979-80. “Revolutionaries must tell the truth to the working class”; “Don’t lie to the class, don’t lie to ourselves”. How often did Cliff repeat these maxims?

Yet somewhere along the line - I think it was particularly in the 90s - we started to lose sight of them. It was in relation to the membership figures that the departure from reality was most stark: we continued to claim 10,000 long after it was virtually impossible that we had that size of membership.

But it was not just over membership - a similar veil was thrown over the sales of Socialist Worker. Every week Party Notes would report excellent sales here and excellent sales there, but the overall figures were never given, never even spoken about in private.

The habit of talking things up and exaggeration (of the size of demos, meetings, Marxism, etc) became part of the culture of the leadership, all to sustain the morale of the members. For a period this seemed, on the surface, to work, with overt enthusiasm being maintained, but in the long run it proved counterproductive. A layer of the membership simply dropped out, while others sank into passivity and cynicism.

The perspective

At the bottom of all this was the question of the perspective. The reason we found it difficult to face reality was that reality was not conforming to the perspective. The perspective was not all wrong: it correctly identified many positive developments and opportunities. But it was one-sided: it failed to take sufficient account of negative features of the period.

A key problem, in my opinion, was our estimation of the effects of the collapse of Stalinism. We were right to identify this as fundamentally historically progressive and to argue that internationally it created a space for genuine socialist ideas to get a hearing. However, we seriously underestimated the extent to which it was perceived by millions, indeed hundreds of millions, as the defeat of socialism.

This led to what was a major characteristic of the 90s and is still with us today: namely a yawning gap between the large numbers who could be mobilised against various things (pit closures, the criminal justice bill, the nazis, ‘capitalism’, war) and the small number who could be recruited for active revolutionary socialism.

Failure to recognise this contradiction cost us dear, as we kept going for organisational structures - ever smaller branches, based on the idea that we could “grow and grow quickly” when the growth was not materialising.

Having an over-optimistic perspective was not, however, the most serious mistake. The most serious mistake was not facing up to it and correcting it when it was clear that it was not working - and this mistake was closely connected to the declining democratic culture in the party, to which I shall return.

Unfortunately, the problem of the perspective was compounded by two other important factors. First, the rather extraordinary fact that the British economy has enjoyed from 1992 to 2005 13 years of continuous growth.

Now it can be argued that this growth has not been as strong as Blair, Brown and the media claim, that underlying weaknesses persist, that it is fragile, and that it may be about to come to an end. But the fact remains that this was not our perspective: our perspective was one of increasing instability and crises, and the fact also remains that we have not come to terms, theoretically or politically, with this inconvenient reality.

Second, and clearly connected, is the historically low level of strikes and industrial struggle which has persisted throughout the period (at far lower levels, by the way, than in the period we identified as “the downturn”). Now this is a fact that the party has acknowledged, but it is not a fact we have analysed, explained or theoretically accounted for. Instead our approach has been to announce periodically that “the green shoots of recovery” were starting to appear and that the tide was about to turn. Yet these two basic facts - the state of the economy and industrial struggle - cannot fail to have serious implications for the development of the party.

Now I am not saying that I have solutions to all or any of these problems, but I do hope that by standing for the CC I can focus attention on the need to address them and that, should I be elected, I would become a voice within the leadership arguing persistently in favour of honest accounting and facing reality.

Party democracy

I have written before on the question of party democracy (in last year’s pre-conference bulletin). I stand by that argument and will not repeat it all here, but some things need to be said.

There is an intimate relationship between the question of facing reality and honest accounting and the level of party democracy. If members are not provided with adequate and honest information about the state of the party, it is very difficult for them to participate in democratic debate about its strategy and tactics. Moreover it is clear that they are not really expected to do so, whatever the formal democratic procedures.

In the course of the last 15 years or so there has hardly been a single significant challenge to the line of the CC on any major issue, nor till now has there been a contested election to the CC. This is not a normal state of affairs in the history of the socialist movement (just check out the history of the Bolsheviks, the Trotskyist movement under Trotsky or, indeed of the IS/SWP in the 60s, 70s and 80s). Nor in my view is it healthy. We need more debate and we need an atmosphere and culture that facilitates that debate.

Last year at the pre-conference party council and the conference there were signs of positive movement in this regard. Many members, myself included, hoped that we were going to see an improvement in the democratic life of the party. However, an episode has unfolded this summer which makes it clear that there is still a major problem.

Since before July a debate appears to have been running inside the leadership about the future of Socialist Review. As this debate has been conducted entirely in secret, I have only the sketchiest outline of its content and course (for example, I do not know who argued for what or why), but my understanding is that there was a proposal to close the Review and replace it with a monthly Socialist Worker supplement.

Apparently no agreement was reached on this and the proposal was shelved (temporarily?), but somewhere along the way the editor, Peter Morgan, departed the scene and was replaced by Chris Nineham.

My concern here is not the rights or wrongs of this issue, but that it was dealt with without consulting either the membership or its elected representatives in the shape of the NC (which met during the period). Surely the leadership, especially if they were divided, should have wanted to know what the membership thought about the Review before reaching a decision. Surely the decision would have been more likely to be correct if the opinions and wishes of the membership were taken into account.

I assume that at some point the matter would have been put to the NC, or perhaps will be put to conference, but as a virtual fait accompli with the CC and leading cadre lined up to support it. But I see no reason why there should not have been much wider involvement in the decision-making process.

There is a more general point here. I believe the party would be healthier and stronger if there was more involvement of the membership and the NC in decision-making. Obviously we are a combat party that often has to respond to events quickly and decisively, but equally there are a range of issues and decisions that could be put to the NC and branches for their input.

At the moment there is too strong a tendency to decide everything at the top and then simply to get the NC, branches and conference to endorse it. If this approach were adopted, I think the overall level of debate in the party would improve and so would attendance at NC meetings and conference and also, most importantly, the confidence of members in the party.

This then is the basis on which I am standing and, if elected, I shall argue to move the party in this direction while also working to strengthen and build the party in every way I can. Obviously as I am standing I hope people who agree with these ideas will vote for me and that in order to do so they will get themselves delegated to conference.

I am not sure whether this final paragraph needs to be written but in order to avoid misunderstandings let me make the following clear:

(1) I adhere completely to the historic positions of the SWP and the IS Tendency

(2) I strongly support, in theory and practice, the party’s united front initiatives including and especially the Respect project

3) I believe the success of these initiatives makes the need for an independent, strong and growing SWP greater than ever before.