13.09.2006

Accountability and Tommy rot

Mark Fischer argues that there are more important issues at stake in the SSP fiasco than who lied and who told the truth about Tommy Sheridan's sex life

l It represented an unprincipled attempt to take a short cut to mass influence by 'Marxists' using petty nationalism.

l The achievement of uniting the non-Labour left in Scotland was more than cancelled out by the foul attempt to split the historically constituted workers' movement in Britain.

l Internal life was characterised by a system of pluralism, more akin to the truncated democratic forms of the bourgeoisie than the sort of genuinely transparent, scientific exactitude that marks out authentic Marxist organisations.

l The much vaunted culture of 'comradely relations', said to contrast to the squabbling sects south of the border, actually consisted of prissy, PC prohibitions on robust and serious polemics and therefore the use of 'insulting' language - in effect providing cover for a wider and wider acceptance of opportunist ideas.

l That SSP elected representatives rightly lived on no more than the wage of an average skilled worker hid the growing mainstream-bourgeois appetites of Sheridan - a degenerative process that was either ignored or positively promoted by the likes of Alan McCombes as another get-rich-quick scheme for mass influence and entry into government.

The only principled position to take in regard to this left nationalist formation was for genuine partisans of internationalism and the working class to prepare for an eventual split - preferably as a majority - on the basis of unity with all communist forces throughout Britain.

The mere fact that we have been proved right will hardly win us a swathe of recruits or new friends: far from it, if we can judge from the recent unpleasant emails we have been getting from Scotland as a mark of appreciation of our coverage. This tragicomedy has been effectively documented in these pages, but it is essential to draw up an initial balance sheet.

First and foremost, we must recognise that this represents the demise - at least in its current form - of yet another of the halfway house-style political formations that the majority of the left has desperately tried to create. Characteristic of these non-Marxist projects has been the search for a 'quick fix' for mass influence, political clout and 'socialism' - in the particular context of Scotland, this has, as I say, entailed an adaptation to petty nationalism.

However, over the last 10 years, England and Wales have seen parallel projects with ostensible Marxist organisations at their core that steadfastly refuse to countenance the notion of actually approaching the working class with Marxism: thus, we have had the warmed-over left social democracy of the Socialist Alliance and now the lame left populism of Respect and the Campaign for a New Workers' Party, plus a plethora of micro (or micro-fantasy) variants, of course.

This tells us something about this period. While the unrelieved gloom of the immediate post-1991 collapse of bureaucratic socialism may have lifted to a certain extent, the current phase of the class struggle is still defined by political decline and organisational decay on the left. The politics of many trends and individuals in the movement thus has a degree of desperation: people cling to the wreckage of the deeply discredited forms of the past and even invest hopes in various 'great leaders'.

Anticipating the SSP debacle, we have seen the short and tawdry history of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party. This was launched with a constitution that had feebly cribbed the anti-communist clauses introduced by the Labour Party in the 1920s. Frankly, this was hardly a shock for those of us who had followed Scargill's career in some detail - including during his finest moment, in 1984-85. The fact that this strategic battle between our class and theirs had been decisively lost was reflected in the desperate behaviour of far too many militants who found themselves in the SLP. They connived with Scargill in imposing his anti-democratic regime.

The unspoken rationale was clear. Scargill was the great man on the white horse, the saviour of a depleted and embattled left. Anyone who criticised the general was objectively providing succour to the enemy. Although comrades from the Socialist Workers Party would not express it in the same crude terms, the logic is clearly the same, as can be seen from Chris Harman, who uses his training in Marxism to give accommodation to opportunism a sophisticated gloss.

The comrade's comment piece - 'The personality is political' - in Socialist Worker of September 2 can be read in different ways. Even beyond the ranks of the CPGB, comrade Harman is often cited as some sort of Aesopian critic of the current trajectory of SWP politics. That or he is a cynical hypocrite - the jury, so to speak, is out. For the purposes of this article, we will take the comrade at face value - that is, as a loyal apologist for the SWP's prostration before such figures as George Galloway and - now marginally more critically, it must be said - Sheridan himself.

At the core of this Harman article is an attempt to justify the SWP's refusal to politically differentiate itself - in other than the most platonic and diplomatic of ways (ie, obtusely in the pages of Socialist Worker occasionally) - from such Bonapartist figures.

Harman says that "often when a new movement is developing, certain figures emerge who seem to many new activists to embody what it stands for" (Socialist Worker September 2). This is uncontroversial for Marxists, of course. The pivotal role of individuals in history is hardly news to us: Trotsky's comment that the 1917 revolution without Lenin would have been pretty iffy is profoundly true. Similarly, but with a vital difference, one can explore Trotsky's own role in 1905. Historical conditions throw up important individuals who then play a huge role in how events unfold - given the objective parameters set for them by their society, their talents and personalities and the historical traditions they have to align themselves with and define themselves against.

Another contemporary figure comrade Harman refers to is Fausto Bertinotti of Rifondazione Comunista. Bertinotti is castigated for "entering an Italian government that is sending troops to Afghanistan and Lebanon" - an implied warning about the possibility of the other cited leaders selling out their principles. Yet Harman alibis them - and the SWP - with the comment that, "as people become part of the movement, they begin to discover their capacity to take control of things without relying on individuals" and, as a result of this spontaneous awakening, "they can create an environment with its own democratic structures which are the only protection against individual personalities going in the wrong direction".

Muddled and semi-anarchic. But the subtext is clear. Harman assures his readers that, as events move on, the masses somehow no longer need leaders (ie, people who embody the development of the movement at certain stages of its growth) and - at that stage - 'democracy' sprouts forth. Effectively, this can be read as an apologia for the absence in the here and now of effective measures of democratic control and accountability over the likes of Galloway and Sheridan. For all their flaws, in other words, they are our men on white chargers for the time being.

Of course, this is largely nonsense. The huge events in Russia of 1917 actually provide an effective rebuttal of the comforting schema comrade Harman outlines. Yes, the development of the movement towards revolution had gone through different leadership moments - Lvov, Chernov, Kerensky. And, yes, it is true that each had been progressively tried, then cast aside, as the movement of the class flowed forward. But the notion that the masses did not need leaders and that at some ill-defined stage they simply invented democratic forms out of the ether is claptrap.

Possibly the best illustration of this was the role of Lenin himself. Arriving back from exile in early 1917, he found himself in a minority amongst the Bolshevik leadership on the question of the future course of the revolution. He operated not as some unaccountable individual who believed he need not bother with conferences and congresses. Lenin was convinced that the working masses were moving towards a position where they would support a second revolution and putting the Bolsheviks into power. And towards that end he fought his battles in a whole range of accountable bodies within the Bolshevik Party and the working class itself. He won and became the personification of the October Revolution!

How the Bolsheviks were reorientated to win the masses is instructive too for the discussion of the lessons of the SSP and the relationship of leaders to the movement of which they are meant to be the servants. Harman implies that when the masses eventually move, only then are really effective democratic controls and measures of accountability put in place. Rubbish. In fact, Lenin won the party in 1917 as a result of utilising structures, norms of party work and culture that were the product of a long and implacable struggle over the whole preceding period from 1903 and earlier. 1917 actually underlines the necessity for polemics, votes, criticism and accountable leaders at every stage of the development of the movement.

In order to hold our leaders to account it is indispensable to know their actual political positions, what their particular nuanced take on a given question is. Which brings us back to the SSP, of course - and comrade Harman himself.

For example, who actually believes that Tommy Sheridan really co-penned Imagine, the extensive apologia for the SSP's left nationalism? It was not an act of modesty which led comrade McCombes to include him on the cover as a co-author, but rather an opportunist bid to promote the Tommy personality cult. Sheridan was marketed by the SSP in a way typical for any top bourgeois politician. His sunbed good looks, his sharp suits, his air stewardess wife, his perfect marriage, his demagogy were all sold alongside the SSP's left nationalism as a package. Indeed the SSP went into elections with the name 'Tommy Sheridan' suffixed to it. People were urged to vote SSP (Tommy Sheridan).

Just as tellingly, we have seen how the various factional chiefs have chosen to conduct their struggle during and in the aftermath of the split. All, almost without exception, have turned to the pages of the bourgeois press and media. Instead of taking on the role of a genuine party journal - featuring extensive open polemics from both sides - Scottish Socialist Voice became a factional voice for the McCombes wing.

Meanwhile, Socialist Worker has effectively lied to its readership over this whole period about the real dynamics of the split - what good is that rag? As with the split in the Socialist Party/Militant tradition in the early 1990s, in order to glean something about the issues at stake, people, members included, had to rely on The Herald, The Record or the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail - a scandal for our movement.