04.10.2006

A lesson in Stalinism

Members of the Socialist Workers Party tried to throw CPGB students out of a public meeting. Dave Isaacson reports

In the past week, as well as continuing to sign people up at various freshers fairs, Communist Students groups have started to hold meetings on university campuses, in addition to intervening in left student politics.

Mark Fischer, national organiser of the CPGB, has begun to address a series of Communist Students meetings on the topic of 'What's wrong with the left?' This is a particularly pertinent question for students who turn up to freshers fairs to find a myriad of socialist groups attempting to win their allegiance, and all claiming that they are the only true heirs of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Why is the left so divided, and how can this be overcome? Is it possible for revolutionary parties to have a democratic internal culture? What forms can we use to guard against the bureaucratisation of working class organisations? These are among the questions comrade Fischer is answering. At Sheffield University comrades were particularly pleased with the turnout for their meeting. Over 20 came along - as many as, if not more than, the other left groups like the Socialist Worker Student Society (SWSS) and the Socialist Party's Socialist Students get to their meetings.

Comrade Fischer has been arguing that the left needs to undergo a cultural revolution. Most groups on the left, at best, pay lip service to notions of democracy inside their organisations. In fact they operate as bureaucratic centralist sects - not the parties they often claim to be. It is therefore no wonder that the left groups are generally unappealing as far as the mass of the working class and students are concerned.

The left is politically peripheral and has no real roots. Where are the socialist pubs, sports clubs, cultural associations, schools and TV and radio stations? These things would symbolise that we were a real force within society. In the absence of this mass base many left groups chase after various opportunistic 'get rich quick' schemes. They abandon in practice any notion of a revolutionary party fighting for a revolutionary programme, instead playing down or hiding their Marxism in various fronts: Respect in the case of the Socialist Workers Party and the Campaign for a New Workers' Party in the case of the SP.

In the long run this opportunism can only hold us back - what we need is a mass party based upon the Marxist world outlook. However, this cannot be built in splendid isolation. If we attempt to exclude or ignore those socialists we disagree with, then all we will do is create another bureaucratic sect. We must engage with those on the left who claim a Marxist party is impossible under current circumstances and opt instead for some halfway house.

And we must also ensure that we operate in a thoroughly democratic fashion. Differences of opinion should be considered 'natural' within a party - not only that, but they should be allowed to take organisational form (as factions and platforms) and to argue their case publicly (in party newspapers, journals, leaflets, etc). What is important is not unity - or conformity - in thought, but unity in democratically agreed actions.

Unfortunately much of the left - including a comrade from Socialist Students at our meeting in Sheffield - currently take the view that the expression of two views in one newspaper will simply confuse working class people, the poor dolts. What sort of opinion is that to take of the class we hope will one day become the ruling class and subsequently abolish classes themselves?

Of course it is commendable that this comrade from Socialist Students came along to our meeting and was willing to engage with us, as were comrades from the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. Dan Randall from the AWL suggested that we ought to take a broad view of what constitutes the left, including anarchists and those influenced by the ideas of People and Planet, etc.

This is not something that we disagree with: we want to engage with all those who can be won to Marxism. The question is, how we do that, and we feel that in the long run you will get nowhere if you attempt to reach the masses by simply going over the heads of the existing left organisations. After all, any student who gets involved in leftwing political activity will eventually come into contact with all the other groups and want to know why the left is as fractured and divided as it is.

At our meeting at Leeds Metropolitan University comrade Jim Padmore asked whether we thought it was really desirable that all these left groups, holding what we would deem the wrong positions on so many questions, should be in the same organisation. How could those who argue that we must strategically vote Labour and those who call for abstentions coexist within the same organisation?

Mark Fischer argued that the struggle for a united Marxist party was not separate from the political struggle against the wrong ideas many of the sects hold. We do not put our political differences aside until we have achieved unity. Indeed it would take a huge political change within most of the left groups before they would even consider any genuine unity around a Marxist programme.

At Leeds Met we also discussed what we mean when we say that Communist Students is an autonomous organisation, when CPGB student comrades and sympathisers were central to its initiation. As comrade Fischer explained, the CPGB has not attempted to hide its role in setting Communist Students up, nor are we agnostic about what it does and the political direction it takes.

We are, however, absolutely sincere when we say it must be autonomous. It is quite conceivable that CPGB members will make up a minority within Communist Students - if you consider how many have signed up at freshers fairs then we are already a small minority. As such it is not impossible that we will lose this or that vote within the new grouping. Of course the CPGB wants to win people to its ideas, but you cannot do this via bureaucratic measures. As John Bridge argued at the CPGB's last members aggregate, a student organisation must be allowed to "have the gumption to make its own mistakes" (Weekly Worker September 14).

Almost by way of illustrating how not to go about spreading the ideas of Marxism and building a healthy organisation, the antics of SWP comrades at Sheffield University demand reporting. Chris Bambery had been invited to address an SWSS meeting under the heading of 'The revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx'. Perhaps 'A lesson in Stalinism' would have been a better title.

When CPGB comrades arrived to engage in a debate with the SWP comrades and their audience, Alan Kenny, the local SWP organiser, attempted to bar them from the meeting. CPGB comrade Lee Rock was told he was not welcome because he was not a student (neither is comrade Kenny actually).

Having previously been a member of the SWP and an SWSS group convenor at Essex University, I know from attending and organising many SWSS meetings that there is no bar on non-students attending. This ban was obviously a political one - Lee Rock (an ex-SWPer himself) thinks the wrong thoughts and says the wrong things. Then Alan Kenny also insisted on the removal of CPGB member and Sheffield University student Ben Lewis from the meeting. This time the charge was that he is too "rude" and disruptive. Another ruse for a political ban - the SWP cannot countenance a debate with comrades to its left.

What does this say about comrade Kenny's view of "the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx"? Are these emancipatory ideas? Is this sort of bureaucratic exclusion the first step on the path to humanity's general freedom? Not in my mind.

What also does this say about Chris Bambery - a member of the SWP's central committee and editor of Socialist Worker? Comrade Bambery often comes across as a bullish and overconfident speaker - the man certainly knows how to shout. But what does this bureaucratic exclusion say about his confidence in reality? He is certainly not confident of his own ability to win out in a free debate.

In the end three members of Communist Students entered the meeting once Bambery had begun his opening. Comrade Kenny clearly did not want to make a fool of himself by excluding them in front of the whole meeting and they were able to stay. In the discussion two of them managed to speak and raised questions about the importance of democracy in the workers' movement. Unfortunately comrade Bambery once again displayed the lack of confidence he has in defending his own ideas and completely ignored our comrades' questions.

If SWP members think they can intimidate our comrades into keeping their mouths shut, they are seriously wrong. Unlike Stalin they have no state machine to enforce their sterile view of politics, and in the long run neither students, workers nor their own rank and file members will stand for this type of approach.

Communist Students will continue to organise our own events and engage with those put on by other left groups. Unlike the SWP we positively want members of other left groups to attend our meetings and engage in comradely debate. We intend to make an impact.