25.01.2007

For democratic, republican self-government

The working class should be doing nothing less than setting society's political agenda, argues Nick Rogers

The emancipation of the working class is first and foremost a political act. Karl Marx's call to the disparate forces that came together to form the First International in 1864 remains relevant today: "To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes."¹  Within seven years members of the First International were to participate in the courageous attempt by the working class of Paris to do just that. Although suffering a brutal and bloody repression, the Paris Commune in a few short months was able to teach Marx (and the international workers' movement) vital lessons about the steps the working class needed to take in order to aspire to state power.

Today, the form that working class political power might take is of equal concern to Marxists. The debate between Steve Wallis and John Pearson²  sparked by my article examining the CPGB's 12-year-old Draft programme and my comments about indirect hierarchical democracy is evidence of that.³  In this article I respond to the issues that have been raised about workers' councils and parliamentary forms, and discuss the purpose of democratic demands as part of the minimum programme. I also touch on the related question of militias.

I do not envisage a revolutionary party winning a parliamentary majority in present capitalist society and proceeding within the constitutional framework it inherits to legislate for socialism. In this respect John Pearson has misunderstood me.⁴  In my original article I was not seeking to prescribe the road that the working class must travel to take political power. Nor, for that matter, do I seek to draft a detailed blueprint for the constitution of a future workers' state or socialist society. The most we can do in this period is to set out very basic principles (about democracy and accountability, for instance).

My critique of the CPGB's current Draft programme on this issue is twofold. First, that a number of the most important democratic demands which the CPGB raises in its current political work are missing from the immediate demands section. As I explained in my Weekly Worker article referred to above, these include "the abolition of the whole monarchical system as a fundamental democratic objective" and specific demands such as "a single-chamber parliament that is elected annually - at last fulfilling the programme of the Chartists". And I might add here the right of electors to recall representatives at all levels.

Second, I suggest that the proposition, "Supreme power in the state will be workers' councils, composed of delegates who elected and recallable at any time", requires clarification. My point was that, "If this means the classic Trotskyist model of indirect democracy - workers elect their local factory committee, which then elects a district committee, which in turn elects a city-side committee, all the way up to a supreme soviet - then I think this proposition is untenable."

I should emphasise that I did not intend to be disparaging towards the Trotskyist tradition. The understanding of the superiority of 'soviet democracy' over 'bourgeois parliamentary democracy' was common to the writings and politics of Lenin from April 1917 onwards and of the Communist International of the first four congresses and beyond. So the adherence of present-day Trotskyists to this conception in one sense marks their loyalty to the revolutionary tradition of the Bolsheviks. However, unless we are prepared to subject our theoretical conceptions to re-evaluation, they risk becoming a dogma with little relevance to what we actually do. My intention in this debate is to begin to delineate the broad outlines of the political and constitutional arrangements that will place political power in the hands of the working class - what the founding principles of the Campaign for a Marxist Party call "democratic republican self-government".⁵ 

Immediate demands

Gerry Downing and Jack Conrad in recent issues of the Weekly Worker have debated the respective merits of minimum and transitional demands. In my article I argued that the minimum programme "should encourage workers to challenge the logic of capital at every point in their lives". Gerry insists that that would be a transitional programme.⁶  Fine. Perhaps there is less to divide us than meets the eye. After all, the CPGB Draft programme says of its immediate demands (ie, the minimum programme): "Our intention is to provide a plan of action and at the same time make the workers aware of their power to refashion society so that it serves human interests. The formulation of our demands thereby connect today's conditions and consciousness to the aim of revolution and the establishment of socialism."

This is remarkably similar to Trotsky's definition of his transitional demands: "It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between the present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat."⁷ 

The real bone of contention appears to be over the CPGB's inclusion in its immediate programme of democratic demands, such as a federal republic for Britain and other proposals to extend democracy. Bizarrely, many from the Trotskyist tradition regard any demands that relate to the way workers are ruled politically as a compromise too far with the bourgeoisie, while a campaign, for example, to defend the national health service apparently serves to build a bridge to the socialist future.

Hillel Ticktin is almost as mystified by the CPGB's approach.⁸  At least he now understands that the CPGB does not hold to a two-stage vision of the transition to socialism (with a democratic capitalist stage required before workers can move to socialism). However, his interpretation of our position is that the CPGB is "arguing that we must talk of democracy rather than socialism because people understand that better and because the left has been undemocratic in the past."

Hillel obviously remains to be entirely convinced. But he has missed the key point. It is because the working class must take political power - not just defend their conditions at work or the welfare state - that the workers' movement must take up all the key political issues of the day. The working class should be doing nothing less than setting society's political agenda. This is the way for the working class both to train itself as a future political ruling class, and to expose and widen the cracks in the edifice of bourgeois rule.

I think this debate masks a key difference in strategic thinking. Many in the Trotskyist tradition expect revolutionary opportunities to arise from future economic crises of capitalism. Indeed, Trotsky's Transitional programme was written in the expectation that capitalism would not recover from the slump of the 1930s (hence its title The death agony of capitalism"¦). The response of many revolutionary traditions to the neoliberal offensive by the world's leading capitalist classes over the last 30 years has been to argue that international capitalism can no longer 'afford' the reforms conceded in the post-war period. It, therefore, makes some kind of sense to prioritise the day-to-day economic struggles of the working class in the expectation that any advances will force capitalism closer to the brink of economic collapse. This is the theoretical justification for present-day economism.

Capitalism does go through periodic economic crises. At these times the capitalist class does attempt to force down working class conditions. However, these crises do not last forever. What is more, capitalism at an international level has shown a remarkable capacity to absorb the demands of strong working class movements. What has been demonstrated in the last few decades is that the capitalist class is equally adept (when the opportunities arises) of shifting the balance of class forces in favour of capital.

Economically the important features of the period have been a reconfiguration of the global capitalist economy and a restructuring of the global working class. Despite a massive growth in the absolute numbers of the working class (and an increase in the working class as a proportion of the world's population), workers' organisations have been much less sharp on their toes in responding to these changes. This stems in part from a failure of working class political leadership.

It is necessary for Marxists to participate in the struggles of the working class in workplaces and communities, and to play a key role in building a strong and dynamic workers' movement. We can agree that without this we cannot develop a credible strategy that looks towards socialism. A self-confident working class is a prerequisite for any kind of revolutionary perspective. But what is important to understand is that the working class can contemplate moving to create a new society only when it is convinced of the legitimacy of its right to rule politically - to become the political ruling class. That is why the CPGB argues that the minimum programme must encompass the whole gamut of democratic demands.

But there is another equally important point to be made about the minimum programme that is not specifically stated in the CPGB's current Draft programme and that to date has not been developed in Jack Conrad's series on programme either. The immediate demands not only inform our campaigning priorities in the present-day class and political struggle; they not only seek to counterpose the logic of the working class to that of capital: they also serve as our immediate programme of government when we take power.

Seen in this light, the minimum programme can in no way be characterised as a set of -semi-cynical demands that seek to make life as difficult as possible for the present rulers of society, but do not hold to account the party that makes them. Consequently, we need to be consistent about the political principles we articulate throughout our programme.

Soviets and parliaments

Any transformation of society led by the working class will inevitably throw up a wide variety of new organisational forms. There will be factory committees, workers' councils, street committees, committees for the users of public services, committees to organise the distribution of goods, monitor their prices and so on. The history of the 20th century provides a huge number of examples from every continent of the political and organisational creativity of the working class when released from the oppressive constraints of capitalist society.

Nor is there any doubt that, as the struggle proceeds, workers will seek to centralise the organisations they have created, with lower-level committees sending delegates to higher-level bodies. These bodies will not just represent factory committees and organised workers in their workplaces. In the words of the Transitional programme: "Ever new layers of the oppressed will raise their heads and come forward with their demands ... The unemployed will join the movement. The agricultural workers, the ruined and semi-ruined farmers, the oppressed of the cities, the women workers, housewives, proletarianised layers of the intelligentsia - all of these will seek unity and leadership."⁹  When Trotsky discusses soviets, he conceives of district or city-wide bodies that represent the working class in all its manifestations - "They throw open their door to all the exploited."¹⁰ 

All routes to revolution require the capitalist class to be suffering a political crisis, whether sparked by economic collapse, war or the insistent demands of a self-confident and well-led working class. Jack Conrad and Mike Macnair have speculated in the course of the last year and more that a revolutionary party could win a parliamentary majority. As is well known, Marx discussed the possibility of the British or American working class leading a largely peaceful revolution after winning such a majority (although he warned of a "slaveholders' revolt" in reaction). Engels advised the German SPD that participation in elections was a measure of the political strength of the working class. He also believed that a parliamentary majority would provide a huge moral and political advantage in carrying through what he insisted in the context of German autocracy would have to be an armed revolution.

But, whatever the course of events that will bring the working class to power - and no doubt they will vary from country to country and from continent to continent - John Pearson is right when he says, "We do not restrict ourselves to a perspective of laying hold of and reforming what capital has created."¹¹ 

The point is that the principles of representation and accountability that will inform the grassroots organisations the working class will create in the process of making a revolution are surely no different from the political principles that should be set out in the minimum programme: frequent elections, recallable delegates or representatives, full-time representatives to be paid no more than a skilled worker's wage.

So there may be bodies that originate as bourgeois institutions - parliaments or local councils - but are radically transformed either partly by a process of concession by a capitalist class in political retreat or in the aftermath of a revolutionary seizure of power. The Paris Commune was one such body. Alongside these will be other organisations in workplaces and localities created entirely afresh by the working class. Or the working class may create a wholly new political structure, pushing aside the discredited institutions of the past.

Whatever happens, my principal contention is that, as we move through a period of struggle (which may well be characterised as dual power) to a revolutionary political overthrow of the capitalist class, the institutions that the working class has created (whatever their provenance) will themselves undergo a process of transformation. As the working class takes responsibility for exercising central political authority, the accountability of that authority will become ever more crucial. Indirect, hierarchical lines of accountability are inevitable when the working class is in struggle and facing a ruthless enemy. But they will not long hold a central government to account.

In my article I referred to the example of Cuba, where the system of 'popular power' was belatedly introduced in the mid-1970s. But you could just as easily point to post-revolutionary Russia in 1918. Marcel Liebman describes the process by which initially largely autonomous soviets were subjected to central authority in the course of just a few months.¹²  Admittedly the degeneration of the soviets took place under the exigencies of civil war, with the Cheka brooking no opposition to its will. Three-monthly meetings of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets became annual from the end of 1918. Between July 1918 and February 1920 the central executive committee of the congress did not meet. After a brief revival of soviet activity in 1920, the introduction of the new economic policy signalled the end of soviet democracy. Even in less harsh circumstances this strikes me as a likely tendency unless the highest political bodies (combining both legislative and executive powers, according to the Draft programme) are subjected to direct accountability by the mass of the people.

If the working class cannot hold a representative on the central parliament (or central soviet or central workers' council) directly to account, how else are they supposed to have any real influence on national affairs? Such accountability must consist of the right to demand that representatives attend a meeting of all electors, that they answer questions about how they have voted and what they have done with their time, and, if necessary, subject them to recall and elect someone else in their place.

Apart from anything else, the person you elect to your local factory or street committee may do just what you want on the local body, but may have lousy politics when it comes to deciding who to send to the immediate parent body. And then, once it comes to holding to account a delegate on a body two or three levels higher up, delegates will be making all kinds of craven excuses for why they were forced to compromise against their best intentions. Plus your factory or street committee is entirely dependent on the majority of other factory and street committees in your area being equally active and robust if you want to exercise any influence on higher affairs.

I see no alternative other than direct accountability of delegates and representatives at all levels to the mass of the working class (in their capacity as electors). A plethora of grassroots working class organisation will support and sustain the process. But the principles that inspire our minimum programme should inform the socialist constitution we hope one day to write.

PR

A couple of short points. Both Steve Wallis and John Pearson detect the incompatibility of making delegates recallable with their election by proportional representation. If delegates are returned without the support of the majority of electors (whether by single transferable vote in a multi-seat constituency or a list system), what is to stop the majority from voting through an immediate recall of delegates?

Steve proposes to resolve the conundrum by dispensing with the right of recall. John would relegate PR to the immediate demands (which for him consist of reforms of the bourgeois parliamentary system) while saving the principle of recall for the system of workers' councils that will serve the socialist constitution. An example of precisely the unprincipled dichotomy between what we argue for in the here and now and what we propose to do when in power that I oppose. The CPGB Draft programme manages to incorporate both recallability and election by PR in the proposed system of workers' councils without explaining how they will work in tandem.

I would propose to ditch PR which, in any case, tends to weaken the link between electors and their representatives. In fact the only electoral system that would prove entirely robust in the face of electors prone to exercise their right to recall delegates would be the alternative vote (in which preferences are transferred until one candidates enjoys a majority of votes).

Of course, small political parties, such as those on the left, seeking an electoral breakthrough look with envy at the progress made by the Scottish Socialist Party under the additional member electoral system in Scotland. But it should not be beyond the capability of a party genuinely rooted in working class communities, in at least some areas, to win majority support.

Militias

Jim Moody presents a cogent case for the CPGB's current position on workers' militia¹³ . However, I raise one caveat. The Draft programme quite correctly expresses opposition to the standing army and calls for an armed people. It then goes on to say: "This principle will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state. It has to be won by the working class developing its own militia." A no doubt accurate forecast of likely developments. But it is equally unlikely that the capitalist state will concede our full programme of democratic demands. These, after all, go most of the way to defining a commune state.

Just as the immediate programme contains both democratic demands and a call to encourage the development of councils of action that "have the potential to become the workers' alternative to the capitalist state", would it not be consistent to demand a popular militia while preparing for workers' militias? This was one of the demands that Marx included in his instructions for delegates to the first congress of the First International¹⁴ . And one of Engels's last political initiatives was to propose that the German SPD present a bill to reform the German military by replacing the standing army with a civilian militia¹⁵ . The German party was too paralysed by the fear of offending the regime of the kaiser to do any such thing.

The CPGB hardly suffers from the same timidity. So can we conceive of no political circumstances in which it would advantageous to raise the call for the abolition of the standing army and its replacement with a popular militia?