24.05.2007

House-building under construction

Communists need a pool to swim in, not a fish tank, argues Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group

The struggle for a republican socialist party took a small step forward at the May 12 Campaign for a New Workers? Party (CNWP) conference in London. The campaign adopted a charter which included republicanism. Whilst this is not yet a programme, it is a definite steer towards one. Slow progress is better than no progress.

Just before the conference the campaign?s steering committee had adopted a draft charter. It was a typical left Labourite platform - strong on welfare and weak on democracy. It was effectively divided into a minimum part of social and welfare reforms, and a maximum programme for democratic socialism. We saw this min-max approach in the Socialist Alliance (mark two) in 2001.

In the pre-conference discussion, largely confined to the steering committee, Pete McLaren (Socialist Alliance) had introduced republicanism into the drafting. But he proposed this be included in the maximum programme calling for ?a democratic socialist and republican society?.

Republicanism must be in the minimum programme, not relegated to the maximum. It is an immediate demand that relates to government, as it exists now. It is not a long-term aim to be realised when socialism arrives. It seems that the Socialist Party rejected Pete?s proposal. One might conclude from this that the SP had rejected republicanism as such. Not so, as it turned out.

There was some criticism of Pete?s maximalist republicanism within the SA. He had done his best to introduce republicanism into the charter. All he got for his pains was criticism from republicans. Some thanks. The SA executive meanwhile debated a resolution and agreed to submit the following - ?For a democratic republic - a radical extension of democracy, including all representatives elected by proportional representation, subject to recall and paid the average wage?.

One comrade proposed the SA drop the words ?democratic republic? - not because we were against it, but because the SP would oppose it. We might get something passed if the ?R? word was not included. But the SA executive rejected this. It would call a spade a spade. The Socialist Workers Party had used opportunistic arguments against republicanism at the founding conference of Respect. If the SP wanted to follow the SWP/Respect approach they be should seen and exposed doing it.

That is how the republican amendment to the CNWP charter came before conference. It stood in the queue waiting to bite the dust. By all the laws known to the British left it should have sunk without trace. But occasionally something strange happens that confounds the pundits. The Socialist Party supported it and directed into the minimum part of the charter. With the usual suspects in the Socialist Alliance, CPGB and Revolutionary Democratic Group voting for it, the resolution was passed almost unanimously.

The amended charter now indicates some of the demands which the campaign thinks will be central to the formation of a new party. Whilst the democratic republic will appear some way down the list, but not at the end, political logic would have it at the beginning.

l For a democratic republic - a radical extension of democracy, including all representatives elected by proportional representation, subject to recall and paid the average wage.

l Keep health and education public. Stop and reverse cuts in, and the sell-off of, our public services. For properly funded, democratically controlled public services for all.

l For decent, affordable public housing for all who want it.

l No to racism and discrimination - oppose the divisive BNP. No to the specific oppression that people suffer due to their ethnic background, nationality, gender, sexuality, age, disabilities or health.

l For a living wage of at least ?8 an hour, and a living pension - restore the link with earnings now.

l No to Trident nuclear weapons - spend the ?76 billion on public services.

l Ownership and planning of energy and transport, leading to massive investment and expansion of renewable energy and clean, public transport.

l Immediate withdrawal of the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

l No to the capitalist profit system. For a democratic socialist society, based on public ownership of the major corporations that dominate the economy, and run to meet the needs of all, and to protect our environment for future generations, instead of the profits of a few.

It is worth going back to 2001 and the SA programme People before profit. This contained some republican demands. But the SWP excluded republicanism from the SA?s ?priority pledges?. These pledges were the SWP code word for minimum programme. Now in 2007 the SP, which agreed with the SWP in 2001, now accepted the demand for a democratic republic into the proto-minimum programme. What has changed?

Has the SP really been won to the arguments of the RDG or CPGB? Unlikely. A better explanation is that the ?crisis of democracy? is continuing to work its magic powers on the dulled thinking of socialist economism. Whilst the SP forgot to include any democratic demands in its original proposal, our reminder was now accepted. Whilst the SWP and SP could easily ignore the democratic questions in 2001, the mistake becomes ever more obvious as the years go by.

Browned off

As Gordon Brown prepared to be crowned prime minister, he explained: ?One of my first acts as PM would be to restore power to parliament in order to build trust of the British people in our democracy? (BBC news, May 11). He explained that ?government must be more open and more accountable to parliament? and suggested Britain could get its first written constitution.

Brown is a better politician than the economist numbskulls of the left. The people may not have come to republican conclusions. But they know something is rotten at the heart of Britain?s ?Ruritanian democracy?. Brown therefore promises that under him this will be mended. Trust me. I?m Gordon, not Tony.

In putting forward his democratic ideas, Brown seeks to draw a line between himself and Blair and at the same time relate to a real mood amongst thinking people in the country. The crisis of democracy is a real factor, even if matters have yet to come to a head.

The gap between the real world and the fantastic outdated theories of the British left gets wider every day. Now by accident or design the SP voted to narrow the gap. Welcome to the real world, in which parliamentary democracy is busted and people are alienated. Welcome to the idea that serious politics means coming up with some answers. Cue Gordon Brown. Cue a democratic alternative put forward by socialists.

One swallow

The implications of this CNWP vote are significant. With republicanism in the minimum programme and socialism in the maximum we have the first hint of a republican socialist party. With republicanism in the minimum programme this is a fundamental breach with Labourism. The Labour Party has never been a republican party. Some of its lefts have been hostile to the monarchy. But with the possible exception of Tony Benn, they have never understood the significance of democratic republicanism.

The CPGB and RDG have kept up constant attacks on the Labourite politics of the CNWP. We have been right to do so. But now they have shot our fox. Not so with Respect. This decision draws a significant distinction between Respect and the CNWP. One points in a secular democratic republican direction. The other has none of those virtues, clings to Labourism and seems ready to opportunistically dabble in religion.

However one swallow does not make a summer. A chink of light can easily be blocked up again. The job for communists is to prise open the gap and let the sunshine in. The most obvious contradiction is that the CNWP may advocate republicanism for the state, but has yet to adopt its own democratic republican constitution. The CNWP must develop its own democratic republican culture. Its citizen-members must have rights, including the right to elect a leadership. The struggle for democratic republicanism, far from being won at the conference, has hardly begun.

Can we build a democratic republican constitution and culture in the CNWP? This is tall order indeed. It depends very much on the attitude of the communists. If the communist forces are ultra-left and sectarian, then nothing much will change. Labourism cannot be combated by left sectarianism. On the contrary they are mutually reinforcing. This leads me back to the main left sectarian arguments found in the debate in the Weekly Worker involving Phil Sharpe.

Left-rightism

I had occasion recently to point to Bukharin?s ?left-rightism? - talking left, whilst acting right. Trotsky criticised the anarchists in Spain for the same thing. The problem also appears in the failure to understand the nature of the period. In Britain the working class movement is still living through its long dark winter of discontent. So I am reminded of Russian fable referred to by Lenin and Trotsky about wearing furs in summer and going naked in winter.

There was much left talk in a recent edition of the Weekly Worker fulminating against halfway-house parties. The headline declared there should be ?No more freaks and halfway houses? (May 3). There was to be no compromise. The Campaign for a Marxist Party was based on ?the rejection of the notion of yet another confessional sect operating through a halfway house?. Mike Macnair warned any waverers that ?the CMP should firmly rebuff any attempt to reverse this?.

Tough talking identifies the main dangers to the working class as ?confessional sects? and ?halfway house parties?. Mike pointed out that I had already openly confessed to half way-housism, but Phil Sharpe was somewhat evasive. His confession was eagerly awaited. Of course, we will need to carefully examine what the RDG has actually confessed to. We would not want people to think that Mike had written our confession and all we had to do was sign it.

Mike and the CPGB?s rhetoric does not stop there. The same target is identified as the ?standard far-left groupuscule? in a ?fake reformist, halfway house front?. They seem entirely oblivious to the fact that this is how the ?CPGB-in-Respect? could be described. They are doing it, whilst accusing the rest of us of promoting it!

Mike explains that ?what comrades Craig and Sharpe have in different ways defended amounts, in substance, to a proposal that the [CMP] should cease to exist by turning itself into a standard far-left groupuscule which campaigns in the here and now for a standard far-left-sponsored fake reformist halfway house front?. Mike tells us that this ?twin-track approach? is not only rejected, but the rejection is ?non-negotiable?.

The terms ?far-left groupuscules?, ?confessional sects? and ?halfway houses? contain a certain sort of distorted truth, even if the language reveals a kind of sectarianism. It is what you might hear from a standard far-left groupuscule. Any minute we expect a statement from some Pythonesque Judean Popular Front saying they have had to split from the liquidators!

The problem is the style of polemic masks the substance of the argument. Take for example the CPGB?s proposal for a merger between itself and the CMP. Will this not create a ?standard far-left groupuscule?? If this new group agrees to work in Respect, then surly it is in a ?standard far-left-sponsored, fake reformist, halfway house front?. The rhetoric obscures an argument between being ?in? and being ?for? these things. There is a gap between rhetoric and reality.

Objective conditions

Is it winter or summer? Certainly the temperature is below freezing. The working class has been defeated and become more atomised. We have had 18 years of icy Tory government, followed by 10 years of bitter cold under a rightwing Labour government. The most militant trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers, has frozen to death. The anti-union laws are firmly in place. Trade union membership has fallen. The socialist movement is hopelessly divided.

These are not the conditions for launching a new Marxist party. Circumstances are stacked up against it. The overwhelming majority of Marxists, including the SWP and Socialist Party, are resolutely opposed to a new Marxist party. They are not about to change their minds. It will require something approaching a major split. They are busily trying to break their own winter isolation by relating to forces to the right of themselves.

The experience of the CPGB itself in the last 15 years confirms this. The CPGB says it has long been a campaign for a new Marxist party. How far have they got? In truth not very far. This is not down to the lack of effort or dedication by these comrades. Neither is it to suggest that nothing has been achieved in 15 years or that the effort was wasted. But the call for a new Marxist Party has not taken off.

Winter conditions include the state of politics, the attitude of the working class movement, the views of politically active workers, socialists and Marxists. They are either indifferent to the call for a new Marxist party or opposed to it. The small number of comrades who have joined the CMP confirms this assessment. Some may naively believe that if we plant the flag of ?Marxism? hundreds or thousands will rally to us. Now we have the reality check.

Winter conditions are beyond our control. They have not changed much. The past 15 years will soon become the past 17. This is not to deny that something may happen tomorrow that will change this trajectory. But let us not count on it or pretend it has already occurred. It seems reasonable to suggest that the CMP will achieve little more in the next two years than the CPGB has achieved in the last 15. Only if we are honest about this can we make progress rather than become disillusioned when reality kicks in.

The question is, what will winter conditions allow us or permit us to do? They will allow us or even force us to come together in the largest possible gatherings for warmth. We will be forced to build ourselves some halfway house to provide some shelter. This will not be ideal. Huddle together or freeze separately.

Of course, there are many different ideas about how houses should be built. Where should they be positioned and what should be the foundations? Our theory tells us that republicanism will work and Labourism will not. That indicates where we can compromise and where we cannot.

Since 1997 the continued winter conditions have produced a number of so called halfway-house shelters. It began with Socialist Labour Party, and was followed by the Socialist Alliance, the Scottish Socialist Party, Respect and the CNWP. These organisations have gathered around themselves reformists, centrists and revolutionaries, including those from ?standard far-left groupuscules? and ?confessional sects?.

The CPGB recognises this reality. It has been present at every founding conference of every halfway house, from the SLP to Respect. None of these conferences set up new Marxist parties. Did the CPGB walk out in protest? Not in the least. Wherever possible, the CPGB took seats on leading bodies. It campaigned in the Weekly Worker for people to join and fully participate in the activities and campaigns of the various halfway houses.

Left demagogy

Real conditions prevent or rule out the formation of a new Marxist party. But this will not prevent us from indulging in high-blown demagoguery and what Lenin called revolutionary phrase-mongering. We can reject all standard far-left groupuscules, condemn confessional sects and oppose all half way houses. No more freaks. No more halfway houses. This can be the firm, principled conclusion of the CMP. As Mike says, we should ?firmly rebuff any attempt to reverse this?.

Then it is back to the real world. Hardly is the ink dry on the proclamation of total war against freaks and halfway houses than the CMP has applied to affiliate to the Campaign for a Halfway House Party (CNWP). A delegate is already chosen to sit on its national steering committee! The point about this is not the hypocrisy. It is a reminder that you can say what you like, but you can only do what is possible within limits. Politics must take account of what is necessary. But it is also the art of what is possible.

If we want to know where consistent, uncompromising leftism leads then look at Workers Power. At the conference they talked about a revolutionary programme and rejected any fake reformist halfway-house party. They threatened to leave. That was the logic of their position. It is the road that leads to isolation. If they are sensible they will be back. The CMP talked the same talk, but committed itself to remaining on board. No compromise, except when compromising with compromise!

Objective conditions limit what is possible. Neither ourselves nor the working class has been strong enough to break those limits. The real options are self-exclusion or inserting oneself into the situation to change it. All this rhetoric about ?confessional sects?, ?standard far-left groupuscules? and ?fake reformist, halfway-house fronts? is really a smokescreen and a diversion from serious discussion about what can and cannot be achieved in order to shift a defeated and demoralised movement onto the right political trajectory.

Halfway houses

The problem here is transitional methods, demands and organisational forms. Militant workers learn in practice about transitional methods when involved in trade union struggles. Just as democratic centralism is a principle of working class struggle, so transitional methods are bread and butter if you are trying to lead a group of workers into action.

Intellectuals have little concern for this because their focus is on the purity and defence of ideas. Lenin and Trotsky were intellectuals. But they were mass working class political leaders. They were and indeed had to be experts in transitional methods. Had they not been so, they could not have succeeded. Most famously Trotsky identified Lenin?s 1917 Impending catastrophe and how to fight it as a model of transitional, or halfway house, politics.

Ultra-leftism is an intellectualist, not proletarian trend, which emphasises the purity of the aim, not the road by which we get there. Since the road is less than the aim, it is therefore a compromise and as such is condemned. ?No compromises? trips off the tongues of red-hot leftists. It is a moral question and a halfway house is an immoral act.

The Campaign for a Marxist Party is not a Marxist party. At best it is a halfway house on the road to such a party. It is a step in the right direction, even if should subsequently prove a dead-end or be overtaken by events. What we need is not demagogic condemnation of halfway houses, but serious discussion about how to build them, the best location, the materials we need and how to lay solid foundations. We should discuss Respect not in terms of condemnation because it is a halfway house. We should analyse whether it really is a halfway house or whether it can be made into one.

Not everything claiming to be democratic centralism, or claiming to be transitional demands, passes the test. We have to judge it in the concrete. General condemnation of halfway houses is lazy politics. It frees us from the responsibility of actually considering which are transitional forms, and which are bogus forms.

It depends on where we think the movement actually is. It is winter. The wind is howling and it is pouring with rain. Building a house or even a shelter on the road we need to take is a move in the right direction. Once the working class movement has recovered and gathered its strength, we will be able to continue our journey to the final destination.

Our task is not to dig trenches and erect barriers on the road to halfway houses so that the working class remains in its current state, atomised and partyless. It is to lead the struggle for whatever is a genuine halfway house. In locating our politics in this way it is more likely that the working class movement will arrive at the halfway house and be ready to go beyond it. We want to march with the movement in order to transcend the halfway house more quickly.

When the rhetoric is stripped away, the real difference is that in winter the real choice is between fighting to provide leadership for those workers convinced that we need a new party of the left. Simply condemning this as a halfway house will leave communists tailing in its wake - condemning it, then joining it, opposing it and then calling on people to become members and supplying the membership forms, refusing to stand for the leadership and then seeking nomination, etc.

Swimming pool

The differences between what I am arguing and the CPGB seem massive. But the reality is different. The SP is trying to build a relatively big swimming pool. It is wholly designed by the SP but with a dodgy filter system. Our argument is that we welcome the attempt to build the pool. But before we can swim in it we should try to influence the design. But not by proposing a fish tank

Our role is not to oppose our design to theirs, but to propose some significant improvements. We want to ensure that we can swim in the best, clearest water, not a dirty, polluted swamp. The clearer the water, the more the strong swimmers will succeed. That is a limited objective, but one well worth fighting for.

The CPGB/CMP is opposed to the CNWP pool. They are proposing a fish tank. It is CMP versus CNWP. They want nothing to do with the design of the pool. But if it is built they will not mind swimming in it. In practice this means we will all end up in the same pool, but the water will be so muddy we will not be able to see each other and so dangerous that we will probably drown.

Confessional sex

When I first heard about this I was unsure what it was, but felt I would like to give it a try. So I was disappointed when I realised I had got the spelling wrong. It is not something to look forward to, but to be condemned. John Bridge says that the CMP intervention in Respect or the Campaign for a New Workers? Party ?should denounce the SWP and SP as confessional sects?.

This concept is open to misinterpretation. It might be misunderstood as a Marxist group that goes around demanding that those in other groups confess they are a sect. It could be an own goal. We should ask what working class members of the Socialist Party will think about being so denounced?

Will it convince them of the correctness of the CMP line? I think not. More likely they will think they have been attacked by a confessional sect. I do not see how this will advance the cause of a new Marxist Party.

Socialist Alliance

It is true, as Mike Macnair says, that both myself and Phil Sharpe are in favour of halfway house parties. However, I diverge from Phil because I do not think a Campaign for a Marxist Party should campaign for a halfway-house workers? Party. A Campaign for a Marxist Party should be exactly that. We would be better employed debating what is meant by Marxist party. How can we go out and campaign for something if we are not clear or agreed as to what it is? We should be concentrating on developing our ideas on that.

The problem of Phil seeking to turn the CMP into a campaign for a workers? party should be a non-issue with a simple solution. The SA (mark three) is a campaign for a workers? party. Marxists who want to campaign for a workers? party should join the SA. If they want to campaign for a Marxist party, they should join the CMP. I support both. It is horses for courses. As things stand, I see no contradiction between supporting both the SA and the CMP.

The SA constitution identifies the workers? party as a republican socialist party. The SA?s intervention in the CNWP has already made a difference. If Phil Sharpe is serious about his workers? party slogan, then he should join the SA rather than waste time trying to liquidate the CMP. But there is no reason why he should not be in both.

Compromise

Let us now reconsider transitional or halfway-house parties. These are parties built on compromise. Lenin dealt with the argument for ?no compromises? in Leftwing communism - an infantile disorder. For communists the question is, what compromise, with whom and for what purpose?

For left sectarians all compromises are ruled out in principle. The question of a compromise party does not arise. Workers have little time for such nonsense. Life and class struggle produces compromise. Any communist active in the trade unions recognises this truth. What we have to do is assess each compromise in the concrete.

The real debate here concerns two kinds of compromise parties. First is the Compromise Workers Party, which we have already considered. Second is the Compromise Marxist Party which we have yet to examine.

Compromise Marxist Party

Differences within the CMP are yet to be addressed. The slogan of a Marxist party was a compromise. It enabled different traditions to come together. It was a lowest-common-denominator slogan. But finding a term that does not offend cannot forge something new. Indeed it merely hides certain differences.

Old Marxists is what we were, and new communists is what we should become. There is a debate to be had between the Marxists and the communists. We get a hint of differences when the term ?revolutionary Marxist party? is used and some comrades object. Mike and possibly the CPGB have come out against ?a revolutionary party based on a revolutionary programme?. If we look beneath the slogan of a Marxist party there are some real differences.

I am not in favour of a CMP campaigning for Compromise Marxist Party. This is not because I have some ultra-left objection to compromise as such. It is a very practical reason. The CMP is a tiny organisation. If it is to acquire any strength, it must be by not compromising ideologically. It is better to fight out all the arguments and then adopt the best.

There is no point in compromising with nationalism, economism and reformism if the purpose is to challenge the SWP. The SWP is in the International Socialist Tendency. How could we hope to challenge that on the basis on a non-revolutionary national Marxist party? That would be a compromise too far. A Compromise Marxist Party would be hammered into the ground as soon as we crossed swords with the SWP. We are only safe because they are ignoring us.

There is no advantage in campaigning for a Compromise Marxist Party. This is the opposite of the argument for a Compromise Workers Party. In the latter case we want to try to create an organisation with hundreds or thousands, with sufficient strength to be in contact with the mass of workers in trade unions or at elections. Here compromise enables communists to relate to a broader layer of the class.

RDG position

Mike Macnair describes the RDG position by saying ?comrade Craig is perfectly open in asserting the campaign should turn itself into a ?revolutionary Marxist? sect based on the RDG?s ?democratic permanent revolution? theory working within a broader campaign for a republican socialist party?.

This is an approximation of our position. But it is not accurate. It is Mike?s spin on what we say. It is therefore inaccurate. First the RDG does not advocate the CMP turning itself into ?a ?revolutionary Marxist? sect?. For one thing the term ?communist? rather than Marxist is correct.

Second, we are in favour of a communist platform inside a republican socialist workers? party. Why should the word ?platform?, or ?faction?, be changed into ?sect?? The answer is fairly obvious. If you tell people what we actually say, then they may agree with us. Were SSP platforms or factions to be labelled sects? Was the Bolshevik faction in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to be condemned as a ?sect??

It is one thing to accurately portray our position and then explain why a platform/faction can only be a sect. But if you are going to explain our position then at least set it out accurately in the first instance.

Then we have the idea that the platform/faction should be ?based on the RDG?s democratic permanent revolution theory?. Again this is not really accurate. First, we would want any communist platform to be part of a wider international communist tendency and an expression of that tendency. Second, it should be built around a programme which its members accept. No disagreement there.

We have simply wound the clock back to a previous stage. A revolutionary programme must be based on a theory of working class revolution. Before we start drafting our programmes and coming up with our favourite bullet points we have to make some critical assessment of the theory of permanent revolution and with it the lessons of the Russian Revolution. This is not, of course, a criticism of Mike, who has made a valuable contribution to that discussion. The first thing the CMP should do is make some official honest accounting of the different positions within its ranks.

So let me end at the beginning. A republican socialist party can and should be an opportunity for the working class to strengthen itself politically. It is not a threat to communism. On the contrary it is a golden opportunity to prepare for the days when winter turns to spring and summer.