24.05.2007

No saviour from on high

Stan Keable replies to Phil Sharpe on the right strategy for the Campaign for a Marxist Party

Phil Sharpe?s polemic (?Prepare for marathon?, May 17) is useful because it displays some of his fears and misconceptions about the views of other comrades in the Campaign for a Marxist Party. It also displays his own illusions in both the likelihood of a Labour left organisational ?break with New Labour? and its ability to make good use of such a split, despite its present parlous state - the sectarianism and weakness of the Labour left mirrors that of the revolutionary left outside Labour.

Phil draws a false dichotomy between the struggle for a workers? party and for a revolutionary party, and, in consequence, mistakenly imputes to Mike Macnair, the CPGB and Barry Biddulph a dogmatism which is not there - as if they would not welcome the spontaneous emergence of a new mass workers? party, would not join it and would disdain to argue the Marxist case within it. All of these accusations are Aunt Sallys. The revolutionary party which overcomes capitalism must, of course, be a workers? party.

As Brecht put it in one of his songs, ?Only the working class can set the worker free? - and, to free themselves, the workers must end capitalism and thereby free humanity from exploitation and oppression. The working class is the only class capable of becoming the ?universal class? (Marx) whose interests coincide with the interests of humanity as a whole in overcoming and surpassing capitalism in a positive way.

So it is not a question of Marxist revolutionaries forming a revolutionary party to free the working class, but of workers organising themselves into a revolutionary party to liberate themselves. What is needed is a mass, democratic party of the working class (in the broad sense) capable of uniting all the diverse sections of the class in action around a Marxist (ie, scientific) political programme of practical class struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist states and the supersession of world capitalism by the development of a classless, communist society.

Yet Phil writes of the workers? party as a mere ?tactic?- ?yes, tactic and not rigid dogma or necessary stage?. The struggle for a revolutionary party ?may or may not have a workers? party stage?, he says. So Phil seems to be aiming not for a revolutionary workers? party, but - the logical alternative - for an elitist party of revolutionaries above the working class and not part of it. How else are we to understand the concept of the workers? party as a tactic? (?The Internationale? proudly proclaims that we will liberate ourselves: ?No saviour from on high deliver ?? I hope Phil is not preparing to follow his one-time philosophical hero, Roy Bhaskar, into the idealist ether of god and reincarnation.)

I confess I found it difficult, at first, to follow Phil?s pontificating about ?what would be the attitude of the CMP? to the ?possible development? that ?the demand for a workers? party can acquire popularity? in the present circumstances - in which the ?working class lacks effective political representation?. It only made sense when it dawned on me that Phil?s assessment of ?the present circumstances? was favourable.

Instead of comparing the present period of reaction of a special kind - when the working class (temporarily) can see no alternative to capitalism - to the ?unfavourable balance of class forces ? before the 1905 revolution?, he likens it to 1905 and 1917, implying that the balance of class forces are now favourable. That is why ?the tactic of the workers? party? (sic!) ?is called for by the circumstances in which we find ourselves?.

But actually the circumstances are abysmal. The Labour left, far from being on the brink of an organisational ?break from New Labour?, is tiny, politically timid and Labour-loyal sectarian. Hardly surprising when the left outside of Labour is divided into a myriad of bureaucratically ruled sectarian groups, disintegrating and moving rightwards. An organisational split in such circumstances would be disastrous, almost certainly dispersing hitherto organised socialists to the four winds, wasting the links their membership carries. A better principle is ?stay-in-ism?. Exercise your opportunities to the full to advocate the politics of extreme democracy and win your comrades to the necessity of a Marxist party. But leave the expelling of revolutionary socialists to the bureaucracy. Let us not help them by resigning.

Phil, on the contrary, counsels that it is ?totally unprincipled for them [the Labour left] to remain with New Labour and not to break to help found a workers? party?. Now, we should certainly welcome Labour Party members into the CMP, and into the CPGB - but not encourage them to resign their Labour Party membership under present circumstances. Walking out in disgust, individually, is cowardly, not principled. Splitting prematurely as a group, before carrying an open argument to its limits, is equally unprincipled.

This misjudgement of our present circumstances perhaps explains Phil?s preoccupation with the unlikely scenario of the spontaneous emergence of a workers? party. Like the Socialist Workers Party with Respect, and the Socialist Party with its Campaign for a New Workers? Party, Phil is dreaming of a mass movement of pissed-off workers coming to the rescue of the sectarian revolutionary left. No, Phil, it has got to be the other way round. We revolutionaries have to sort ourselves out in order to offer coherent leadership to the mass.

Reflecting his reluctance to accept that the task of the day is to organise revolutionaries as revolutionaries, without making this dependent on ?favourable circumstances?, Phil unjustifiably attributes negative attitudes to other comrades. Mike Macnair ?reluctantly concedes?, says Phil, that ?we would be arguing for fighting within? a new mass workers? party, should one arise. Why ?reluctantly?? Mike was just restating a well established CPGB position, in case you had forgotten. Of course we would intervene in it. We find close combat and the short sword more effective than polemical missiles from afar. Phil seems surprised that ?the CPGB is in favour of ? fighting for Marxist principles within the existing organisations of the labour movement?. Mike and Barry ?cannot contemplate a change of tactics because of the untarnished character of their principles?. But the dogmatism seems to be yours, Phil. Revolutionaries must not wait for favourable circumstances before getting themselves organised.

What we actually need now is the organisational unity of revolutionaries for effective action in the struggle for a revolutionary workers? party, in place of the existing multitude of separate, competing groups. Yes, Marxist revolutionaries must dig roots in the working class, so that revolutionary organisation becomes part of the class. But our first job is to organise ourselves, so that we can approach this task in a democratic, planned, organised, disciplined and therefore effective way.