29.11.2007
Fresh start for Campaign for a Marxist Party
In a rebuff to sectarians and halfway house supporters, the recall conference of the Campaign for a Marxist Party put it on a much sounder basis last Saturday. The tiny, unrepresentative Democratic Socialist Alliance faction that had dominated the committee for over a year, doing little or nothing, was replaced. Jim Moody reports
The first task of the November 24 conference was to agree on a constitution for the campaign. The DSA had put forward in the name of the outgoing committee a lengthy draft of the type so beloved by trade union bureaucrats. This went into painful detail about how the CMP should be structured: the frequency and precise organisation of general meetings; the need for no fewer than 12 officers (to be elected by the membership) and the remit of each officer; the exact way in which the constitution was to be amended (by a two-thirds majority) and the campaign closed down - all were extensively laid down. In diametric contrast, the CPGB proposed a constitution that covered half a side of A4 and left the election of necessary officer posts to the members of the incoming committee.
The devil in the detail was personified by DSA leading light John Pearson. Comrade Pearson's presentation of the outgoing committee's proposed constitution rested on very wobbly bureaucratic legs. He claimed that the direct election of all officers, including a permanent chair with extended executive powers, is the best democratic method, instead of the Bonapartist carte blanche that it is in reality. By contrast he denounced the CPGB's proposals as "manipulation" by "an unaccountable group". In fact, , said comrade Pearson, the CPGB draft was "managerial" and "petty bourgeois" - no doubt because it did not comply to the norms of the trade union bureaucracy.
When proposing the CPGB's alternative constitution, Mike Macnair's starting point was "the sovereignty of the membership and the membership taking collective action". He counterposed this approach to the legalism inherent in the Pearson draft, which addressed detailed contingencies by rule and would function to bolster the existing leadership as the guardian and interpreter of that rule. Comrade Macnair likened this to the sort of restricted and refracted democracy favoured by the bourgeoisie.
Comrade Hillel Ticktin, editor of Critique, opposed the DSA draft in his intervention from the floor. It was the sort of thing that the committee had wasted its time concocting over the past year instead of actually organising the campaign on the basis of serious political debate. This drove comrade Hillel Ticktin to comment that the "committee has been an utter disaster ... failed hopelessly ... it's been a disgrace". He was appalled at the way the minority, through its control of the committee, had behaved: "We can't slag one another off ..." He added: "We are talking of a call for a party; we are not a party." The CMP constitution "has to be flexible and short ... and sweet."
DSA 'theoretician' Phil Sharpe was unable to justify the draft of the outgoing committee apart from stating that such constitutions were standard fare for the workers' movement (he meant the trade unions, where superior knowledge of the rule book is one means by which the bureaucracy exerts control over the membership).
He agreed that "establishing an accountable organisation" was important, but he merely asserted that filling posts by direct election at a general meeting once a year was the only method that fitted the bill: "A faceless committee does not have that relationship to the membership." But why would well known members of the committee be "faceless"? Apparently because they would decide for themselves which of their number would carry out which task.
As CPGB comrades explained, committee members themselves would normally be in a position to know who was up to which job and who ought to be replaced. But under the DSA draft no individual officer would be answerable to the committee, and could reasonably claim that only a membership meeting could remove them, irrespective of whatever incompetence (or worse) they might display. This was what was meant by Bonapartism, but comrade Sharpe could only respond lamely to the effect that CPGB members were therefore suggesting that "Lenin was the first Bonapartist".
Nick Rogers (CPGB) stated that the outgoing committee's proposed constitution failed to establish the new committee's collective accountability. And, of course, the campaign was in crisis: over the past year the committee had "not been able to hold its officers to account" nor would they be under the outgoing committee's constitution; and so the crisis would continue were it accepted.
Once the general meeting had decided overwhelmingly to base itself on the CPGB proposed constitution, four amendments were taken. First, Steve Freeman argued that describing the party we want as "international revolutionary democratic communist" was preferable to calling it "openly Marxist"; but for most of those present comrade Ticktin's reply that Marxists worthy of the name are internationalist anyway encapsulated why the amendment should be rejected. The CPGB's John Bridge noted that comrade Freeman does not in actual fact agree with the first aim of the CMP, the requirement to "put forward the need for a Marxist party at all opportunities", which is understandable for someone who actually puts forward a halfway house party "at all opportunities".
Gerry Downing's first amendment sought to add the concept of "a world party of socialist revolution" to the 'Aims' section of the constitution. This was opposed by comrade Macnair, who attacked the post-Trotsky Trotskyist (and Maoist) view that it was possible and desirable to build a top-down "oil slick international". Despite comrade Sharpe labelling opposition to comrade Downing's amendment "opportunist ... conservative ... socialism in one country", this amendment fell, too. Comrade Downing's refusal to agree to remove from a second amendment an ambiguous reference to "equality" under communist society led to its defeat.
Finally, over Pearson's bureaucratic objections, two amendments brought at the meeting by comrades Moshé Machover and Chris Gray to improve accountability were accepted without opposition. The constitution was therefore agreed as amended.
A motion from the DSA to develop a political analysis in a manifesto - most likely a lengthy document to be authored by comrade Sharpe - was answered by comrade Macnair, who pointed out that "we are never going to agree" on such an analysis. This harked back to a Mandel-like approach. It was much more important to "publish comrades' convergent and divergent positions", not vote on them. The most important question was to find ways of working together, not pretending agreement on theoretical matters. The motion was lost overwhelmingly.
Another DSA motion, proposed by comrade Pearson, aimed to rescind the resolution of last year's conference to enter into fusion talks with the CPGB. Comrade Bridge admitted virtually nothing had happened on this front in the last year, but that was down to the outgoing committee's opposition to it; conference agreed and the motion was defeated by a large majority.
The closest vote was over comrade Dave Spencer's motion in favour of a "code of conduct" within the CMP, which claimed there is "a well established link between verbal and physical abuse". However, although comrade Ticktin spoke in favour, citing recent bad behaviour online, a majority of comrades agreed that the proposal spelt disaster for open discussion - one person's "abuse" was another's fair comment. The CPGB's Stan Keable opposed the motion, even though he welcomed the aspirations behind it. It was based on a wrong method. What was needed was to develop a communist culture that set behaviour through argument, not a legalistic code and a policeman's approach. The motion was narrowly defeated, with, for once, a good number of non-aligned comrades voting with the DSA.
Ironically, a comrade who was fully in favour of such a code of conduct - namely John Pearson - was exposed as having threatened to attack another CMP member during the lunch break for having had the temerity to describe Pearson as a "political idiot" in an online discussion.
Was this what was meant by comrade Spencer's "well established link between verbal and physical abuse"? At the start of the afternoon session, when openly challenged by the CPGB's Mark Fischer over this behaviour, Pearson shocked the meeting by justifying violence in the workers' movement. Apparently, in the absence of a code of conduct which would ban phrases such as "political idiot", violence was only to be expected. And a day later, in an online exchange with the comrade he had attempted to intimidate, Pearson continued his menaces and went further, threatening blackmail.
Two other motions originating with the DSA were lost by two-thirds majorities or more: one effectively dismissed the left groups as hardly worthy of attention; a second called for yet another conference of the left, this time appealing to non-affiliated socialists. Who would come?
The CMP now has a chance at least of becoming a true forum for discussion between its elements, particularly Critique and the CPGB, but including a number of non-aligned socialists. Decisions of the conference emphasised its role in bringing into one political space those who recognise the need for a Marxist party - as opposed to the plethora of reformist, halfway house lash-ups that are or have been on offer to our class.
Elections to the new committee replaced all the DSA comrades (whom at the previous conference in May had demonstrated their unwillingness to work alongside the CPGB). The seven comrades elected were: Chris Gray (New Interventions), Hillel Ticktin (Critique), Torab Saleth and Yassamine Mather (Hands Off the People of Iran), plus CPGBers Nick Rogers, Mike Macnair and John Bridge. All those elected received between 70% to 90% of the votes cast.