14.02.2008
Is the party a halfway house?
Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group replies to the CPGB's Mike Macnair on the present roots of the national Marxist party in Britain
“The communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the minority rights of the working class, but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future of that movement” (K Marx and F Engels Communist manifesto).
This oft quoted statement is vitally important. It points to involvement in the “movement of the present”, whilst representing the “future of that movement”. How we do this poses a problem. On one side we could simply tail or follow the “movement of the present. The opposite danger is to ignore the present and simply represent the communist future.
The first danger is what Lenin called the worship of spontaneity and opportunism. The second is substituting propagandism for the real movement of the class and leads to sectarianism. The problem is to steer a course between these two poles of “present” and “future”, between opportunism and sectarianism. Here we face the issue of transitional demands or ‘halfway house’ policies and organisations.
Although the term ‘transitional demands’ is associated with Trotsky, it was fundamental to Marx’s method and to Lenin’s politics. Transitional demands and halfway house organisations are highly problematic. We are not provided with a formula that enables us to make a simple distinction between tailist-reformist demands, transitional demands and pure propagandism.
It is the same problem that Lenin discusses in Leftwing communism in relation to “compromises”. Lenin takes ultra-leftism or childish leftism to task because of its moralising about ‘no compromises’, no deals and no halfway houses. In fighting for the interests of the working class, its leaders will have to make some compromises and some retreats otherwise they will be useless. The difficulty is to distinguish in each concrete case the difference between necessary retreats, transitional steps forward and opportunistic betrayals.
Current debate
The debate between Mike and myself in Weekly Worker (January 10 and January 17) cuts across two questions - the party question and permanent revolution. My ‘Back to the future’ article concentrated on the party only. The Revolutionary Democratic Group has two slogans - the international revolutionary democratic communist party (the full Monty) and the republican socialist party (halfway house). The ‘full Monty’ slogan concerns “the future of that movement” and is presently directed to the communists. The second addresses “the movement of the present” and its immediate political need to break with Labourism.
The story of ‘Jack and the beanstalk’ (‘Back to the future’ January 10) is aimed at sharpening the contrast between the present world, where Jack lives with his mother, and the future ‘other’ world he discovers climbing the beanstalk and finding the golden treasures of communism.
In Jack’s present world we find two so-called halfway houses, named for polemical purposes ‘Republican Socialist Party’ and ‘National Marxist Party’. Both arise from the current conditions in the British workers’ movement. The purpose of the analogy was to ‘out’ the CPGB’s own version of halfway houses. Mike recognises this as the key point. He asks whether the unification of the Marxist left in Britain into a single party (“as comrade Craig argues, a ‘National Marxist Party’”) is merely another kind of halfway house. He recognises this as “a more serious argument than any of comrade Craig’s other points”.
In this reply I will leave aside for another occasion Mike’s philosophising about the relationship between past, present and future, the use of ‘Jack and the beanstalk’ analogies, the importance of science and who stands accused of ‘Trotskyism’ and ‘Stalinism’. I will concentrate on the question of the National Marxist Party as a halfway house. We need to examine this in a scientific way to see whether it cuts the mustard.
The problem is that the CPGB has adopted a demagogic rather than scientific attitude to transitional or halfway house formations. The term ‘halfway house’ was chosen as a term of moral approbation, as if it is a betrayal of pure communism. It is equivalent to the leftist slogan, ‘No compromises’, condemned by Lenin. This makes it impossible to rationally examine the relative merits of the National Marxist Party and the Republican Socialist Party.
Denying the National Marxist Party is a halfway house is a very dangerous road to take. It would be opportunist to pretend this was the full Monty. Communists must call a spade a spade and be open and honest about their compromises. When Marx set about building the First International, he never pretended it was a revolutionary communist international. He applied ‘halfway house’ politics to brilliant effect because he did not dabble in leftist rhetoric.
National Marxist Party
The National Marxist Party is described by Mike as having just “three very general principles”. These are: “(1) that the working class needs to take over the running of society; (2) that it needs for this purpose radical or extreme democracy, both against the capitalist state and within the movement against the labour bureaucracy; and (3) proletarian internationalism”.
He clarifies this further explaining that (1) is “a reference to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’”, which can be seen as closely allied with (2) “extreme democracy”. This programmatic formulation about the dictatorship of the proletariat confirms that he is speaking of a national party which is internationalist. As Mike explains, this is not “a reference to the aim of socialism and common ownership”. It is simply a step towards it. Whether we call this transitional or halfway to our final goal is a moot point.
Mike provides further confirmation of the national character of his Marxist party. He says “to build a party in this country is to play a part in building the sort of international that we need”. Here we see the idea that the NMP is not an end in itself, but a step towards an international party. That would fair enough and hardly in need of comment if Mike was not in denial.
It would be credible if Mike argued that a National Marxist Party was a step towards an international communist party. At one level this seems to be what he is saying. But because of the previous demagoguery he is evasive and does not want to be hoist by his own halfway house petard.
So he tries to obfuscate. He claims that building the National Marxist Party is the same thing as building an international party. He draws a parallel between building locally and nationally. He says: “Just as to build in one locality is to play a part in building the sort of national party that we need”, so building a national party plays a part in building an international.
Mike’s statement is deliberately ambiguous. Let us consider two interpretations. First a National Marxist Party is set up. It then proceeds to set up local branches in London, Swansea and Sheffield. Hence building in one locality, such as Sheffield, plays a part in building the existing national party. True enough. It is building from the top down, from the national to the local, from the centre outwards.
But there is an alternative interpretation. Suppose there is no National Marxist Party and somebody proposes we set up a Sheffield Marxist Party. Mike supports this on the grounds, as he says, building “in one locality is to play a part in building the sort of national party that we need”. No, it is not. Setting up separate, autonomous local parties with the intention, real or fictitious, of uniting them at a later date is the wrong approach.
It may be claimed that an autonomous Sheffield Marxist Party is really a step towards a National Marxist Party. It is by no means certain that it is. Two methods confront each other - the centralist method of building from a strong political centre, versus the bottom-up, localist, anarchist and autonomist method. It is this localist-autonomous method that sees the National Marxist Party as a bottom-up method of building an international.
Internationalising
Mike assures us that the National Marxist Party is not simply a British Marxist Party. Already we see his oil slick spreading across the channel. He explains that the three principles of the party can be used “just as much in Iran or in Argentina as in the US or in Japan”. So we are looking at perhaps 230 Marxist parties which differ because “the concrete features of politics vary from country to country”.
By ‘internationalising’ his theory of the National Marxist Party, Mike simply confirms his national conception of it. It is internationalist, but not an international. He argues that “at an international level, the workers’ movement needs principled aims and the struggle for closer solidarity”. Thus instead of an international party we have “principled aims and closer solidarity”. Are these principles and aims a step towards an international or a substitute for one?
How will this halfway house become the full Monty? Mike rules out one road - which he calls the ‘oil slick international’. This refers to “the existence of the international organisation, inevitably dominated by the national group that initiated it”. Mike says this “prevents the comrades in other countries from developing a real programmatic line for their own country”. Autonomy violated again! This is the same anarchist ‘principle’ which protests that local parties are ‘dominated’ by one national central committee - the oil-slick national!
Mike’s international will not therefore be formed from one Marxist Party spreading across the globe. It is to be formed from the bottom up, by the coming together of multiple national Marxist parties. Not one halfway house, but many, built nationally from below. What is absolutely clear is that this conception of the communist party stands absolutely against Trotsky, who applied the principle of centralism to building an international.
Stalinism
In 1943 Stalin dissolved the Communist International, releasing its sections from the obligations of its constitution and decisions of its congresses. The sections became autonomous National Marxist Parties, albeit with continued support and influence from Moscow. In my article I linked the National Marxist Party with British Stalinism. Mike introduced a handy corrective. It is better therefore to think in terms of world Stalinism and British Stalinism. But this merely serves to strengthen my argument.
The Communist International became the instrument of world Stalinism. All its national sections were subordinated to the foreign policy of the Soviet state. The logical extension of ‘socialism in one country’ was the replacement of the CI by various National Marxist Parties, the invention of world Stalinism, not British Stalinism, as I had implied.
This does not, however, negate the contribution of British Stalinism. The British road to socialism, broad leftism and its relationship with Labourism had a direct impact of the character of the British version of the National Marxist Party, namely the CPGB. This is more obviously projected in the politics of the Communist Party of Britain. The Morning Star reflects the popular front relationship which Stalinism sought to build with Labour. Whilst the CPB is critical of the rightwing leadership of the Labour Party, it is not seeking to win the socialist and trade union left to break from Labour.
RDG programme
I have not the time or space to deal with all Mike’s arguments about the RDG programme. But one point is highly significant. Mike briefly summarises part of the strategic core of our programme as “the possibility of a ‘democratic revolution’, which would create a ‘dual power republic’, which in turn would pose the question of soviet power; and hence the centrality at the present stage, in Britain, of a ‘republican socialist party’”.
This is the same error that Mike made previously. All versions of the theory of permanent revolution lead logically to the world party. The ‘republican socialist party’ is not mentioned in the RDG programme (The revolutionary democratic road to socialism) and nor should it be. It is a communist programme, which calls for “the world party”.
Clause 60 says: “The international working class is the only class capable of establishing international socialism. Advanced sections of the working class in each country must unite in an international or world party, based on the best traditions and experience of the first four internationals”. The only other reference to party is to a “revolutionary socialist workers’ party”. But this was in the context of the RDG in the early 1990s orientated to the SWP, still considering itself a faction.
There are two reason why the republican socialist party is not mentioned in the RDG’s communist programme. First it has no place there. Second it had not been invented. It is a tactical slogan arising from recent British conditions. The slogan of a republican socialist party arose from practical engagement with the political “movement of the present”, as Marx called it, in —the British working class. In 1996-98 new phenomena appeared “unexpectedly” that were not predicted by any theory. A section of British trade unionist and socialist activists tried to get to grips with the collapse of the old CPGB and the rise of New Labour. The first effort was Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party and soon after the Socialist Alliances and the Scottish Socialist Party.
These were progressive developments. The best parts of the left sought to engage with them in a non-sectarian way. Scargill’s initiative could be described as a Stalinist-influenced national Marxist party and the SSP was the first imperfect stab at a republican socialist party. Both were real responses to the crisis on the left. Neither was designed according to the theories of Mike Macnair or Dave Craig. The more Trotskyist Socialist Alliance succeeded Scargill’s more Stalinist National Marxist Party. Those of us involved in these initiatives had to engage theoretically and not just in practice and so new slogans appeared.
Conclusion
The National Marxist Party and the Republican Socialist Party can be seen as approximately Stalinist and Trotskyist responses to the crisis of Labourism and the collapse of the old CPGB in the specific conditions of the British labour movement. From a communist perspective they are either transitional halfway houses or opportunist adaptations to the recent past.
Neither of these parties should be in a communist programme, especially one based around the theory of permanent revolution. If anybody doubts this, they should climb the beanstalk and have a look around. I can assure comrades neither is among the golden treasures.
Of course, Mike has produced his own version of a National Marxist Party, different to Scargill’s effort. His three principles testify that there is some new wine in this old bottle.
Final point. Mike tries to play the silly playground game in which he calls me a “Trotskyist” and claims I say “this proves you’re a Stalinist”. This is too childish for words. What I actually said was that, since we are accused of “clinging to Trotskyist pieties”, it would be worth examining whether there was any evidence of the obverse. The evidence is there in the theory of the national Marxist party (or Marxism in one country).
It does not mean I accused Mike or the CPGB of being Stalinist or even Kautskyite. I did not. We do not all fit into neat, self-contained boxes.