26.08.2009

What sort of party and how to get to it

The final session of Communist University featured a roundtable discussion entitled ‘Capitalism’s crisis and how we should organise’. There were four introductory speakers

Ben Lewis (CPGB) spoke first:

The first thing that needs to be said about this topic is that, whatever answers we come up with, it is certainly not business as usual for the left. This crisis is unique and has unique dynamics. We are entering a new period that necessitates new thinking and a fresh approach for the left.

We know the problems that the capitalist class has in terms of formulating its own strategy, and similarly, in discussing our response, our alternative, we have to take on board the fact that the left - given the defeats of the 20th century and the distortions of Stalinism - is also in crisis.

What the working class internationally obviously lacks is a party. There is a sea of competing, hostile, bureaucratically controlled formations, that bear little or no relation to the working class movement itself, and are often even counterposed to that movement by their insistence on advancing their own narrow interests and replicating their own little groups. This disunity is something we must take head on in order to fight for what is obviously objectively necessary in these conditions. That is, not a party of Labourism, but a party of Marxism, offering Marxist, global solutions to what is quite obviously a global crisis. As Lenin once said, the working class without a party is nothing, but with a party it is everything. That is precisely what we must have in mind when discussing how we organise to fight back.

So what sort of party do we need? The first thing to be said is that the left needs to openly and honestly fight for the politics it purports to uphold: the basic political principles of Marxism. Were that to be the case we would undoubtedly be in a stronger position.

But what are the fundamental political goals of Marxism, and the principles we should organise around? Firstly, working class political independence from the bourgeoisie: no government coalitions with the bourgeoisie, but instead, as Kautsky put it, irreconcilable, consistent and unshakable opposition to the bourgeois state.

Secondly, internationalism. One of the greatest poisons of the workers’ movement of the 20th century was the so-called theory of socialism in one country. We have to be clear that from the start that the organisation of our movement requires the international unity of the working class above all else. That also means that, for communists operating in Great Britain, we have to think on the level of the European Union.

Thirdly, extreme democracy, which itself has two elements. We fight for extreme democracy in society against the bureaucratic state. We are for the working class becoming the hegemon in that fight, which is the fight for workers’ rule. For example, we demand annual elections for representatives, who should be instantly recallable and paid the equivalent of a skilled worker’s wage; we demand the replacement of the standing army with a popular militia. Such demands are central in the struggle for the democratic republic, the form of working class rule.

But there is another element to extreme democracy, absolutely crucial in the fight for genuine Marxist politics, and that is extreme democracy within our own movement. Minorities must have the right to organise, speak and publish openly and fight to become the majority. The struggle against opportunism must be conducted in the most open, democratic and polemical fashion possible to achieve clarity about where we disagree. But the left avoids serious engagement with each other’s ideas and overcoming this is part of the struggle for unity.

The left seems to be organised on a model that is an insult to the Bolsheviks post-1921. We might forgive this if we had to operate under conditions of civil war or state repression, but it is absolutely not justified. This misconception of Leninism is actually a product of the defeat of our movement. In effect it rearticulates pre-Marxist forms of organisation, which Marx himself struggled against in the First International.

This necessary unity is not something we can put off until tomorrow. We cannot just hope that if we get practically involved, and things start to move, maybe somehow, spontaneously, this will create a dynamic towards unity. Whilst there may be an element of truth in that, unless we address the question of unity head on, and fight for the organisation that we need now, we will be in no position to engage with an upturn in working class struggle.

We must break with the prevalent notion that the task of Marxists in this period is to set up organisations that are known to be insufficient - programmatically not delimited between reform and revolution - as some sort of catching mechanism to meet the masses halfway. As Rosa Luxembourg points out lucidly in a polemic with Eduard Bernstein, these manifestations of opportunism are not actually signposts toward Marxism: they lead in a different direction entirely. Quite clearly the so-called Marxist left trying to create formations like the Socialist Alliance, Scottish Socialist Party or Respect is not just an insult to Bolshevism, but an insult to Menshevism! Our struggle is for a Marxist party.

The CPGB is firmly committed to the fight for a Marxist party that can win millions to its banner. We have to break with the conception of the ‘pure’ vanguard party that must necessarily be for the elect. We want a mass party. For Lenin and Kautsky there was no real distinction between mass and vanguard. The party they sought would bring together the vanguard, but with a view to winning the majority of the working class because socialism is the conscious act of the majority. A point Marx made against the anarchists.

We have to fight for what is needed whenever the question of party is posed. We have done just that over the last period, intervening in halfway house unity initiatives in the face of quite hostile opposition, insisting that we need a party guided by Marxism. Because we want a mass party it does not follow that we are not concerned about programme, which must be informed by the most advanced theory and act as a memory for the class, a guide to our political action. We want unity based on acceptance of the Marxist programme. It is not about agreeing on every issue - that is not how parties are built. It is about acceptance of the programme as a whole and the duty to articulate disagreements where they arise within the framework of that programme.

That is the sort of model we look to for unity. Not a bureaucratic unity where minorities are silenced, but genuine unity which must be fought for and won and constantly rewon through open political struggle, which educates the working class in the process. That is why we put on events like Communist University, bringing comrades together from different traditions to air their views on the questions of the day. And this final session is really the question we need to think about coming out of Communist University. What have we learnt in the course of the week that can inform our drive to unity?

We welcome contributions on this to the Weekly Worker. Our paper is crucial in the fight for a Communist Party precisely because it allows comrades to argue things through. And for those who accept our principles and programme, we urge you to join us. Whether you do that or not, work with us in the fight for what is increasingly necessary in these times, and that is a Marxist party.

Hillel Ticktin (Critique):

I agree with the need to form a Marxist party. We had a little experience of it a couple of years ago and somehow it did not work out. I do not believe the change to socialism will be spontaneous, although there is spontaneity of a kind. I do think there has to be an organisation and the bourgeoisie will do its best to stop it, and therefore taking power through spontaneous action is not going to happen. In principle without a revolutionary party there is not going to be any change.

The question is not whether we need a Marxist party. That is obvious. The question is how we get there, and I have to say I may have read Lenin, but I have not learnt how we do it. I do not even have a modicum of a solution. It is the correct goal, but recognising that does not get us there.

The good thing is that the semi-ideology we have seen over the past 20 years - a reactionary utopia of the efficiency of the market - has been exploded. However, is also true that there is a lack of understanding. An opinion poll in the United States showed that 25% of Americans think the Jews caused the current downturn. Obviously you cannot organise people very easily while such nonsense is believed.

This state of affairs results partly from the failure and the horror of Stalinism and partly from the legacy of social democracy, even though both have largely gone. There is a general view that, however desirable socialism is, it is utopian, or worse than utopian. Because it is utopian, the argument goes, Stalinism, or a version of it, is bound to arise along the way. This view is very widely held. The problem today is to explain and overcome the history of last 100 years in order to get people to take the next step. That is where we actually are.

This is a new period, not just because of the end of Stalinism and social democracy, but also because of the current profound, long-term crisis. But I do not think the programme the CPGB has put forward will work either in terms of its attack on Labourism or in its extreme democracy. It appears to me that what people want is not a reiteration of the terms of democracy. Of course, in the deepest sense that is what we all want. That is to say, a society where there is control from below, where everyone has an input - which actually goes far beyond democracy. I understand that is what is really meant.

However, the term ‘democracy’ is tarnished. We have to look at what it means today. Parliamentary democracy! Well, it is clearly dying. Therefore slogans around democracy just do not work. Particularly if you call yourself a Communist Party talk of nothing but democracy recalls the so-called ‘people’s democracies’. The demand has to be for socialism itself. Most people, when you explain what it is, agree it is a wonderful idea. The problem is how you get there without liquidating half the population. I do not have a solution of how to overcome this gap.

I also do not agree that the question is one of dealing with the Labour Party bureaucracy, as that is largely dead today. Prime minister and Labour leader Gordon Brown has done a marvellous job in this respect. Who on earth wants a Labour Party? The only reason people will vote Labour is because it is not the Conservative Party. Yet in some respects Labour has clearly moved to the right of the Conservatives: it has introduced some of the most draconian laws in British history; it has attacked the working class openly. The idea that people now are hung up on Labourism is fantastic: they are not. They may be stuck with it, but that is a different matter.

I do not have a solution, but I think we have to move step by step toward a party. The only way we can do that pragmatically is to find steps that will get to the population. I am certainly not against what Chris Knight has done in trying to get through to people. One way is simply to try and get together people who are well known, and make an appeal on that basis. It will probably get nowhere but it could start something, possibly. We could have study groups across Britain. In other words, there are a series of partial measures to call on people to try and begin something, and we will get some sort of response. We quite evidently cannot form a party tomorrow.

The other aspect that has been mentioned is that one of the major reasons no one wants to join the left is the awfulness of the existing groups. Only someone who is totally ignorant, or wants to beat themselves up would actually join the Socialist Workers Party today, quite evidently. However, there are tens of thousands of people who have been through the left groups, and it is to them who we have to make an appeal to begin a process. How it would work out from there I do not know, but that is how to begin in a small way. I think events will begin to happen very quickly and we may then be able to see a way forward, but I cannot predict it.

Moshé Machover (Israeli anti-Zionist):

I am going to treat the subject under two distinct headings: one, the prospect of a reformist party; the other, the task of forming a revolutionary Marxist party. The former is not our task as revolutionaries, but we have to formulate some kind of strategy towards it because it is reasonably likely to arise.

It is not a halfway house towards a revolutionary party, as it is sometimes labelled. That suggests it is on the same continuum. But it is nothing like that at all. It is an entirely different prospect. A reformist party is about reforming capitalism, not overthrowing it. A revolutionary party is about superseding capitalism via revolution. Certainly one is not a substitute for the other.

I am going to enumerate the things going for a reformist party and the obstacles it faces. I also have some modest proposals both in respect to this and in respect to how to go about forming a revolutionary party.

The advantages facing those who want to form a reformist party is that this niche is vacant. There is no major reformist party at present. The Labour Party, whether a bourgeois workers’ party or not, no longer has a programme of reforming capitalism. It has retreated quite obviously from the basic demands even of the right wing of a reformist party.

The other advantage for those who wish to from a reformist party is that in non-revolutionary times more workers would actually agree to a reformist programme than to a revolutionary one. It is only in revolutionary situations that the majority of the working class is likely to move toward the idea of actually overthrowing capitalism. If you do a poll of those workers that are at all politicised in any sense you would find more in favour of reforming capitalism, although maybe with more radical proposals.

The main obstacle facing such a project is that, whilst the ideological niche of reformism is vacant, the electoral niche is occupied by the Labour Party. Labour, whilst no longer reformist, still occupies this electoral niche. The horrible Westminster electoral system is specifically designed to prevent radical parties of both left and right becoming established. For a reformist party this is a crucial obstacle, because reformism requires electoral success. A reformist party that has no prospect of getting at least a few members elected to parliament is a non-starter and this has actually been such projects’ main difficulty.

It is not our task to form such a party, but we cannot stay aloof. We must consider what kind of intervention to take toward such a party and what demands one could raise towards it. One sort of demand, which is a non-starter in this county, is the right to bear arms. In the United States the right to bear arms is a simple democratic demand and so is not problematic. In this country and the rest of Europe this is not a reformist demand. It is quite clear if you raise such a demand you are not raising even a left reformist demand. It is a nonsense, and quite wrong to raise it vis-à-vis a reformist project.

But you can aim to radicalise reformist projects. Make it left-reformist not right-reformist by raising some perfectly reasonable demands. For example, in the current situation, nationalisation of the banks, renationalisation of the railways. This would be very popular, as is the idea of republicanism: the abolition of the monarchy. It is not merely a symbolical institution, but is very important in its symbolical guise. What it symbolises is inherited power and privilege. Although the demand does not go beyond capitalism - obviously capitalist republics exist - in this country it has radicalising potential. So we can raise both economic and political demands.

Now I am going to address the second part of the topic: the task revolutionaries must undertake, the task of forming a revolutionary party. The advantages we have are that for this project to get off the ground it is not necessary to have electoral success. You can perfectly well have a mini mass revolutionary party with quite a substantial following without necessarily being electorally successful, certainly not in national elections. The other advantage is that this niche is vacant.

The obstacles are in that in non-revolutionary situations only a minority, and probably a small minority, of the working class will actually follow a revolutionary programme. The tendency to reformism will probably be stronger in the grass roots. So a lot of work has to be done in education in order to convince a non-negligible part of the working class that overthrowing capitalism is a serious project.

Now to my constructive, modest proposal. I think we can learn from the experience of the Campaign for a Marxist Party. I am not going to go into detail, but I think we can learn from some mistakes. The whole thing blew up when the CMP wanted to draw up a fairly detailed programme. That is when differences emerged early, and too soon, and the whole thing exploded. Working on the initial 16 principles that brought me to the project, or something like that, for quite along time would have been enough.

Another thing we should learn is that revolutionary projects usually have an international starting point. The idea of first building a revolutionary party in Britain, and maybe other countries will do likewise and then at the end of the process national revolutionary parties will get together to form an international party - perhaps this is looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope,. Perhaps we should start by forming an international entity.

You cannot start on an international basis to form a party with discipline and so on, but you can form a network. Those who know the history of the revolutionary movement know that this is how the First International came about. Such a network would be able to utilise the communication capacity we have today to make such correspondence far easier. Not that anyone could join, but it could unite around something like the principles that initiated the CMP.

If we look round this room, even the international contacts that people in this room are in touch with could provide the nucleus for this international network. This has to be very carefully and cautiously undertaken, but I think this is perhaps a more promising way to go about forming a revolutionary party that would be international from the very beginning.

Chris Knight (Radical Anthropology Group):

I want to say a little about the CPGB, and also talk about fundamental Marxist philosophy. I will go over some of the actions of the past year - the G20 Meltdown and so on - then move on to the Labour Party and conclude with some suggestions.

Shortly after last year’s Communist University I applied to join the CPGB. I received several documents, met with Mark Fischer, and had long discussions. I totally accepted the programme of the CPGB. But despite always having excellent relationships with the comrades here every summer, for some reason not a lot happened. I still would like to join the CPGB. We need a Communist Party and I want to join it, please!

Point two: Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach. It rather needs repeating. Thesis two: “The question whether human thinking can reach objective truth is not a question of theory, but a practical question … The dispute about the actuality or non-actuality of thinking - thinking isolated from practice - is a purely scholastic question.” Thesis eight: “All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and the comprehension of this practice.” Finally thesis 11: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

The whole point of Marx and Engels and everything they wrote is that you do not go around saying the problem is people’s consciousness. That is the Young Hegelians’ idea. It does not work. Marxism explains why people have the consciousness they do. The class which is the material force dominating in society will be the dominant intellectual force - how do you deal with that? You have to break the material power of the ruling class. You need a countervailing material force to do that, which has to be the working class.

I just laugh when I think about the argument as to whether or not to arm the working class as an immediate demand. You have to start with something concrete. Get down to the Isle of Wight, to Vestas - we need a few bodies on the line. The bailiffs came to evict the workers in occupation and we could have done with a few hundred comrades to stop them and keep the occupation going - it would have been a spark to light up the landscape. It was probably the most popular occupation in British history with six workers in the place. So instead of talking about disbanding the army, start with something practical. Please, comrades!

The communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working class parties. They have no interest apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own with which to shape and mould the proletarian movement, etc. Exactly what Lars Lih was explaining to us was Lenin’s position.

Consciousness is, of course, important. But the consciousness which the class needs - and we have to be part of the class if we are even relevant - is the consciousness of our own strength. That is what is needed. And we cannot be conscious of our strength if we are not doing anything. We do not have any strength if we are not connected. It does not matter what is in our heads: it will not be revolutionary consciousness.

What do the reformists do? The trade union bureaucracy and others do? Two things. First of all, they make damn sure the different sections of the class are divided. That different struggles are not linked up, that any dispute is defeated. Secondly, they drum into the working class how weak they are. How dependent they are on the politicians. Therefore it is perfectly simple what revolutionaries do. The complete opposite. We lead the struggles, and insofar as the struggles get even a tiny bit linked we bring to all sections whatever strength we have got locally, nationally, internationally. If we are not doing anything we will not be in any position to disseminate any sense of empowerment, of strength, because nothing is happening.

Hillel Ticktin says honestly, “I have got no solutions.” I, Chris Knight, have no solutions. It does not matter what is in my head. That is not a solution. Maybe in this room we have a little bit more like a possible solution. A few of us down the Isle of Wight last week would have been good. We may have a solution. But to be a solution we have to move in some practical way.

Now, the G20. I wrote something for the Weekly Worker. In a way, humorous. Perhaps I should say that when Lehman Brothers collapsed last September, my instinct was to laugh. The funny thing was these bankers suddenly agreed with one of Marx’s most famous formulations: “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs”. The bankers came to the government, saying, ‘Our abilities at this moment in time are severely limited. However, we have got enormous needs. We have got yachts to repair and all kinds of things to do. Please subsidise our needs.’ So ideologically they had completely lost it - they were agreeing with communism, although, of course, only for the rich. The point is that, when the ruling class agree that communism is fine as long as it is kept to the rich, you know it is not going to work. It is unsustainable, and it is kind of comic. We need to see the humorous side of this crisis.

I wrote a thing called the October thesis marking immediately the moment of transition into this new period of crisis initiated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers mid-September last year. Marxists, and anybody with intelligence on the left, needed to mark that in someway. OK, we had a Halloween party at Canary Wharf. It was not the revolution, but it was damn sight more relevant than what the rest of the left did. At least the Socialist Workers Party students went to the Bank of England and had a little demonstration up there. At least they did something, however much you criticise it.

I will say this, if I had been a member of this Communist Party, and we had few more people and I had sobered down a bit and had a few more discussions, maybe the thing would have been a bit more measured, a bit more balanced, a bit more connected with the class. I do not doubt that. But almost any kind of action on the right side of the barricades is better than complete graveyard silence. Do comrades realise this? If it hadn’t been for me in a slightly mad stage at that time, and four or five others, if we had not decided that something needed to be done in response to Barack Obama and his finance ministers from around the world ... The provocation of that crowd coming to London demanding more taxpayers’ money to meet their needs … But to do nothing? To not respond at all? I do not understand it. The point I am making is that even with a small group we managed to mobilise about 30,000 people, many young and never involved in politics before.

We drew on our anthropology and decided to make it a carnival, using sexy symbols like the four horseman of the apocalypse to make a point. Because, if you give somebody a great long text in the Weekly Worker of 8,000 words, all in very small print, they may not react as soon as if you do something with a little more impact. So we did that, and I will tell you now that I have no regrets. I am proud of what a small number of us managed to do. It made a difference.

Never mind arming the people: we had police violence - direct violence by the state - and in a sense we taught them a bit of a lesson. They will not go for kettling and all that in the near future. We turned the tables on the cops. They were photographed killing somebody and beating up a whole lot of other people. SWP comrades at a senior level - Martin Smith and others - took all their comrades, instead of targeting the banks, to some Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament thing at the American embassy. But they all know that was a mistake. They should have been with us at the Bank of England - actually a few were.

Immediately after that we set up the United Campaign against Police Violence. It is a useful campaign. We have reinvigorated the Institute of Deaths in Police Custody in Brixton. We have got many black families thinking if the police can be hounded for killing Ian Tomlinson, what about the hundreds of black people killed in police custody? Why don’t we open these issues?

I am just giving you examples of things you can get stuck into. Comrades, I understand you cannot do everything. You are a tiny little group, and the paper is really important, and is fantastic. I read it every week. The stuff on Iran is second to none. You just do not see it anywhere else, as with many other articles. I understand you cannot be everywhere at once, but do not remain a tiny little sect by not getting involved.

Ben made the point: we do not want to be a sect; we want to be a mass party. What would it look like? Well, rather like the pre-World War I German Social Democratic Party. So why don’t we just dream of it - a mass, revolutionary working class party? It would be involved in everything - churches, the army, music. We would have brass bands, jazz bands, dance, poetry, science. We would be doing all these things. As well the street theatre, the picket lines.

I understand we cannot do that, but - and this is my point - in principle, the party in embryo, if it is to be the seed of a revolutionary party, has to embody all of that. Do not close doors, comrades. Do not shut out all those many comrades who now know we need a revolutionary party.

I have one small proposal at the end of this: why don’t you let me join?