30.03.2011

Debating Labour left and left Labourism

Alex John reports on the March 27 aggregate of CPGB members and supporters in London

The perspectives document produced by the Provisional Central Committee at the beginning of the year was adopted unanimously last Sunday after the inclusion of a number of minor amendments. The document was the main business for the second successive aggregate.

Opening the discussion on behalf of the PCC, John Bridge remarked that, in the six weeks since the PCC document was proposed, the differences which had been expressed verbally on February 13, particularly on the question of Marxist work in the Labour Party, had not been presented in the shape of amendments or as an alternative perspectives document, nor elaborated in a Weekly Worker article. It was unfortunate, he said, that opponents of this part of the PCC document had decided not to attend the aggregate. This was a pity, because these differences within the organisation had clearly not been resolved. Indeed, they rumbled on in online discussions, albeit in an undeveloped and almost non-political form.

However, the meeting did discuss generally supportive amendments from comrade Farzad. In the section on ‘Our organisation’, the need to “guard against impatience, frustration and childish leftism” was complemented by her amendment: “as well as reformism and conformist class collaboration”. As comrade Bridge commented, the pull to the right “goes with the territory” of engagement with the Labour Party and electoral politics.

In the section on ‘British politics’, the document speculates on the “outside possibility” of the Blairites “breaking away from Labour and entering government alongside the Tories and coalition Lib Dems”. Comrade Farzad had proposed to offset this with the following amendment: “There is also the possibility that as a result of Liberal Democrat members and ‘personalities’ joining the Labour Party, the party will move further to the right.” However, the amendment was withdrawn after comrade Bridge and others argued successfully that it was “misconceived”.

Comrade Farzad had argued that if the likes of Charles Kennedy abandoned the Lib Dems to join Labour, this could exert a rightward pull - but she thought this would affect Scotland more than Britain as a whole. Comrade James Turley raised the possibility of a different scenario: Ed Miliband might “track to the right” in order to “break off a bigger piece of the Lib Dems”.

However, Weekly Worker editor Peter Manson argued that the rank and file deserting to Labour are coming from the left flank of the Lib Dems. Likewise, comrade Bridge said that most of the thousands of Lib Dem members joing Labour are “generally of a leftish, radical nature” and are “certainly to the left of most Labour councillors”. The class character of Labour as a bourgeois workers’ party “remains open-ended” , he said, because the right wing may yet break the trade union link, but unless that happens, the party’s politics will remain “determined by the trade unions” in the last analysis. In the present period of austerity and attacks on the working class, he argued, “the working class will fight back” and “Labour will move to the left”.

Perhaps reflecting the reluctance of some comrades to entertain the possibility that the Labour Party could be transformed from a bourgeois workers’ party into a real party of the working class, comrade Farzad distinguished between “Labour Party Marxists” on the one hand, and “Labour lefts”.

This view was countered by comrades Jim Gilbert and Stan Kelsey, who argued that being on the Labour left was not necessarily the same as being a left Labourite. Comrade Kelsey said that many left organisations, tendencies and individuals, within and without Labour, define themselves as Marxist, which is why our call for the unity of ostensible Marxists in a Marxist party was appropriate.

Comrade Kelsey said that communist work in the anti-cuts movement should include recruiting anti-cuts activists into the Labour Party. The CPGB’s theses on Labour make clear that there is no contradiction between transforming the Labour Party and reforging the Communist Party (see Weekly Worker October 21 2010). Transforming Labour is not a private task for selected political guerrillas, but a task for the whole class. When the revolutionary left does form a united Marxist party, it will have to tackle Labourism and the Labour Party, he said.

Comrade Farzad responded that, while it is fine to campaign for unaffiliated trade unions to affiliate to Labour, we should not attempt to persuade individuals to join. Since being in government in the 1920s, Labour has been a party of class collaboration and nationalism, and the Labour left has been social-imperialist, she said.

Today Labour says that coalition cuts are “too deep, too quick”. But a Labour government will either appease finance capital or capital will leave the country, so “there is no middle road”. Labour will come under pressure from a strong anti-cuts movement, she said, but encouraging individuals to join and intervene in the party will “encourage illusions” - Labour speakers invited to anti-cuts meetings “put forward capitalist solutions”. If we argue in the anti-cuts movement that there is no Keynesian solution for capitalism, that the state will only give concessions if the system of capital is threatened, then we “cannot go to anti-cuts meetings and argue for people to join the Labour Party”.

John Bridge said he had been surprised at the “high-risk” austerity programme undertaken by the Tories, which seems “foolish” from their point of view. However, “we don’t advocate Keynesianism”, which does offer an alternative for capitalism, but not for the working class. Comrade Mike Macnair had written that a flight of capital was possible (‘There is an alternative’ Weekly Worker March 24), but where would it go? Until now, capital has been moving to the US and to the City of London.

Marxists should recruit to Labour on the basis of their politics, not to prop up Labourism, said comrade Bridge. The question for the anti-cuts movement is: ‘What are we for?’ Miliband and Keynesianism had to be opposed in the Labour Party too; at the same time there needs to be a fight for Marxist unity in a reforged CPGB.

In her amendment to the section on ‘War and instability’, comrade Farzad sought to ground the protests in Arab and Middle Eastern countries in the global economic downturn, as “the economic background had been missing” in the original document. Comrade John Bridge agreed, but sought also to emphasise the people’s aspiration for democracy and not to reduce the protest movement to mere economics. After discussion, an amendment stressing both aspects was agreed.