18.07.2013

On the fringe

Michael Copestake reports from the CPGB and HOPI's fringe meetings

The CPGB and Hands Off the People of Iran were among organisations hosting fringe meetings at this year’s Marxism. The CPGB fringe was on the subject of the hot topic of the moment: that is, the debates around democratic centralism, what it means and how the SWP’s interpretation of it is both a historical distortion of Bolshevik history and a failure in practice.

Comrade Jack Conrad in his introduction noted that democratic centralism has, on some parts of the left, become a scare phrase. For some it represents the notion of a monolith that cannot be challenged, a dogmatic and one-dimensional cudgel, which is in reality the negation of democracy. But what they are talking about is actually an SWP-type regime: ie, bureaucratic centralism.

Referring to Jo Freeman’s Tyranny of structurelessness, comrade Conrad said that the alternatives of horizontalism and anarchism can never produce a workable alternative model for coherent democratic organisation: ‘consensus’-based groups typically end up with an invisible leadership stitching things up behind the scenes.

It seemed to comrade Conrad that the SWP’s ‘democratic centralism’ was very much in the post-1921 Bolshevik mould - but at least the Bolsheviks could point to imperialist invasion and social collapse. As a result they saw no alternative to undermining their own democracy through the introduction of emergency - supposedly temporary - measures such as the ban on factions. Why should this be the starting point in 21st century Britain?

Against this the comrade contrasted the Leninism of What is to be done? Even in 1902, under conditions where Marxist agitators were regularly sent off to Siberia, the aim for Lenin was nonetheless to create a party with as much democracy as concrete conditions allowed. Contrasting Lenin’s paper, Iskra, with the SWP’s publications, the comrade said, highlights two very different approaches. Iskra was a paper full of sharp polemic amongst and against the left, which took for granted that the advanced workers already knew that the tsar and the bosses were bad, and instead sought to bring out and clarify the key political and strategic differences on the left.

In the debate that followed one comrade pointed out that these differing approaches to the organisation of the party actually reflect different attitudes to the class itself. The first assumes that the future ruling class demands openness and democracy in order to acquire the necessary knowledge and experience, while the second in reality believes that a passive working class must be manipulated by a party elite. It is clear to the CPGB which is the authentic Leninism.

Following the military coup in Egypt against a Muslim Brotherhood government, the Hands Off the People of Iran fringe meeting on political Islam benefited as always from the presence of Hopi chair Yassamine Mather and Israeli socialist and mathematician Moshé Machover.

Providing a quick survey of the state of the Middle Eastern region, comrade Mather concluded that the various Islamic parties were under substantial pressure. In Iran anger was growing against the regime, as a result of the continued and dramatic economic decline and the consequent suffering of the people. In Turkey there were now protests against the ruling Islamic AKP party. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood government had provoked mass dissatisfaction until its overthrow by the military. The common theme, the comrade observed, was continued and growing inequality, poverty and the inability of governments to resolve the underlying economic crisis.

In addition, the behaviour of the Islamic parties in government has proved so markedly divergent from what they appeared to many to represent when in opposition that this too has contributed to the disillusionment of their supporters. In contrast to the talk of social justice and toleration, the reality is of economic liberalisation and, in Egypt and Turkey, the pursuit of previously unheralded programmes to transform society on a religious basis, to the chagrin of wide swathes of the poor, the workers and, of course, the secularists.

Comrade Machover focused on the role of Israel in the region and its relation to the social turmoil in the surrounding states. He began by pointing out that amongst all the news emanating from the Middle East, Israel was largely absent - something the Israeli state was likely happy about, as it could pursue its aims without unwanted attention being drawn, for example, to the ongoing removal of thousands of settled Bedouins from their land.

Israel is happy whoever is in government in Egypt, said comrade Machover, so long as it is the army that is really in control - Tel Aviv has an understanding with the Egyptian military about the continuing siege of Gaza and the closure of its Egyptian border.

The comrade was also at pains to stress that Israel should not be characterised one-sidedly as the puppet of the US - there are emerging differences over their perceived interests in, for example, Syria, where the US is increasingly gung-ho in wanting the removal of an Assad regime which Israel could at least tolerate; and in Iran, with whom Israel fears that the US may cut some kind of deal.