18.07.2013

SWP: How did this bloody mess come to pass?

Marxism, the annual school of the SWP, saw a revamped opposition, reports Mark Fischer

The aftermath of this year’s Marxism will pose a conundrum for the Socialist Workers Party’s deeply discredited leadership. Despite attempts to “draw a line” under the Delta crisis and move on, a new, revamped opposition successfully used the event to challenge the apparatus and cohere itself. The opposition has many differing opinions, but seems determined to fight it out at the January 2014 conference. As one CPGB comrade commented afterwards, the opposition “went into Marxism with a blog and came out of it with a caucus”.

Tony Cliff, the organisation’s founder-leader must be spinning in his grave. Membership down to a thousand amidst splits, divisions and accusations of rape. John Rees - gone. Lindsey German - gone. Chris Bambery - gone. Martin Smith - in disgrace. And, worryingly, for his surviving prodigies ensconced in the Vauxhall HQ, the revamped opposition includes those who have been classified by Alex Callinicos as part of the SWP’s wider political leadership. ‘How did this bloody mess come to pass?’ Cliff would be asking.

There are signs that the Revolutionary Socialism Opposition is actually more committed to what it understands by ‘Leninism’ than the comrades who so easily decanted to form the International Socialist Network (they currently seem determined to wade into the swamp hand in hand with Socialist Resistance and the Anti-Capitalist Initiative). The defiant stance of comrades such as Ian Birchall, Neil Davidson and Rob Owen certainly emboldened critically minded SWPers at Marxism. And outside support for them came in the form of Paul Le Blanc and Gilbert Achcar, particularly in the July 14 session on ‘How socialists should organise’, where Achcar tore into the disgraceful bureaucratic behaviour of the leadership. Whatever our other disagreements with him, the stance Achcar took at Marxism was spot on.

Prior to Marxism, we reported on a campaign conducted by various leftists and feminists to persuade the luminaries of the left to boycott the event. We even presumed to draft a critical speech that John McDonnell - one of the comrades who buckled to this pressure - might/should have made if he had taken up the challenge and used an SWP platform to thrash out the politics.

As our report of the session shows (see p8), comrade Achcar did precisely this and it is a shame that more invited speakers did not follow his example to give solidarity and some ballast to the critical voices in the organisation. Apparently Achcar himself was repeatedly lobbied in an attempt to get him to join the list of non-attendees. He faced these critics down openly and observed, quite correctly, that their approach “[revealed] the regrettable persistence of a certain mindset on the left, a mindset the origin of which is known all too well and for which anathemas and excommunication are substitutes for political fight”.¹

There were also more oblique critical references from the likes of Eamonn McCann (“We fight any manifestation of sexism … particularly in our own organisations”) and Jerry Hicks (who made light-hearted references to the CC’s unpopularity in his rambling, but amusing contribution to the opening rally), as well as others. It is clear that the tactic of boycotting Marxism was totally wrong-headed. The left in general needs to connect with the crisis in the SWP, not keep its distance for the sake of its supposed moral ‘purity’. This is not a matter of either intruding on private grief or getting ‘dirty’ by association. The SWP is an important organisation in our movement and the comrades forming its opposition need to be critically supported.

As it was, the ongoing existence of an internal faction was established as an accepted fact; whatever the bureaucratic rules prescribe, it exists. For example, there were open references to it by comrade Callinicos in his stormy ‘Leninism in the 21st century’ session; and in Ian Birchall’s contribution to the ‘Lessons of the German revolution’. Comrades should not take sides on which German faction might have deserved their support in the early party of the 20th century, he told us, given that they now had their own “factional struggles” to occupy them right here in the 21st.

Hit

You have to assume that the SWP leadership knew it would take a hit at this year’s Marxism. Even the more dullard elements on the central committee must have seen it coming, given the scale of the crisis. After all, at least half the active membership has either rebelled or, unfortunately, walked.

So bitter exchanges were unavoidable; attendance would be down (in the event numbers were around half of those seen in recent years) and the embarrassing boycott by many high-profile speakers would be damaging in the soft-left intellectual milieu the SWP habitually courts to lend its events prestige.

Best to let the storm blow itself out, was probably the calculation. Accordingly, the contributions from leading members were largely moderate in tone when they addressed the differences within the SWP’s ranks. It was perfectly natural to have an open debate, was the repeated claim - not only by CCers, but rank-and-file loyalists in conversations with other leftwingers on the stalls, etc. The mantra was almost off pat; divisions need to be healed, the organisation must return to the serious tasks that confront it, etc.

With this narrative in place, mild-mannered national secretary Charlie Kimber - with his rather gentle, self-deprecating sense of humour - was judged an ideal envoy from the central committee to address the closing rally. He spoke of the “privilege” of attending Marxism this year. Of course, any revolutionary organisation had to be engaged in a process of “continual discussion and debate” and the critical exchanges that had characterised Marxism “must continue”. But a “united party” was needed in the light of the “big responsibility” that rested on the collective shoulders of the SWP.

The danger was that these clashes might settle into “fixed divisions” and distract from the big battles that lay ahead: the September 29 march on the Tory Party conference, the Unite the Resistance conference on October 19, the struggle against the bedroom tax, building People’s Assemblies, the “crucial work” of Unite Against Fascism following the Woolwich murder - comrades will be familiar with the tune, even if the lyrics are continually tweaked.²

Marxism was therefore a bit of a ‘grit your teeth and get through it’ experience for the CC and its supporters. You heard plenty of these comrades mouth the familiar platitudes about this year’s “fantastic” Marxism. However, the little clusters of comrades between sessions gave a more accurate picture of the mindset of the loyalists. There the talk was of “disgraceful”, “not very good”, “leaving a bitter taste”, “shocking” and “getting rid of traitors”.

In fact, this was an interesting Marxism. There were genuine, open debates between members of the SWP - even if the standard, time-pinched format of the sessions was totally inadequate to bring out the differences in sharp relief. Understandably, intra-SWP relations were sometimes fraught and very angry. Despite that, comrades did not in the main retreat into bunkers. Apart from a few unreconstructed lardheads, I found that even CC supporters were prepared to engage. Myself and other CPGB comrades had a number of relatively honest, quite extended conversations with SWP loyalists, comrades who - while hurt and understandably defensive - were clearly chastened by the tsunami of criticism that has swept over them.

What is to be done?

The leadership clearly attempted to polarise the debate with the opposition around ‘Leninism in the 21st century’, a theme that ran throughout the school. A point made repeatedly by loyalists was that it was dangerous to think of the party as prefiguring the socialist society itself in some form. The message was pretty clear - socialism will be lovely, humane and democratic. But the party that wins it will be semi-military, with an all-powerful central apparatus ever ready for Cliff’s favourite dance move, ‘sharp turns’. Or, to put it in the idiom of ‘Leninism’ SWP style - ‘shut your gobs, grab that bundle of Socialist Worker and let’s get busy’.

An opportunity therefore presents itself to the SWP opposition to rehabilitate not simply the SWP in the eyes of the movement, but to strike a blow for the reconstitution of the Marxist left in the UK on a qualitatively higher, more principled basis. To strike a blow for partyism, in other words.

The factional struggles of 2012-13 should suggest some obvious lessons in this regard:

1. The mistakes of the first opposition wave must be avoided. Comrades should prepare themselves for an uncompromising factional war with people who have forfeited any right to be trusted. This means there should be no more talk of “red lines”; of developments that would spark instant resignation - eg, the rehabilitation of Martin Smith or a wave of expulsions.

2. Similarly, this time round there must be no suspension of relentless public criticism of the positions of the central committee. To agree to this would be to accept that the battle will be fought exclusively on the ground of the leadership, in arenas which are conducive to its bureaucratic manipulation and apparatus gerrymandering. The pre-conference discussion period has de facto started, as comrade Ian Birchall declared in the July 13 ‘Leninism in the 21st century’ session. This ought to be conducted openly with a view to drawing the wider revolutionary left into an active, partisan engagement. It is not simply a matter of winning over the so-called “reluctant loyalists” in the middle ground, as some comrades have suggested. Again, a narrow, internal approach like this will concede the initiative to the apparatus and will more or less guarantee defeat.

3. If this central committee again succeeds in gerrymandering the next SWP conference there can be no question of accepting its legitimacy - it was a grave error to do so in relation to the March special conference. That helped spread the mood of despair that saw several hundred comrades simply quit. The opposition must demand representation on any body that purports to speak in the name of the SWP in proportion to its actual support. The same must apply to the election of conference delegates. If the leadership refuses, then the conference should be branded as nothing more than a factional gathering with no right whatsoever to speak for the SWP as a whole.

4. If it becomes clear that the leadership is set on a repeat of March and another rigged gathering, it would be legitimate for the opposition to convene an emergency SWP conference, with the aim of replacing a palpably bankrupt leadership, so clearly intent on maintain control over the SWP as if it were a piece of private property. Such a conference could urge those who have left the SWP to come back and take the initiative of calling upon other Marxist organisations to unite with the aim of fighting for a mass Communist Party.

mark.fischer@weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

1. Statement, May 8 2013: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.marxism.marxmail/168543.

2. The politically selective hearing of sections of the SWP opposition is rather worrying. A July 17 posting on the Revolutionary Socialist blog quotes Kimber’s puff about continuing debate, but omits his more pointed comments on a united party now moving forward with practical intervention. There is such as thing as wilful naivety, comrades …