Broad Parties, Revolutionary Parties and the There is increasing agreement on the left in Britain that the new period of radi- calisation, opened up by the emergence of the anti-globalisation movement and the mass anti-war movement has created the best opportunity for many years to reshape and revitalise the left. This is reflected in the launch of Respect - the best opportunity yet in England to create a party on the lines of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Here Alan Thornett assesses the debate between John Rees of the SWP and Murray Smith of the ISM' on the class nature of the Labour Party, the possibilities of building broad left parties and the character of the united front. 2 Published in the SWP's magazine International Socialist Journal, 100, Autumn, 2003. Murray Smith's piece is entitled: "The broad party, the revolutionary party and the united front: a reply to John Rees'. The articles by Murray Smith and Nick McKerrell are reprinted from the ISM's Debate issue_002 winter, 2004 Socialist_ Outlook United Front: The John Rees/Murray Smith debate While there is agreement that real new opportunities exist for a revitalization of the left, an important debate continues as to whether such a new organisation should be a political party or simply an alliance with a more limited function - mainly, though not exclusively, around elections. This debate has gone on inside the Socialist Alliance (SA) since its inception. Leaders of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) have seen the SA as a 'united front of a special kind', and have treated it as one of a number of united fronts through which the SWP functions. By contrast the International Socialist Group (ISG), and Socialist Resistance (SR), have argued for the SSP model: a broad anti-capitalist party, democratically organised, with a common publication and a common framework for campaigning activity, and with the revolutionary groups as platforms within it. This debate continues in an exchange between John Rees of the SWP and Murray Smith and Nick McKerrell of the SSP. They argue for the SSP model to be applied in England. 2 This exchange also covers the issue of the class nature of the Labour Party, which both Murray Smith and John Rees argue (from opposing directions) is the determining factor in the type of alternative we need to build. Social democracy dead and buried? Murray Smith insists that social democratic parties, across Europe, including the Labour Party in Britain, ¡ International Socialist Movement - Marxist platform Leading the SSP publication Frontline. are now straight capitalist parties and not 'capitalist workers parties', as the Marxist left has traditionally seen them. This change, which he says is a matter of 'fundamental importance', has come about because the end of the post-war boom has meant that reforms are no longer possible and because these parties have opted for the full neo-liberal agenda. They were forced, he says, by changed economic conditions, to choose between taking an anti-capitalist or a pro-capitalist stance: there was no middle way any more. They chose the pro-capitalist road and became straight capitalist parties. This has created a situation, he argues, where it is possible to 'skip over' such traditional parties of the working class and move directly to building left alternatives. These alternatives should be parties like the SSP, not alliances like the SA. John Rees argues that, on the contrary, the Labour Party remains a capitalist workers party, and consequently the new organisation we need to build should be an alliance and not a party. 'If Labour is finished', he argues, 'the whole political territory that it previously occupied is, potentially at least, open to a new socialist party'. Since the Labour Party is not finished, he concludes, we need to continue to have a united front approach to it. Hence the SA - and by implication Respect - should be a 'united front of a special kind'. Murray Smith is right to argue for the SSP model in building an alternative in England, but wrong on the class nature of the Labour Party. John Rees is more )
right on the class nature of the LP but wrong to advocate building a united front of a special kind, rather than a political party, as the alternative we need today. I say 'more right' because John Rees bends the stick too far and presents the Labour Party as if little has changed, which Murray Smith rightly describes as a "static view'. They are both wrong to see the type of alternative we need today as determined by their respective views on the class character of the Labour Party. Its class character is an important issue, but it is not the factor that determines whether we should be building party or an alliance in England today. That rests on the objective need for a new left alternative - which is common ground - and on what is the most effective way to build it. In my view what is needed is a political party of the SSP type. This does not exclude a united front approach to the Labour left. In fact a united front approach can be carried out far better by a party than by an alliance. The most important thing is to give the Labour left confidence that the new organisation is a genuine new alternative and not the existing far left in a new hat. A party is more understandable to them than a loose alliance with the far left organisations still functioning publicly in their own name and with multiple papers being sold at public events. Relating to the Labour left in campaigning work is also far better achieved by a party, which conducts a full range of campaigning work, than by a united front of a special kind - which by definition would not. There is an awkward logic in arguing that you cannot build alternative parties whilst the Labour Party remains a capitalist workers party, since there is absolutely no guarantee that Blair will complete the process and transform it into a straight bourgeois party. In fact there is little sign that he needs to, since the current Debate issue_002 winter, 2004 Socialist_ Outlook situation suits him very well. He has curtailed trade union influence in the Party, maintained a low level of strike action through the anti-unions laws, but retains substantial trade union support - even if this is reduced and critical - at the electoral level. To rule out building a new party until the Labour Party becomes a capitalist party, could therefore, exclude the building of a broad party for the foreseeable future. John Rees has said in the past that he does not rule out building an alternative that is a party, but this comes close to ruling it out. To argue that the SA is a united front of any kind does not make sense. It has an extensive political programme and presents itself as an electoral alternative. When I argued this at Marxism 2002, John Rees' riposte was to quote Trotsky, saying that everything from a trade union to a soviet was a united front. But such examples from the 1920s or the 1930s, of calls for unity between the mass Communist Parties and the mass Social Democratic Parties do not tell us very much today, when the united front is best understood as 'march separately, strike together': the campaigning unity of diverse forces around a single issue. In fact the SA has evolved towards becoming a political party - which is its logic. It has come up against two main obstacles, however: its own narrow political composition, and the SWP model of an electoral coalition - which has effectively been imposed on it. Murray Smith is quite right to argue, against John Rees, that we are no longer in a period of reformism without reforms, we are twenty-five years into a capitalist offensive designed to strip away the gains of the post- war period - and new Labour is leading it. New Labour has many Tory policies, some worse than those of the Tories themselves, but this does not mean it is a straight capitalist party. The class nature of the Labour Party is not determined by how right wing its policies are, but by the way it is perceived by sections of the working
make cheque payable to T1 Research and send with this form to: Socialist Outlook PO Box 1109 London N4 2UU Debate issue_002 winter, 2004 Socialist_Outlook class, and its continuing, though severely strained, political and organisational connections to the unions. It remains the case that, after years of reformist ideology, important sections of the working class still see Labour as 'their' party. Many others do not, of course, and have left or stopped voting Labour as a result. That is precisely where the opportunity has opened up for the left. It is Blair's stated intention to heal the breach with the Liberals that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Labour Party was formed: in other words to change the Labour Party into a straight capitalist party. But the process is incomplete, and the distinction between a completed and uncompleted 28 process, is in this regard, is very important. We do not Page_ agree with Murray Smith that we can 'skip over' the issue of the Labour Party and the place it occupies. Such a view has consequences. The Socialist Party, which has a similar view to Murray Smith on this, has been placed in a leftist position on the debates in the trade unions on the political fund and affiliation to the Labour Party. Nonetheless, we should recognise the major political and structural changes that have taken place in the Labour Party. Internal democracy has been destroyed, the strength of the left within it decimated, and its relationship to the unions weakened and its relationship to the employers strengthened. Under these conditions an internal fightback by the left is not impossible but it is extremely difficult. The main opportunities for building an alternative are now firmly outside the Labour Party. These are major developments. We cannot ignore them, nor can we wait until the change in its class character is complete before altering our tactical approach to the Labour Party. Nor has this been the case. On the contrary, the left, including the SWP - which has undergone a radical change in this regard - has dramatically changed the way it relates to the Labour Party. The bulk of the left is now outside of the Labour Party, and in favour of standing candidates against it. Twenty years ago the majority of the left, other than the SWP, was inside it and the Labour left was massive; standing candidates against Labour was a minority activity. Today the unions are questioning their funding socialist Outlook subscribe to socialist Outtook for L name address E-mail address .. for international and european subscriptions please pay in Sterling of the Labour Party. Even union leaders who argue for reclaiming the Labour Party, rather than building a new organisation outside, in today's conditions and under pressure from the membership, often want to reduce their funding to it. These are the conditions under which we have to make a choice between a political party or a loose alliance. Broad left parties and revolutionary groups The building of broad parties also raises the issue of the relationship between such broad parties and the revolutionary organisations that exist inside them. This is where the SSP model is an instructive one for England and Wales, and beyond. From the outset the revolutionary organisations have existed inside the SSP as platforms. It was a complete break from the horrors of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), where Scargill rejected what he called a 'federalist' approach and decreed that anyone joining would first have to leave any other political organisation they were in. Fortunately it appears that Respect is rejecting this approach from the outset and is to allow political platforms. Within the SSP the political organisations retain their own political independence and have platforms. They organise meetings in their own right, and sell their own publications inside the SSP. Externally, however, it is different; all sell the SSP's publication, Scottish Socialist Voice. Additionally they all conduct their campaigning work through the SSP structures. The SWP accepts this way of working in Scotland but seems strongly opposed to it in England. Here they advance a model by which revolutionary organisations affiliate to the broad party/organisation but continue to function fully as public organisations, prioritising their own publications and reserving a range of campaigning activities to their own party profile. It is hard to see John Rees' interpretation of the united To detent this most and es aplication by he S WE. He has argued in the past that the advantage of keeping the • one yeartfour issues incl. P+P £10 Sterling UK one yeartfour issues incl. P+P £12 Sterling Europe one yeartfour issues incl. P+P £13.50 Sterling international
SWP as a public organisation is that at certain points - the setting up of the Stop the War Coalition for example - an open revolutionary party like the SWP is far more effective than a broad alliance because it has a fast and effective decision-making process. But this is wrong in fact and theory. The initial meeting that set up the StWC coalition could equally well have been called by the SA as by the SWP - which actually called it. This is particularly the case if the SA had been acting more as a party. In any case the SWP could have acted through the SA to inject more urgency if it was considered necessary. The application of the SWP conception means that every demonstration, and every major event of the left, loses its visual identity to the revolutionary organisations - in particular to the SWP because it is by far the biggest. Dozens of SWP stalls and flags and placards and paper sellers ensure that every major event looks at first sight like an SWP event. This is what shocked the European left when the SWP arrived in Florence for the ESF in 2002. To argue that these tactics are wrong is not to downplay the importance of revolutionary organisations - far from it. Our goal is a mass revolutionary party that can challenge capitalism. This is the strategic objective, and, for us, there is no alternative to this. For today the building of a broad party is the best way toward a mass, or a much bigger, revolutionary party. Broad parties are both the most effective way to organise the left against the right in this period, but also the most effective way to build what is necessary to put an end to capitalism - a mass revolutionary party. Such parties could not produce the latter if they were not the former. And they could not produce the latter unless they can win the non-revolutionary section of the party to a revolutionary perspective. Murray Smith is right on this. - and it is a very useful contribution, Let me start by clarifying my position. I am convinced that the building of revolutionary organisations of the type of the SWP, LCR,3 etc. in their present form, is becoming redundant and that these organisations should contribute to the building of new broad parties and function as currents within them. I do not believe that the strategic perspective of building revolutionary parties, that is, parties capable of leading a revolution, a socialist transformation of society, is redundant. I am convinced that the role of revolutionary Marxists today is to build broad parties while defending their own Marxist positions within 3 Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, French section of the Fourth International 4 Murray Smith, Autumn 2003, pp 72-73 Debate issue_002 winter, 2004 Socialist_Outlook them, with the aim, not of building a revolu- tionary faction with an 'entrist' perspective, but of taking forward the whole party and solving together with the whole party the problems that arise, as they arise. I would put the question as follows: "To overthrow capitalism and carry out a socialist transformation of society we need a mass revolutionary party. Starting from where we are today, what is the best way to get there?' When John Rees counterposes 'broad social- ist party' to 'revolutionary organisation' he is describing two choices that effectively confront revolutionary socialists today. However, when he later counterposes a broad socialist party to a revolutionary party he is wrong. Build- Page_29 ing a broad socialist party today may in fact be the best way to advance towards a mass revolutionary party tomorrow. What would be the necessary attributes of such a party? In particular, such a party would have to be clear that it is not sufficient just to take control of the existing state machinery but necessary to replace it with democratic organisations of working class power, that the working class has to maintain its political independence in rela- tion to all other classes and that the struggle is international. 2 This, in my view, is exactly the right approach to prepare for the building of a future mass revolutionary organisation in today's conditions. It is the contribution that the SSP and the ISM inside it have made to the revolutionary movement in Britain. The idea that a mass party that can challenge capitalism can be built by one-by-one recruitment to a single tradition, so that a small party becomes a large one through a kind of linear process, is an illusion. Even a party that has been as successful, in far left terms, as the SWP cannot do that. There are tens of thousands of young people, mobilised by the anti-war movement, who are open to socialist politics but who will not immediately join a revolutionary party. But many will join a broader party and work with revolutionaries in that framework. The best way to win them to revolutionary politics is to bring them into broad parties and collectivise the experience of struggle and in this way transform the party into an adequate instrument of socialist change. For many years reformism in the form of the Labour Party was dominant in Britain and the revolutionary organisations consigned to the relative sidelines. This is not the case today. With the decline of the Labour left and the collapse or decline of the Communist Parties the far left has been brought more centre-stage. This was the lesson of the anti-war movement. The challenge for the far left today is to ensure that the opportunity is not missed.