BulLDING ANTI-CAPITALIST PARTES NEUROPE Following on the recent European elections, leading SWP member Alex Callinicos has written an article entitled, 'The European radical left tested electorally: ' The article is interesting from two points of view. In the first place, for what it has to say about the experience of Respect and the lessons the SWP draws from it. Secondly, for the way it approaches the broader strategic issues' concerning the radical left in Europe. In these two articles Murray Smith of the French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) and Alan Thornett of the International Socialist Group (ISG) respond. Callinicos writes that, 'it may be useful to explain why the SWP has chosen to pursue the strategy represented by Respect - not, to repeat, because it constitutes a universal model and certainly not because it is above criticism, but because the strategic analysis may have a bearing on other cases'. I will come back to this 'strategic analysis' and the question of 'models' later in the article. But first of all, credit where credit is due. Respect is the most encouraging development on the English left for a long time. The overall national result it obtained, 1.7 per cent, is modest, though actually not much more modest than the early electoral results of, for example, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) or the Portuguese Left Bloc. Respect has also succeeded in appealing to and involving sectors of the Muslim population, a new and welcome development in England and all too rare in Europe. All those involved in building Respect deserve the credit for its performance. And since the SWP is the main political force involved, it must take a large part of the credit. The impact that Respect has had amongst Muslim and immigrant communities represents a huge step forward. The question of '(winning) the support of a working class that in the inner cities at least, is increasingly diverse in its colours, national origins, and religious beliefs', as Alex Callinicos points out, is one that confronts socialists not just in Britain but in just about every country of Europe. In France the gulf between the left and immigrant communities is considerable, a situation not helped by prevailing attitudes among many on the left to the affirmation of minority identities, especially when they are expressed through religion, as we have seen in the controversy over the hijab. It is perhaps not too much to hope that the success of Respect among Muslims in Britain might encourage some on the French left to rethink their attitudes. 24 Murray Smith Building an anti-capitalist party The question of building a radical anti-capitalist party in Britain has been posed at least since the arrival of Blair as leader of the Labour Party and the invention of New Labour in 1994. Outside of Scotland, progress has been slow and opportunities have been missed. The SLP failed to realise its potential of becoming a broad socialist party, essentially because of Arthur Scargill's authoritarian conception of the party and his stubborn refusal of pluralism. The history of the Socialist Alliance and some missed opportunities is dealt with in Alan Thornett's article. However, that is past. The task now is to develop Respect from what must be considered very promising beginnings. That will depend not only on hard work on the ground but on the political and organisational perspectives that Respect adopts. There is obviously no blueprint. Respect has to find its own way forward. Certainly in this formative period its organisational forms will have to be flexible. But without forcing the pace, the question of developing its political programme will be posed. Here the terminology that Alex Callinicos uses is striking. He makes a distinction between the 'radical left' and the 'revolutionary left'. The term 'radical left' 'refers to forces that actively identify with resistance to neo-liberalism and imperialist war and that seek to develop an alternative to 'social- liberalism". "Revolutionary left' on the other hand, 'refers to those organisations and currents - in Europe today almost exclusively Trotskyist - that are committed to socialist revolution'. He explains that the revolutionary left. represented by organisations such as the SWP and the LCR, is a "component of the radical left'. Anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism What is so striking about these definitions is what is missing. There is no mention of the 'anti-capitalist left'. There is a real differentiation on the European left between political programmes and organisations that are anti-capitalist/socialist and those that are simply anti-liberal. Callinicos's definition of the revolutionary left is uncontroversial. However his definition of the 'radical left' would cover - and in France certainly does cover - forces who specifically reject the idea of building a party on an anti-capitalist programme. Politically, what is involved is the difference between having an illusory perspective of going back to a more humane, less liberal capitalism, and posing the question of a socialist alternative. This is no mere ideological abstraction. In France it largely determines how you relate to the dominant social-liberal Socialist Party. I would argue, therefore. that opposition to neo-liberalism and war is not sufficient to build what the SWP correctly defines as the aim of Respect - to build a mass alternative to New Labour. For that it is necessary to develop what Stathis Kouvelakis calls the "politics of mass
anti-capitalism'' or as the SSP puts it, to 'rehabilitate socialism'. It is not a question of artificially imposing political norms on a developing movement. Alex Callinicos writes that the programme of Respect 'is not an explicitly socialist, let alone a revolutionary programme'. I would say that its programme is implicitly socialist, a good starting-point. It covers a wide range of specific issues and includes more general objectives such as 'a Europe based on need not profit. A Europe which is a clear alternative to global capital'. The point however is not where Respect is at this relatively early point in time. The point is where it is going. Respect is indeed as Callinicos says 'a work in progress' and given its origins in the anti-war movement and its diversity it would be foolish to criticise it for not being explicitly socialist from the start. Even more obviously, the extremely important development under way towards a new party in Germany is likely to start from quite minimal bases and we have to proceed from reality and not from abstract schemas. The new formations of the radical left will be products of the real national situation and the political and social forces that give birth to them. How developed their programmes will be, how quickly they structure themselves, will depend on many things, on political events, the level of class struggle, the strength or weakness of the revolutionary left, its sectarianism or lack of it, the presence of significant currents from reformist parties. These formations can and will develop politically through their activities and the challenges of the class struggle to confront and resolve political problems. Callinicos seems to recognise this when he says that, 'the programmatic stance of Respect... will evolve and become more specific in response to specific challenges'. Which is pretty much the way the SSP developed, indeed how real living parties do develop. In the case of the SSP, although it was explicitly socialist from the start, its programme is certainly much more developed now than it was five years ago. New political formations can start with quite limited programmes and develop more solid ones through common activity and discussions; provided that no artificial ceiling is put on the process, that no brakes are applied. If Respect remains a loose coalition with minimal politics it will fail to realise its real and considerable potential. Callinicos makes a distinction between the model of Respect and the 'model' of the SSP - an example of a broad socialist party. Now if he is describing the present reality, that is one thing. If he is theorising this distinction, that is another. And in spite of his repeated denials that Respect is being presented as a universal model, there does seem to be a certain amount of theorising of it, particularly when he refers to 'the strategic analysis' behind Respect. The SSP is widely seen as one of the most successful new parties in Europe and has attracted some attention. The SWP leadership has always seemed to have some difficulty with that. There is often a tendency to reduce the success of the SSP to its electoral results. Perhaps the SWP think that the SSP has many faults. Perhaps they think they can do better. But if the perspective is not to build a broad socialist party, then what on earth is it? To remain as a loose coalition? It is not unreasonable to ask: for the SWP leadership, does Respect represent a particular tactic for building a broad socialist party, or does it represent an alternative to such a party? Building Respect Respect is now faced with the task of developing its structures and having perspectives other than simply electoral. That means building through campaigning activity and not just keeping it ticking over from one by-election to another or until next year's probable General Election. From that point of view the signs are encouraging. It seems clear that there is a will to continue building Respect and that this is shared by most of its components, including the SWP. It also seems clear that it is not simply envisaged as an electoral alliance. That comes across not only in the press of the SWP, but from reports of local Respect meetings since the June elections. Establishing solid local branches and democratic structures from top to bottom is another aspect of taking Respect forward. This is not incompatible with the need to develop new and innovative ways of reaching out to a wider audience, as Respect has done in the recent election campaigns. But the members of Respect have to be able to democratically control their organisation and determine its policies. The other aspect concerns developing the programme of Respect, a point stressed by other members of Respect. National Respect chair Nick Wrack explains, 'we have to continue developing our political programme'. Ken Loach considers that 'we cannot build a new party just on activism and electoral work, we need to build its political platform, get it organised'. Alan Thornett has argued the same case in detail both before and after the election. For the moment this aspect does not seem to be stressed by the SWP. As Callinicos says, the SSP has succeeded in 'creatively combining community and electoral politics'. But the former predominates. And isn't that what Respect should be aiming to become - at its own rhythm - a successful party with a broad socialist platform that creatively combines community (and class struggle) and electoral politics? Ken Loach poses the question, democratic or Marxist?' I would say neither the one nor the other. The influence of Marxism will be strong, because many of Respect's active members, SWP and others, are Marxists and will spread the influence of Marxism. But to define Respect as Marxist would be to exclude those many present and future members who are not. There will be people who define themselves as 'left Labour' or 'Old Labour', which is not a problem. But the real trap to avoid is of trying to recreate the Labour Party. The answer to New Labour is neither to try to go back to Old Labour, nor to go back to the old far left, but to go forward to a new socialist party whose members will define its project together by discussion and action. Alex Callinicos writes of Respect that 'the programme, while principled, is relatively minimal, meaning that Respect is a pluralistic organisation in which diverse viewpoints coexist'. Elsewhere in the article, he says that Respect is 'a pluralistic coalition rather than a unitary party'. Now it is an excellent thing that Respect is pluralist, for at the moment it is a coalition with a limited programme. But what we are faced with in Europe (and not only in Europe - Callinicos aptly mentions Brazil) is to build pluralist parties on bases that are not minimal. Parties like the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) in Italy, the SSP, the Portuguese Left Bloc, the Danish Red-Green Alliance in Europe and the P-SOL in Brazil are both pluralist and unitary. And they have developed programmes because you cannot build a coherent political force without one. But in Callinicos's discussion of Respect not only the word but the concept of 'party' is entirely absent. Once again, is Respect being 25
presented as another way to build a party or as a lasting alternative to a party? Models and examples Let us look at the question of models in relation to the anti-capitalist left in Europe. The SSP is often accused of seeing itself as a model, or as Alex puts it 'a paradigm to be copied elsewhere'. If there is a model or paradigm for the radical left, it is to build parties that are anti-capitalist and pluralist, so that they are different to social democracy and Stalinism. They are also different to the traditional far-left organisations in that they are broader, both politically and in their social base. That is, they take on board all those who want to fight back without imposing an ideological entry examination and they seek to conquer the space that has been abandoned by the reformists. Within this model there are examples, each of which arises out of national conditions and the political choices of those involved. It is fundamentally the crisis of the social- democratic parties, and between these parties and their social base that is creating the opportunities for significant new anti-capitalist parties to emerge. It is not simply a question of existing members of the social-democratic parties leaving to join a new party. That will be one aspect of it. But most of the reformist parties over the last period, have steadily lost many of their active members while more or less retaining their electoral base. Many of these people will be attracted to new parties. But there will also be many people, especially young people, who were not attracted to New Labour and its equivalents in Europe. The experience of the SSP, the Left Bloc and the Red Green Alliance in Denmark is not only that new members quickly outnumbered the combined forces of the groups that came together to launch those parties, but that most of these new members were also new to organised politics. That is even to some extent true of the PRC in Italy. Alex Callinicos also writes: 'had substantial ex-Labour Party members joined, the Socialist Alliance would have had two poles, reformist and revolutionary'. Now why should that be so? If people come together on the basis of anti-capitalism, ot even in the first instance of opposition to 26 neo-liberalism and war, why should there be "poles'? There will certainly be debate, but I think the idea of an inevitable polarisation revolutionaries and reformists in the emerging new political formations is somewhat abstract. In the first place I think we would all agree that revolution is not immediately on the agenda - but a multitude of campaigns and struggles is. In the second place people evolve. In the present period many members and supporters of the Labour Party and similar parties do not start by breaking from Rather, the reformist parties have broken with them by abandoning the defence of past reforms and the perspective of new ones, and by adopting the neo-liberal agenda. But these disillusioned members do not stand still. To think that they will just form a reformist pole seems a rather static view. Thinking about what has happened to the parties they supported, and having to fight to win reforms, or even just push back attacks, by class struggle methods is likely to make them evolve leftwards. How they develop depends also on how revolutionaries themselves in a broad party will also have to evolve, not in the sense of abandoning their revolutionary politics but of sloughing off what is narrow, doctrinaire and routine in their political practice and discourse Social democracy Alex Callinicos finishes on two points. The first is the question of the 'decay not disappearance' of social democracy. He criticises the 'assumption (by the LCR) that the Socialist and Communist parties were in radical decline and had, in any case, gone decisively over to the side of the bourgeoisie' - the SSP having, according to him, a 'more stark and one-sided' version of the same analysis. First of all, as I am sure he would agree, the social democratic parties did not have to go decisively over to the side of the bourgeoisie. That is where they have been since at least 1914. What they have done, and what is the source of their crisis, and of the disaffection of their social base, is to adopt the neo-liberal agenda and in the process to destroy the gains of the post-1945 period with whose defence they had been associated. They have not disappeared. they have changed. They will not actually disappear until they are replaced. I think that another SWP leader, John Rees, was correct when he recently wrote: 'the hold of Labourism over working people in this country is dissolving. That is not only true for Britain. Of course the process will be prolonged. But it seems clear that it is well under way. And in spite of electoral ups and downs, for example in France and Spain recently, I would argue that it is irreversible. Revolutionary left, radical left The second point on which Callinicos the relationship between and development of revolutionary left, on the one hand, and a broader reorganisation of the radical left. on the other'. He goes on to define the 'dual task - making the radical left an increasingly powerful pole of attraction in British politics and building revolutionary left within it. But the actual relationship between these two elements remains unclear. The very minimal definition of the 'radical left that he gives and the emphasis on Respect as a coalition could be interpreted as keeping Respect organisationally loose and politically limited in order not to obstruct the There is no problem with the SWP maintaining its own identity within Respect and making sure that 'a strong revolutionary Marxist voice is heard', to quote Callinicos again. How it works out in practice may be another matter. Alan Thornett warned before the elections of the danger that the 'SWP conception would mean carrying on in the old way' and described how the SWP tends to swamp any major event with it own presence and material.* That is hardly compatible with 'building Respect... and making it more effective". Alex Callinicos uses a famous quote from Lenin: 'whoever expects a "pure' social revolution will never live to see it'. One might add, 'whoever expects a 'pure' revolutionary party will never live to see it'. The Bolshevik Party certainly was not one, nor were any of the mass parties of the Third International. The building of revolutionary parties will come about not just from the growth of existing revolutionary groups but from the evolution of broader parties, an evolution on which these groups can have a key influence.