mittee" of the bourgeoisie, whose rule rests on the whole of the capitalist state machine.
Decisions affecting the lives of workers are made outside parliament by the big capitalists. Socialism cannot be achieved without smashing that state machine and replacing it with a workers state based on workers councils.
This does not mean that revolutionaries rejoct the use of parliament - on the contrary, as long as the working class looks to parliament, revolationaries will use it, and elections to it, to propagate their alternative.
We use it as a platform to help popularise our ideas, expose parliament as a sham, and use the authority as workers' representatives to ther the ass suic Common to the breakaway parties is that they either continue the social democratic acceptance of parliament as the basic etemal form of democracy or prevaricate on the issue, at best trying to reconcile the antagonistic forms of parliament and soviets. The latter is a hallmark of centrism. vacillating between reform and revolution.
Revolutionaries recognise that the class struggle, not parliament, is the motor force for change in capitalist socicty and see their prime purpose in furthering that struggle, educating the working class in the nature of capitalism and its state, and the use of parliament as subordinate to that task. Left reformists and centrists again vacillate (at best) on this.
In the years immediately after the end of the First World War much of Western Europe was in ferment, with mass strikes and uprisings breaking out in several countries.
Mainstream social democracy, after having capitulated to imperialism in 1914 through its support for the war effort in all countries, followed this up by being defenders of the capitalist system and parliamentary democracy in peace time.
Russian Revolution Revolutionary communist parties were being established by those forces which had opposed the war, on the strength of the example and authority of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
In these circumstances large layers to the left of social democracy questioned its programme and practice and there were mass breakaways from the Second (Socialist) International. while in other countries, such as Britain, social democracy put on its left face in allempt lo forestall such developments.
In Germany canitalism and bourgeois de mocracy would probably not have survived this period without the support rendered to it in the workers movement by the SPD The USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) reluctantly split during the war on a pacifist, not a revolutionary platform. This was a mass party with 800,000 members. obtaining 18% of the votes in the general elec. tion of 1920 (as against 2.1% for the Communist Party).
Its programme encapsulated prevarication -at a time when workers' councils existed and revolutionaries were arguins for building inem as an alte mave to parliament, it had that work en councile and mariament should co-exis and co-operate on a permanent basis, effec. tively demobilising the struggle.
Under the dual pressure of events and the Communist Party (KPD) the Left in the USPD fought for an end to such wavering and, against all kinds of manoruvres by the right, voted at their congress for fusion with the Communist Party and affiliation to the Third (Communist) International. As part of this same process of clarification the KPD expelled its ultra-left wing (which rejected work in the mainstream unions, the use of parliament and the united front). The fusion with the USPD transformed the KPD from a large fringe party into a mass party.
Similar developments took place in France and Italy, except that the fight took place primarily within a single mass party.
In France, where a centrist leadership had won control of the SFIO during the war, the party swung far to the left after the war and Nirted with the Comintern. But its leadership really wanted a centrist international, excluding only the out-and-out social patriots like the German SPD and the British Labour Party.
The SFIO, however, voted by a 3-1 majority at its Tours congress in December 1919 to affiliate to the Cominter, including acceptance of its 21 conditions, which included the expulsion of its prominent left reformists.
The new French Communist Party (PCF) started with 150,000 members and the right split away to re-establish the SFIO. However. its centrist leaders. like Marcel Cachin, masquerading as revolutionaries. remained until The Italian PSI had taken a similar centrist position to the USPD during the war. In March 1919 its executive voted to affiliate to the new Third International, but the party still had centrists and left reformists in its leadership.
The centrists refused to expel or even sericusly politically fight the reformists and the situation came to a head after the occupation of the Italian factories in September 1920 in which the PSI talked left, but in fact gave no real lead to the movement and capitulated to the reformist trade union leaders (also PSI members).
After this the left in the PSI pushed for a split, which took place at its Livoro congress in January 1921. However, unlike in France and Germany, the Left failed to win a majority of the party because of the "boycottist" line of its leadership towards parliament.
After an aborted attempt to set up a centrist compromise Two and a Half International. the right and centrist wings of the USPD. SFIO/PCF and PS1 drifted back to their natural home, the mainstream social democratic parties and the "Socialist International".
These centrist parties were a temporary product of the large-scale radicalisation which followed the war. Mass centrist organisations. vacillating between consistent revolutionary politics and consistent reformist politics are inherently unstable. Trotsky observed "The masses don't stay for very long in this transitional stage: temporarily they rally to the centrists, then they go on and join the communists or go back to the reformists - unless they lapse into indifference".
Headed off
In Britain, no such mass breakaway from social democracy occurred in the aftermath of the first world war, because the revolutionary groups were so weak, the post-war radicalisation was much less thoroughgoing, and the Labour Party leadership skillfully headed off the movement in sympalhy with ine kussiat revolution by the adoption of the supposedly "socialist" Clause IV and support for a toothless national "'Council of Action" against Brit. ish intervention.
When the British Communist Party was formed in 1920 with a claimed 10,000 mem. bers (probably a considerable exaggeration) only a tiny section of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) joined, and at conferences the leadership of the Labour Party was easily able to win rejection of the Communist Party's reques! for affiliation.
When a large break from the Lehour Party did come, in 1932, it was in entirely different so impose discipline amongst its members to vote against in parliament. Thus a dispute blew up with the Labour Party leadership about whose discipline the MPs were subject to - the ILP's or the Labour Party's.
Defection
The dispute continued after the defection of Ramsey MacDonald in 1931 to form a National Government and the subsequent general election had reduced the ILP to 5 MPs, even though, with the LP back in opposition - and a rump one at that - the issue was hardiy likely to be immediate.
The 1931 Labour Party conference made the acceptance of Standing Orders obligatory and the MPs began to function as a separate parliamentary group. The ILP voted (by 241 to 142) for disaffiliation at its July 1932 conference and immediately split, with a section staying in the LP and going on to form the Socialist League.
Although there was talk of the ILP becom. ing a party of "militant marxist socialists". in fact it wavered between reform and revolution. It came under increasing pressure from the (by now fully Stalinist) CP which, though much smaller, was considerably more effective.
The ILP lost its youth section to the CP. but participated in many Stalinist campaigns, while at the same time criticising the Moscow show trials. On the Italian invasion of Abyscinia (Ethiopia) the ILP was divided down the mid die between those who called for sanctions against Italy and those who argued that social. ists had no interest in backing cither side.
It cut itself off from serious work in the labour movement by the decision of its July 1932 conference to immodiately resign from all positions of responsibility within the Co-ops. Labour Party and trade unions.
At the time of its disaffiliation the ILP had 16.700 members (compared to the CP's 2,500) and 653 branches.
Four months later it had lost 203 branches. with big losses in the traditional strongholds of Scotland. Lancashire and Yorkshire: by 1935 membership had declined by 60per cent and at the general election of that year all four ILP MPs elected were for Glasgow constituencies.
What's more, in some constituencies al. though the combined ILP/P vote was a majority, the Conservatives won because of the split vote. This decline continued and the ILP virtually ceased to exist arter the wal Around the same time ceoist parties aruse in several other countries and they repeated the earlier attempt to form a new international.
However the same fate befell it as the earlier attempt, and the various parties fell by the wayside.
This brief survey, which could draw on many more examples such as the short-lived Scottish Labour Party in the 1970s, shows that if a breakaway from social democracy is to achieve any momentum, it not only has to be at a time when it reflects a radicalisation of the mass of the working class, but also to quickly clarify its politics if it is not to disintegrate.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No 94 November 25 1995, Page 7