All Change on the Left
Democracy vital in steps towards a new workers' party
Today in Britain thousands of socialists and activists are increasingly discussing the need to build opposition to Blairism.
United action to defeat the attacks meted out by this New Labour government is a central part of such a debate, but so too is the question of whether and how to build a new workers' party
This is not a new discussion but it takes place in changed circumstances. Marxists have always understood that the Labour Party would only form capitalist governments, different from other capitalist governments only to the extent they initiated reforms the better to enmesh or lead the working class into class collaboration.
The Labour Party has always been a capitalist party based on the working class, but herein lay its fundamental contradiction. New Labour represents more than just another swing to the right, it is a concerted, and so far successful attempt, to resolve this historical contradiction and transform the Party into a bourgeois party.
This transformation has not yet been achieved, but we should have no illusions about the line of Blair's march. We have analysed the underlying causes of this crisis elsewhere, but the Blair juggernaut has already resulted in widespread defeats of the left including one failed attempt to fill the vacuum in the form of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party.
Tragically the SLP is famous today for having an internal bureaucratic functioning which is worse than the Labour Party.
Since the election of New Labour into government conditions are rapidly maturing, for the first time since 1945, for upheavals and ruptures in the broad workers' movement. A process of recomposition and regroupment will be concretely posed in the medium term.
There will be many problems to overcome and many political questions that will need to be debated. Nobody has all the answers in these uncharted waters and much of what we in Socialist Outlook have to say is tentative.
Here Dave Hudson discusses one issue the left has to resolve.
The SLP experience presents the socialist left with one intractable question: How do we deal with the political and organisational fragmentation, soft splits and dispersal of the left and the equally important and related problem of sectarianism and petty factionalism?
In our December issue we argued: "A new party means bringing together, in an open and democratic framework and based initially on a limited action programme (not primarily an electoral programme), broad class struggle forces from the Labour and trade union movement, the social movements, radical youth and the far-left.
It is only size, social and political weight which can impose a sense of responsibility, order and procedure on such an initially diverse political formation, not the bureaucratic jack-boot."
Some comrades are understandably sceptical about the task of bringing together all the left. After all, most of the organised forces seem concerned only about building themselves.
Manoeuvres
Some engage in appalling manoeuvres and raids in order to win a few members, and regularly put the narrow interests of their own organisations above that of the working class as a whole.
Some have felt it necessary to pull back from an inclusive approach to building a new party because of this. In our view this would be an error.
There are others who for political and usually bureaucratic reasons want to keep out most of the organised left forces (all except those who support them!) because they might constitute a serious challenge to their dominance. Most bureaucratic celebrities are infected by this approach and we should be under no illusion that this was why Scargill kept the Socialist Party and others out of the SLP.
A federal approach to the process of founding a new party is necessary, if it is to be a real party and not another grouplet. A new party to the left of Labour must reflect the diversity of the existing forces.
Fragmentation can only be overcome through a process of debate and common experiences. The ex-SLP comrades have made this point many times against Scargill.
Like most new parties, including the Labour Party when it was founded, a new workers party will initially take a federalist form.
Exclusion always has a political agenda, as the opposition inside the SLP found to their cost. Organised forces close to Scargill were allowed to organise, while those who did not agree were increasingly excluded. Who is excluded and who is included (the SP or the Lancashire NUM) depends on the politics of those bureaucrats in control.
Policing
In any case, as we all know, exclusions will not work. In practice supporters of far left groups will not be kept out, they will only become secret entrists. They will then require policing and "voiding" leading to the nightmare of an SLP Mark 2.
A mass political party which is based on clearly defined politics or programme, cannot be built overnight because of the historical divisions on the left. Therefore, a party of recomposition and regroupment is necessary, which by definition is an open and inclusive party of discussion and action. In reality it will initially be a proto-party.
We defend the right of far-left organisations to base themselves on a worked out revolutionary programme and openly stating this. Such a party or organisation will however be small under today's conditions.
Develop Programme
To unite all those who wish to fight on a more limited programme of action is a different project - a movement that wishes to become a party, an open movement that will debate the way forward and develop its programme through this discussion and experience.
If such a proto-party or refoundation attempts to exclude some active socialists but not others, then this means that somebody somewhere has decided that they already have the answers and are acting upon them.
One of the problems of the SLP is that it was founded on false pretences. Thousands of active socialists and revolutionaries are members of left organisations or are sympathetic to them. Despite exhibiting sectarianism and often petty narrow factionalism, they comprise an important activist part of the British and European left.
We need an open party with properly agreed ground-rules, the right of tendency, which insists also on responsibility - on loyalty and openness by all the tendencies concerned. Narrow minded party-building raids (actually sect-building) must of course be condemned.
Socialist Outlook wants to build a revolutionary party, because we don't think capitalism can be reformed into socialism. We are prepared to debate this and other Marxist propositions with anybody.
We don't think a revolutionary party can be built simply through individual recruitment, or just founded in one go, but only through a process of debate and clash of ideas, linked to experience and recomposition.
Neither do we think that the first attempts to build a new alternative left party in Britain will create a revolutionary party, but we are prepared to loyally build a new left or class struggle party, if it allows for democratic discussion, the right of tendency and separate publications.
A new party which includes forces from the Labour Party, ex-CP forces and Trade Union lefts, which is essential if it is to be credible, is unlikely to be a revolutionary party in the first instance.
This is one reason why the revolutionaries must remain organised to fight for their ideas, and that includes currents like Socialist Perspectives who would surely not like to hand over a new workers' party to another Arthur Scargill. Principled politics, the right to organise for all tendencies, transparency and full accountability will be essential ingredients in any new workers' party.