Tony Cliff
A World to Win, Life of a Revolutionary
Tony Cliff completed his autobiography A World to Win, Life of a Revolutionary just before he died on April 9 this year. It has been published posthumously.
The book is chiefly Cliff's account of the centre-piece of his life's work - the building of the Socialist Workers Party and its predecessor organisations in Britain.
These organisations were moulded and shaped by Cliff's energy, dedication, strengths, weaknesses, theories - and also his quirks. It also deals with the organisations of which he was a member in Palestine.
The book show's how Cliff's twin theories - state capitalism, (which rejected Trotsky's analysis of the class nature of the Stalinist states) and the permanent arms economy (which purported to explain the post war boom in the west) - are at the core of the organisations he built in Britain. This went alongside his rejection of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution.
It also reflects his particular brand of economism, socialism from below, and rank and fileism - the refusal to take positions in the unions above the rank and file level.
This tended towards seeing the trade union bureaucracy as an alien class rather than a bureaucratic layer of the working class - an idea which springs from the theory of state capitalism itself.
Cliff argues, unconvincingly, that his differences with Trotsky, particularly over the class nature of the Stalinist states, were not a break with Trotskyism as such but brought it into line with the main body of the Marxist tradition.
He recounts how he went over to the theory of state capitalism, which had already become a debate within the Fourth International, in the immediate post war years (1947/8) with his text The Class Nature of Stalinist Russia.
Cliff formed the Socialist Review Group (SRG) in 1950 after the Revolutionary Communist Party dissolved. The SRG was inside the Labour Party and had a loose and Luxemburgist structure, but its main reason for a separate existence from the FI was the advancement of Cliff's theory of state capitalism.
The SRG existed for about 10 years as a small group of a few dozen people. It became the International Socialism group (IS) in 1962 with about 70 people.
According to Cliff, the membership of IS reached 200 by the mid-1960s after work in CND and the launching of the Young Socialists (YS) by the Labour Party, which it entered, even though it was squeezed by Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League (SLL) which was overwhelming the biggest far left organisation at that time.
The IS also began work amongst students in 1967/8 with a group established at the LSE.
The fact that Cliff founded the SRG and the IS on the basis of an analysis of the Stalinist states (and some tactical positions and assessments) rather than on a programme - made them rather a strange organisations.
The theory of state capitalism itself has programmatic implications, but, apart from in the Korean war, the SWP has managed to be on the right side against imperialism. This was the case by the time of Vietnam.
The IS began looking towards industry in the same period, first gaining a base at the ENV engineering plant in West London.
From that the IS launched, in 1966, the London Industrial Shop Stewards Defence Committee. This was in the same period as those of us in Cowley, under the influence of the SLL, launched the Oxford Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions and the CP launched the Liaison Committee in Defence Trade Unions.
Cliff backed up his work in the shop stewards movement with two books, Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards in 1966, and then in 1970 The Employer Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them.
These books clearly played a significant part in building IS at this time, and Cliff frequently refers to them in A World to Win.
Cliff locates the major growth of the IS during the militant years of the Heath government of 1970-74. The IS made a "turn to industry" and set up rank and file organisations in different sections of industry, many with their own newspapers.
In 1972 they launched the National Rank and File movement, which held its first National Conference in 1974. According to an internal report (quoted by Cliff) this attracted an impressive 500 delegates from 270 trade union bodies.
The National Rank and File Movement came to a shuddering halt just a few years later, however, as a direct result of Cliff's conversion to his famous (or infamous) 'downturn' theory.
In 1977 he declared that a major 'downturn in the class struggle' had been taking place for the last three years - since 1974. Moreover, the problem, he said, was located in the working class itself, in the form of a 'collapse of militancy'.
The downturn was partly the result, he argued, of what he called the bureaucratisation of the shop stewards movement. He pointed to the rise in the number of full-time convenors, who were "a transmission belt between the bureaucracy and the rank and file".
As a full-time car industry convenor myself from 1967 to 1977, however, I saw the rise in full time convenors in that period both as a material gain of the militant struggles themselves, and as a challenge to the full time officials. That was certainly the way that many of the full time officials saw it.
Cliff's whole downturn theory was incomprehensible to many of us outside of the IS/SWP, and involved in the numerous strikes taking place.
Cliff defends his theory at length, however, in A World to Win, and since it (with the later upturn theory) has been such a major part of the politics of the SWP over the past 20 years it is worth looking at his arguments in detail.
There were certainly no half measures in what Cliff argued. The chapter dealing with the downturn is entitled "From Beautiful Spring to Freezing Winter" i.e. from the beautiful spring of the 1970-74 period to the freezing winter of the post 1974 period - including the years 1974-84. This freezing winter, he claims, went on for nearly 20 years until the early 1990s.
The period 1970-74 (or more precisely 1968-74) was special in terms of the level of class struggle. There were two successful national miners strikes in 1972 and 1974, the second of which brought down the government.
There was the opposition to Labour's anti-union package 'In Place of Strife'. There was widespread unofficial action in support of the Pentonville Five (who were jailed for picketing in defiance of the Industrial Relations Act) - and the occupation of Upper Clydeside Shipyards, along with numerous other factory occupations.
It is also true that important changes, political and economic, occurred in the mid-1970s which altered the framework of struggle. The first was the end of the post war boom and the onset of the long recessionary wave across Europe as a whole.
The second was the election of the Labour government in 1974, and its relationship to the trade union leaders. The third was the increasing fight-back by the employers against the gains of the working class in the previous period.
All this made struggles increasingly defensive. But this was not a "crisis of the militancy" of the working class. That was invented by Tony Cliff.
In fact high levels of militancy, with minor fluctuations, continued from the late 1960s until the defeat of the miners in 1985, despite the changes in political and economic conditions.
The figures speak for themselves. In the five (upturn) years between 1970 and 1974 a huge 70 million days were lost in strike action. But in the five (downturn) years from 1977 until 1981 another huge 65m days were lost .... hardly any different.
Was Cliff arguing that 65m days lost was a collapse of militancy of the working class? It beggars belief. If that period was a freezing winter, the 'upturn' of the 1990s was an ice age, since the days lost in the 5 years 1991-95 was just 2.6m - a tiny fraction of the 'downturn' period!. And the second 5 years of the 1990s were even worse.
There was a drop in the level of strikes for two years in the 1970s, in 1975 and 1976. This was a result of the support of the TUC for Labour's initial stages of incomes policy and its 12 month rule (which outlawed pay claims with 12 months of the previous one).
As a result "only" 6 million days were lost in 1975 and 3.2m in 1976 against 14.7m in 1974.
But this went back up to 10m in 1977 and then a staggering 29m in 1979 - the highest since the general strike of 1926 and 6m more than the highest year in the 70-74 period.
There were numerous strikes against the later stages of Labour's incomes policy, the most important of which was the 13 week national fire fighters strike against Stage three.
The winter of discontent itself came out of confrontations with Labour's stage four 5% wages policy. It was led by a powerful tanker drivers' strike which broke the policy, and a massive lorry drivers' strike which paralysed large sections of industry, with strike committees issuing chits for the movement of essential supplies.
There was a spontaneous strike across all Ford plants which smashed through the incomes policy; there were hospital strikes (with miners coming out in support of nurses), there were strikes in local government including amongst refuse collectors.
Major strikes continued after the winter of discontent. There was a 15 week steel strike in 1980, strikes in engineering and cars in 1981 and 1982, and the printers strike in 1983. There was then the miners strike in 1984.
The evidence Cliff advances for the downturn is, not surprisingly, weak in the extreme. The most unreal are the figures he quotes which he claims show a 'massive collapse of militancy' in the mining industry:
"There was a massive collapse of militancy thought the mining industry, as can be seen from the following figures: the number of days lost - over 10 million in 1972 and over 5 million in 1974 - collapsed to 52,000 in 1975, increasing to 70,000 in 1976, 88,000 in 1977 and 176,000 in 1978".
Is this is a collapse of militancy? You can't compare two years when there were national strikes with four years when there were not. Even more outlandishly, this claims to prove that a section of workers who were to mount an astounding year- long strike six years later had lost their militancy!
In fact the political problem of the trade unions remained the same from the late 1960s until the defeat of the miners - strong trade union organisation and high levels of militancy but insufficient political development to challenge the trade union leaders in either their social democratic or Stalinist varieties.
Cliff says that it was during the fire fighters strike in November 1977 that he realised there was a downturn.
He points to a National Rank and File conference at that time, which he says was only 200 people and smaller than the previous conferences, which adopted a resolution calling for a day of strike action in support of the fire fighters. No one responded - and this proved definitively that the movement was in a downturn.
I attended that conference (and spoke at it) and I remember it as bigger than 200. But as I recall, there was not a direct call for solidarity strikes with the fire fighters, as such, but a general call for solidarity.
Be that as it may, the idea that the fire fighters' isolation could be broken by a call for unofficial solidarity strikes from a conference of a few hundred delegates organised mainly by one far-left current was optimistic.
Examples of unofficial solidarity action by one section of workers in support of others engaged in sectional struggles are extremely rare. Unofficial solidarity action was difficult even over issues affecting the whole movement.
Cliff completely ignores the trade union leaders, who were fighting to keep to the 12 month rule and the then 10% limit intact. The TUC General Council voted to urge the fire fighters to accept the policy and return to work.
Leaders of a million authority workers and a million NHS workers accepted the 12 month rule, defying pressure from their members to break it. Tanker drivers, power workers, and others were holding back for the same reason. It was the political fight to break that log-jam which was the key to breaking the fire fighters' isolation.
The SWP's rank and fileism saw the trade union bureaucracy as irrelevant, and was therefore unable to combat them.
Some of this still survives. In the trade union session of Marxism 2000, the main speaker said that it was almost irrelevant who was the general secretary of a union since everyone (more or less) does the same once they are in that position - so forget about them and organise at the base!
The battle, by Cliff, to convince the IS/SWP of the downturn was eventually formalised at the 1982 SWP conference. The IS/SWP lost ground, particularly in industry, during the protracted internal battle over the downturn.
But what counteracted the damage was the launching of the Anti Nazi League (ANL) in 1977-8 as a response to a sharp rise in the activities of the far right. It was controlled by the SWP, but was hugely successful and the SWP recruited heavily from it.
By the time of the miners strike, in 1984, the approach of the SWP was dominated by the downturn theory and its attitude was one of deep pessimism. This almost led to an attitude that it was impossible to win the strike.
So the defeat was nothing to do with the TUC who had accepted the Tory anti-union laws or the trade union leaders who had left the miners isolated! The problem in the SWP's view remained the "lack of militancy" in the working class itself. In A World to Win Cliff puts it this way:
"In 1994 the miners strike broke out and they fought bravely for a whole year. Alas, the long period of downturn, of declining militancy, led to the final defeat of the strike".
The SWP stayed outside of the miners support groups until very late, arguing that the strike could be won by mass picketing (of which there was no shortage) rather than breaking the isolation of the miners though other sections coming out on their own claims and opening a second front - something which involved taking on the trade union leaders and the TUC.
Cliff eventually declared the end of the long downturn in 1989 By this time the level of the class struggle was a pale shadow of that which existed when he declared it. The situation, according to him, was now 'neither upturn or downturn'. This has remained the analysis of the SWP during the 1990s and to date.
True, the second half of the 1990s saw a major rise in the level of class struggle across Europe, triggered by the mass strikes and demonstrations in France at the end of 1995.
These led to series of mass strikes and general strikes right across the EU against the Maastricht criteria. On a world scale, a fight-back was also beginning against the effects of globalisation and the neo-liberal offensive.
But Britain remained isolated from all this. By the mid-1990s the level of strikes had plunged to the lowest since records began in the late 19th century. The employers have been able do almost anything they have wanted, usually without resistance.
This was not an upturn or even the absence of a downturn, it was a disastrous situation. The only victory was against the poll tax in the early 19 90s, which was outside of the unions and did not have a long term effect - other than the removal of Thatcher.
The political consequences of the low levels of trade union struggles in Britain in the 1990s were the development of social partnership in the unions and Blairism in the Labour Party. Blair is a new type of Labour leader with a project of turning Labour into a straight capitalist party and championing the neoliberal agenda.
Blair's advance shifted the political situation to the right and the left (far left and social democratic left) shrank dramatically - although unevenly.
The SWP's refusal to accept the realities facing the working class remains a huge illogicality in its political analysis. It means it has no rational analysis of the depth of the defeat of the miners, and doesn't understand the decline of the shop stewards movement or the reality facing activists in the workplace today.
At the trade union session of Marxism this year, the message was that everything was on the up. One more heave by the socialists and everything can be achieved.
Small advances, which are happening of course, were seized upon and used to paint a completely unreal picture.
On the other hand some of the crudest rank and fileism has gone, with the SWP taking elected positions in some unions over recent years.
Despite this unreality, the SWP has been the major exception to the rule as far as the shrinkage of the left is concerned.
One factor was the way the SWP was able to use its relative size, material resources, and insularity, to protect itself from the cold blast of politics outside. The upturn theory itself undoubtedly played a positive, if completely unreal, role in this process.
The other factor was the collapse of the USSR and the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. Cliff presented it as a massive vindication of his theory of 'State Capitalism'.
This gave the SWP members confidence at a time when the Communist Parties went into free fall in many countries including Britain, and sections of the far left, drew deeply pessimistic conclusions.
Yet Trotsky characterised Stalinism as a counter revolutionary force on a world scale. Trotskyists argued that whilst control of societies by the working class had been destroyed in Eastern Europe, the mode of production had not been changed.
In fact it is this analysis of Trotsky's which was confirmed so convincingly by the collapse of the USSR, not the theory of state capitalism. You did not have to be a state capitalist to be undeterred by the fall of the Wall.
Demoralisation grew not amongst those with a Trotskyist analysis, but for those who saw Stalinism as playing a progressive, role and supporting an "anti-imperialist camp".
The SWP remains a highly significant organisation on the British far left. Since the mid-1990s - following the collapse of the Communist Party, the sharp decline of the Militant/ Socialist Party, and the general decline of the left - it has emerged as by far the biggest revolutionary socialist organisation in Britain, and amongst the biggest in the world.
Now, after years of placing its own interests first, it has taken a dramatic turn towards working with the rest of the left in the Socialist Alliances and in some campaigns.
It is beginning to end its isolationism in the unions, and in Scotland discussing unity with the Scottish Socialist Party. All this has opened up the possibility of forging a new broad political alternative to Blairism initially in the form of the Socialist Alliances.
Interestingly there is no mention of the Socialist Alliances in 'A World to Win,' or any reference to the united front - a theme developed by the SWP this year.
The last event mentioned by Cliff is last year's lobby of Labour Party conference, and the SWP did not make a major turn towards the London Socialist Alliance until a few months later.
By all accounts, however, Cliff was fully behind that development and became enthusiastic for the LSA as it developed. The SWP leadership faces a major challenge in maintaining and developing the new course it has taken and carrying this through to the construction of a new broadly based left.