What kind of Manifesto for Socialist Alliance?
As the Socialist Alliances network gears itself up for the General Election it will need a major debate on its Election Manifesto, which will be agreed at a national conference on March 10. BOB JENKINS outlines some of the International Socialist Group's suggestions
Political organisations define themselves and are defined by their programme and the corresponding methods they deploy fighting for that programme. The only difference with the alliance is that because it is a new organisation its future development and precise character are not yet fully determined.
Nor do all those involved yet have clear ideas of how they would like to see it evolve.
Whether or not the Socialist Alliance can or should evolve into a new party in the future and the speed it could do this remains controversial. It is dependent as much on circumstances beyond our control, as on our will to take this road.
Some see the Socialist Alliance simply as an electoral united front, and therefore by definition, more or less temporary and federal. Others see the Alliance as a framework for constructing a united revolutionary Marxist party, more or less in the short term.
But the Socialist Alliance needs to win support from those who are breaking from Blairism to the left, who at the present juncture do not wish to go down this road.
Others have their eyes on a much bigger project, seeing the Socialist Alliance as a framework for building a new party to the left of Labour. This widely supported perspective is a response to Blair's take-over of the Labour Party.
The 'Third Way' is not just another right wing project of the labour bureaucracy, but a historically new phenomenon, which explicitly aims to transform the Labour Party into a straight-forward capitalist party. According to some comrades this has already happened.
Each of these perspectives leads to different ideas about what we do now and what kind of manifesto we need. The process of agreeing a platform for the General Election will inevitably involve these big questions.
In the view of the International Socialist Group, the Socialist Alliance today is a united front-type formation, a political alliance of socialist organisations and individuals, with the potential of becoming the focus of a future recomposition of the workers' movement and the oppressed. This will hopefully result in a new workers' party.
While we would in the future fight for such a party to become a revolutionary party, the balance of forces for that to happen does not exist today. However we want to ensure that the steps we now take to build the Alliance do not prejudice such a development in the future.
In this context the type of manifesto we favour is what has been called an 'Action Programme' - neither a revolutionary programme nor a minimum programme.
The Manifesto must include a small number of advanced but popularly formulated demands that, if taken up by the mass movement, would challenge the basis of capitalism and the capitalist state -what Trotsky called 'transitional demands'.
The other demands in the platform would be of a minimum type. Such an anti-capitalist programme would correspond to the type of alliance that exists today and also take into account the existing levels of class-consciousness.
If we do not adopt this approach there are a number of dangers. If the Alliance projects itself merely as a collection of campaigns and issues, with a corresponding list of partial or minimum demands, then it will not be seen to offer answers to the big questions confronting society.
These are precisely the issues that many people are more likely to think about at a General Election than at most other times.
One central area we must discuss thoroughly is our governmental approach. We want to challenge the big monopolies and trusts and make inroads into free market capitalism, raising slogans such as "People before profit and the free market!"
Our alternative should be summed up through a governmental slogan such as "For a government based on the workers and oppressed".
For us this is the sort of way we would want to express the traditional Trotskyist demand for a workers' government.
Keying in with the question of cuts we could raise the slogan 'For a government that will tax the rich and nationalise the banks' (to pay for hospitals, schools, housing and an integrated transport system which will soak up unemployment.).
We need to work out a central governmental slogan which will be conjuncturally most appropriate and which can define us in the election.
We can advocate other demands which we believe can guide effective working-class politics, from "open the books" and "work-sharing with no loss of pay," to "workers' control" through to the expropriation of the giant financial institutions and big capitalist companies.
Such an approach eschews a narrow, reformist, parliamentary perspective, while avoiding the trap of ultra-left propagandism. It also promotes the fundamental idea of working-class political representation, which the Blair government has trampled on.
The consequences of this are clear: the need for new political representation, for a new mass workers' party.
There are other considerations in drawing up a manifesto. Many comrades in the Alliance, including ourselves, believe it is still necessary to maintain a united front orientation not only to movements outside the Labour Party but directly in relationship to the Labour Party itself, in practice its left-wing.
Others fail to see the importance of this or reject it, wishing to work only in the unions and social movements.
It is true that the left in the Labour Party has been defeated, but the majority of the working class, including its active vanguard, will still vote Labour in the spring, if only to keep the Tories out. More importantly they still retain illusions in Labour because of their reformist ideas.
We think in this conjuncture that it is important to try and link up with left reformist and class struggle forces that exist and will emerge in the future within what is still a unitary Labour movement.
A united front method where we try to link up with local councillors, ward parties, even a few MPs, to fight for example against the sell-off of council housing, has implications for our manifesto and how it is presented. Without such an orientation the Socialist Alliances will never become a centre of recomposition of the movement.
One view represented by comrades of 'Workers Liberty' argues that: "We raise the idea of unions dissatisfied with the Millbank machine forming their own Labour Representation Committee, which might take shape initially as a ginger group in the Labour Party (or on its fringes, like the new US Labor Party with the Democratic Party) and later become part of a new mass workers' party."
The ISG is in favour of a fighting unity and building common struggles with militants in the Party and unions.
However, the idea of a new Labour Representation Committee is appropriate only if big ruptures from within the Labour Party and between the Party and the unions are imminent. This seems to us unlikely at present, or in the foreseeable future.
What we can expect is a slow haemorrhaging of members from the LP and the strengthening of the left caucuses in the unions.
It is true that big-business funding, of Blair's party machine has further weakened the ties between the Labour Party and the organised working class, but there is no sign that any major section of the trade union bureaucracy breaking from Blair or the Labour Party.
This is an issue of concern to a small section of the political vanguard, not a central political issue facing the class in the General Election
What we see is a growing class resentment against the Blair government, but as yet little confidence to challenge it - or the employers.
But these are not the only considerations. There is the question of what social forces we wish to address.
Some may want to concentrate an a purely working class/Labour movement campaign, while others also want to attempt to address the anti-capitalist youth radicalising on issues such as globalisation and the ecological crisis.
Some will be more sensitive to defending the gains of the movement since 1968, for example on issues such as women's and black liberation.
Some within the SA have 'economist' tendencies (orientating to daily trade union struggles) which leads them to underestimate the important new political issues and movements unless they are to be found in the unions. Examples of issues which don't fit this 'economistic' model include the youth radicalisation over the ecological crisis of our planet, pollution and global warming.
This diverse movement involves and influences young working class people, but it is not based in the organised workers' movement.
If the Alliance avoids organising and putting forward demands around these issues it would be a big mistake. The Socialist Alliance would seem old fashioned, unable to reach out to young people.
We need a programme to counter the greenhouse effect, which means that it is necessary to transcend the fossil fuel economy. George Monbiot has called for a complete ban on the use of fossil fuels in five years time! More practically, the SA manifesto should state this to be our objective without giving a time limit.
This means a move away from the car economy. There are probably 500 million cars in the world, and with present trends this will reach 1 billion in twenty years.
The amount of human labour power expended in making, repairing, and insuring cars and in building roads, clearing up after accidents, and footing the health bill due to pollution, is a phenomenal waste of human resources.
We stand not only for a clean, efficient and integrated public transport system, but one which is free and geared to the needs of local communities.
In the longer term we need to re-plan and restructure our cities so that people do not have to move such large distances in their daily life. Should people be paid for the time they take to commute as well?
We want regulatory measures to force manufacturers to make cars cleaner and more fuel efficient. promote faster technological development and possibly things like fitting governors which control car speeds which would reduce accidents and cut pollution.
We are also for energy conversion and serious conservation measures, and for the nationalisation of the petro-chemical industry.
It is of course true that the strategic task is to rebuild the trade unions, re-launch working class struggle and to build a political culture in the working class for its self-emancipation.
But this requires a break with economism, and necessitates linking up the workers movement with new layers who are struggling now, to build on the new "anti-capitalist" mood burgeoning after the Seattle anti-WTO protest.
This can be a boost to working class consciousness and action, and has to be taken on board by the SA manifesto.