Following
on the recent European elections, leading SWP
member Alex Callinicos has written an article
entitled, “The European radical left tested
electorally” (1). The article is interesting
from two points of view. In the first place,
for what it has to say about the experience
of for 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.
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”.
Respect
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 SSP or
the Portuguese Left Bloc. But there were some
very impressive results in inner-city working-class
areas, in particular but not only in London
and Birmingham. And following on the experience
of the anti-war movement, Respect has succeeded
in appealing to and involving sectors of the
Muslim population. This is not only a new and
welcome development in England; it is 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
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 in particular his stubborn
refusal of pluralism. Subsequently, having launched
the Socialist Alliances, the Socialist Party
proved unable to develop them as broad formations
and with one or two local exceptions left them
to vegetate. The SWP took them up in 2000-2001
and a national framework was established. Some
encouraging electoral results were obtained.
Alex Callinicos’s essentially “objectivist”
reasons for the failure of the Socialist Alliance
are unconvincing. Of course, it is clear that
the potential for Respect today is greater than
the perspective was for the SA three or four
years ago, because Respect emerged from the
most massive anti-war movement Britain has ever
seen. But the Alliance could have been built
in the course of that movement, and the decision
not to do so was a conscious one on the part
of the SWP (2).
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 the
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. In a
brief postscript to his article he explains
the concepts he has used. 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”. It is however in the Conferences
of the European Anti-capitalist Left that the
SWP, the SA and now Respect have participated
since 2000. It is not a question of nit picking
over terminological definitions. As a matter
of fact I tend to use “radical left”
and anti-capitalist left” interchangeably.
But 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,
factual. 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. Indeed in the current debate in the
LCR what Callinicos calls its “right wing”
is often accused of counter-posing an “anti-liberal
party” to an “anti-capitalist party”
and of choosing its partners on the ex-plural
left accordingly (3). Politically, what is involved
is the difference between having a perspective,
perfectly illusory, 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.
In
the two articles by Stathis Kouvelakis, which
I will come back to, he takes up the question
of the “two lefts” (4). This may
seem somewhat obscure to people outside France.
The majority of the LCR argues that you cannot
just talk about the “left” in France
today because there are in fact two lefts –
the social-liberal left (essentially the Socialist
Party and a part of the Greens) and the radical/anti-capitalist
left. That is contested by what Kouvelakis,
like Alex Callinicos, calls the “right
wing” of the LCR, who say there is only
one left and that we have to shift the lines
of force within it. Kouvelakis basically agrees
with them about that, though he doesn’t
endorse their general political line. Some comrades
even say that there is a “third left”
which is neither anti-capitalist nor social-liberal,
but is or claims to be anti-liberal. Now this
left certainly exists – the Communist
Party, some of the Greens, left currents in
the Socialist Party. But the principal advantage
of identifying it is to show that it has in
fact no independent existence. The radical anti-capitalist
left - which is much broader than the “revolutionary
left”- has a certain political coherence.
It potentially represents a political alternative
to social-liberalism. For the moment its inability
to appear as a structured political force severely
limits this potential. The social-liberal “left”
also has a coherence; when in government, it
applies neo-liberal policies with as much of
a social veneer as is deemed necessary and possible.
The anti-liberal left basically argues that
you can oppose neo-liberalism without opposing
capitalism. They explain that you do this by
“getting your hands in the engine”,
by going into government with the Socialist
Party to influence its policies in an anti-liberal
sense. They denounce the revolutionary left,
and in particular the LCR, for not assuming
its responsibilities and thus limiting itself
to “protest politics”. This line
of participation or not in social-liberal governments
is a decisive dividing line on the French left.
As Stathis Kouvelakis brings out, it is the
fault line along which the best elements of
the PCF could be won to an anti-capitalist perspective
- although he also underlines the complexity
of this task.
This
“anti-liberal” left went into the
Jospin government aiming to be a counterbalance
to neo-liberalism and quickly ended up by being
simply a left cover for it, and a more and more
threadbare one at that. They simply shared in
the shipwreck of the plural left in 2002 and
many of their supporters voted Besancenot or
Laguiller. They pursued the same policy in the
regional elections in March and were rewarded
by becoming junior partners of the SP in regional
governments. They now have their eyes fixed
on the perspective of a new version of the plural
left government in 2007. From the point of view
of the SP leadership the “plural left”
operation does not just provide some extra votes
in Parliament. It simultaneously provides a
left cover and makes the forces to its left
who fall into the trap share the discredit its
policies entail, thus preventing them from appearing
as an alternative. This is precisely the danger
that threatens the PRC in Italy if it goes into
government with the centre-left.
Of
course, simply defining yourself as anti-capitalist
is no guarantee against opportunism. The PRC
would define itself as anti-capitalist. It is
not enough to say you are anti-capitalist, it
is also a question of your political practice
and of your independence in relation to social-liberalism.
But 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 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 Alex 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,
it is clear that the extremely important development
that is under way towards a new party in Germany
is likely to start from quite minimal bases
and that we have to proceed from that reality
and not from abstract schemas. The new formations
of the radical left will be products of the
real situation in their countries 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
as they are led by their activity and the challenges
of the class struggle to confront and resolve
political problems. Alex 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. That is, of
course, 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. Alex 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’s another. And in spite of his repeated
denials that Respect is being presented as a
universal models, 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 as such it has attracted
some attention. The SWP leadership has always
seemed to have some difficulty with that. There
is often a marked 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. Perhaps
the party that will be built in England will
be different from the SSP, perhaps it will be
better (5). But if the perspective is not to
build a broad socialist party, then what on
earth is it? To remain as a loose coalition?
As Daniel Bensaïd has written: “A
politics without parties (whatever name –
movement, organisation, league, party –
that they are given) ends up in most cases as
a politics without politics” (6). 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?
The Australian Socialist Alliance
The
example of Australia is perhaps worth quoting
here. In issues 3 and 4 of the IST bulletin
there was a polemical exchange between David
Glanz of the ISO (Australian IST group) and
Doug Lorimer of the DSP (7). From a British
perspective the case of Australia is not without
interest - an advanced capitalist country with
a Labour Party in which the trade unions play
a key role. The article by David Glanz is a
general broadside against the DSP and as such
ranges far and wide. It includes for example
the question of permanent revolution, on which
I do not agree with the DSP (8). However the
main thrust of Glanz’s article is to attack
the DSP’s approach to regroupment and
the building of new parties. On these questions
I am very largely in agreement with the DSP
and with Doug Lorimer’s reply to David
Glanz.
The
DSP has made a considerable contribution to
international regroupment through the work it
has done with new and not so new parties in
the Asia-Pacific region. But over the last three
years they have also been engaged in building
the Socialist Alliance in Australia. As the
Alliance has developed it is the ISO and the
other smaller groups that have tended to act
as a brake on taking it from being a loose,
primarily electoral coalition towards being
what is now its avowed aim, a multi-tendency
socialist party (9). It is the DSP and the majority
of the independents, trade unionists and others,
who have taken this project forward. The idea,
defended by Glanz, that the DSP wants to reduce
the Alliance to a far-left group can hardly
be taken seriously by anyone who reads their
press and documents. They want to develop the
influence of revolutionary Marxism within the
Alliance, which is perfectly normal, without
forcing the pace, and their ultimate objective
is a united revolutionary party. The attitude
of the ISO appears to be motivated by two considerations.
In the first place, to keep the Alliance organisationally
loose in the name of the autonomous action of
“an independent revolutionary party”
i.e. themselves. And to keep the political content
relatively low in order to attract Old Labour
supporters. Their continuing refusal of the
perspective of a broad anti-capitalist party
is not an encouraging example.
Alex
Callinicos writes of “building Respect,
but also building the SWP – as part of
Respect and as a means of making it more effective”.
There is clearly no problem about the principle
of the SWP maintaining its own identity within
Respect and making sure that “a strong
revolutionary Marxist voice is heard”.
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 vividly described how the SWP tends to swamp
any major event with it own presence and material
(10). That is hardly compatible with “building
Respect(…) and making it more effective”.
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 till 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.
Not being just an electoral coalition is one
aspect of taking Respect forward. Establishing
solid local branches and democratic structures
from top to bottom is another. 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
third aspect concerns developing the programme
of Respect. Now for the moment this aspect does
not seem to be stressed by the SWP. Perhaps
that’s just an impression. It is developed
by other members of Respect. National Respect
chair Nick Wrack explains that “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 (11).
Alex
Callinicos describes the SSP as “tightly
controlled by the far-left grouping that created
it”. The grouping in question is the International
Socialist Movement (although it didn’t
create the SSP on its own) and for those who
know how the SSP works the idea that the ISM
“tightly controls” the party will
produce some amusement. Any influence the ISM
and its members have is due to the strength
of their arguments and to their credibility
in the party, not to any “tight control”.
Describing the SSP as “a successful parliamentary
party with a broad socialist platform”
is closer to the mark. Except of course that
it is not primarily a parliamentary party. As
Callinicos also 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, “Will it be left social
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 hopefully they will spread the influence
of Marxism. But to define Respect as Marxist
would be to exclude those many present and future
members who aren’t. Left social-democratic
? 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, it is a fact
that for 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 PRC, the SSP, the Portuguese Left Bloc,
the Danish Red-Green Alliance in Europe and
the P-SOL in Brazil are both pluralist and unitary
(12). And they have a developed programme because
you cannot build a coherent political force
without one. Now in Alex Callinicos’s
discussion of Respect not only the word but
the concept of “party” is entirely
absent. Is this what he means when he talks
about “the strategy represented by Respect”
and the “strategic analysis”? Once
again, is Respect being presented as another
way to build a party or as a lasting alternative
to a party?
Muslims
The
impact that Respect has had among Muslim and
immigrant communities represents a huge step
forward. There is nothing to disagree with in
what Alex Callinicos says there. 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” is one
that confronts socialists not just in Britain
but in just about every country of Europe. In
most of them a great deal remains to be done.
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.
There are historical reasons which explain but
do not excuse the attitudes of a large part
of the French left towards Islam and religion
in general. 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.
Lutte
Ouvrière’s position of support
for the law banning the hijab in schools is
of course a disgrace. On International Women’s
Day (!) Arlette Laguiller demonstrated alongside
not only representatives of the Socialist Party
who supported the law, but also a minister in
the right-wing government that has imposed it.
It now appears that LO is preparing to oversee
the application of the law when schools start
up again in September, in an unholy alliance
with sectors of the reformist left. What Alex
Callinicos calls the “national reformism
that is still very strong on the left wing of
the French workers’ movement” is
not infrequently combined with a more or less
marked French chauvinism. LO’s fundamentally
sectarian attitude towards religion draws it
into an alliance with forces of which under
just about any other circumstances it is severely
critical. Unlike LO, the LCR has taken a position
against the law, though the majority position
does not rule out exclusions. The PCF and the
Greens have also come out against the law. But
none of these organisations has conducted any
campaign against it.
The European elections
Callinicos
starts his remarks on the European elections
by saying that “in many countries the
radical left did worse in the elections to the
European Parliament in June 2004 than it did
in 1999”. I would question that judgement.
The 1999 European elections (and some national
elections around the same time) saw the emergence
of the radical left for the first time as a
serious political force in a number of countries.
There were exceptions, and important ones, like
England and Germany. But progress was made in
France, Scotland, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg
and Holland.
Although
less spectacular, the results of the radical
left in 2004 do not actually show that in “many
countries” it did worse than in 1999.
First of all, how de we define the radical left?
Let’s take as a criterion organisations
that are members of the European Anti-Capitalist
Left, or have been observers at its conferences.
That covers practically all of the organisations
that are neither social-democratic nor unreconstructed
Stalinist. Callinicos quotes the three countries
where such parties or alliances lost ground
– France, Spain and Greece. Let’s
leave aside France for the moment. As far as
Spain is concerned, the reasons clearly lie
in the now chronic crisis of the United Left
(IU). Already in the European elections of 1999
IU had lost half of its votes compared to the
previous elections and it repeated the feat
this time round. The fundamental cause is its
inability to emerge as a force independent of
the social-liberal PSOE. The article in the
same issue of the IST bulletin by the comrades
of En Lucha (the Spanish IST group) goes into
this in some detail. A further point to be made
is that in an election where one of the issues
was to combat the projected adoption of a neo-liberal
constitution for the EU, the United Left was
actually in favour of it. Synaspismos in Greece
appears to be in a process of mutation that
makes it difficult to draw too many conclusions.
Callinicos
quotes the Italian PRC as “the most important
exception”. The PRC did indeed go from
4.3 per cent to 6,1 per cent and from 4 to 5
MEPs. The only other exception he actually mentions
is Respect. But there were other good results
(13). In Holland the Socialist Party went from
5 per cent to 7 per cent and from one to two
seats. In Portugal the Left Bloc, which was
only launched in 1999 but has since made steady
progress in every election and has now three
MPs, won 4.92 per cent, its best ever result,
and now has its first MEP. The Bloc is now a
serious challenger to the Portuguese CP in that
party’s working-class strongholds. In
Scotland the SSP went from 4 per cent in 1999
to 5.2 per cent. That’s less than in last
year’s Scottish elections but more than
in the last British General election. And there
is of course the emergence and success of Respect.
Even in Austria, not exactly a storm centre
of the class struggle in recent decades, but
where the biggest mobilisation in fifty years
took place last year over pensions, a new radical
left regroupment “Linke” involving
forces from the CP and the revolutionary left
made its first modest electoral foray. Overall,
the radical left isn’t doing too badly.
Models and examples
Let’s
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, i.e. that are different from
social democracy and Stalinism. And that are
also different from 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. Just
to take these two examples, among the founding
group of the EACL, the SSP and the Left Bloc
are positive examples in the sense that they
are already parties and quite successful ones.
Neither the SSP nor any other national example
is a model in the sense that you can say, “this
is how to do it, there is no other way, just
copy us”. Of course, successful examples
in one country can be encouraging. Although
Callinicos and other representatives of the
SWP often seem to go to considerable lengths
to distance themselves from the example of the
SSP, its example has inspired people in a number
of countries, including in England.
It
is fundamentally the evolution, however you
define it, of the social-democratic parties
that is creating the opportunities for the radical
left. It is the crisis of these parties, and
between these parties and their social base
that is creating a space for new parties to
emerge. Not in the immediate future for mass
revolutionary parties, but certainly for significant
anti-capitalist formations. Alex Callinicos
is right to say that this does not have to take
place as the result of catastrophic splits,
and in fact in the present period that is the
exception rather than the rule. Callinicos uses
the metaphor of the iceberg melting in relation
to the Labour Party. One could also speak of
these parties crumbling. Sometimes the bits
that crumble off are very small, sometimes only
individuals, sometimes larger groups break off.
But
it is not simply a question of existing members
of these parties leaving to join a new party.
That will be one aspect of it. But the reality
of most of the reformist parties is that over
the last period, while more or less retaining
their electoral base, they have steadily lost
many of their active members. Many of these
ex-members will be attracted by new parties.
But there will also be many people, especially
young people, the kind of people who would probably
have been members of the Labour Party and similar
parties twenty years ago but who were not attracted
by 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 new to organised politics. That is even
to some extent true of the PRC, where much of
the present membership was never in the old
PCI, though the percentage is certainly higher
in the leading bodies.
Alex
Callinicos also writes: “had substantial
ex-Labour Party members joined, the SA would
have had two poles, reformist and revolutionary”.
Now why should that be so? If people come together
on the basis of anti-capitalism, or even in
the first instance of opposition to neo-liberalism
and war, why should there be “poles”?
There will certainly be debate but there is
no reason to think it will be polarised between
revolutionaries and reformists. Callinicos talks
about the need for revolutionaries to respond
to “concrete forms of actual movements,
not the abstractions they form in their heads”.
I think the idea of an inevitable polarisation
between revolutionaries and reformists in the
new political formations that are emerging is
something of an abstraction. 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
reformism. It is rather the case that the reformist
parties have broken with them by abandoning
the defence of past reforms and the perspective
of new ones and 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
intervene. Revolutionaries who find 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.
France – a model?
To
go back to the question of models. The SSP is
not a model to be followed to the letter but
it is certainly an example of a new and successful
anti-capitalist party. As far as building a
force of the radical left, or even simply intervening
in elections, is concerned, the LO-LCR electoral
alliance in France is neither a model nor a
positive example, but if anything a counter-model.
This alliance was a reflection of the failure
to build a broad anti-capitalist alliance or
party, a temporary substitute for such a party,
an expedient. In theory an LO-LCR axis could
have been the launching pad for a new party.
That seemed to many people outside France a
reasonable idea in 1999. It was certainly worth
making the attempt. Callinicos says that “ideally
an alliance with LO should act as a lever for
dividing and disorganising the left of the ex-plural
left and drawing some of its fragments along
in the wake of the revolutionary left”.
I’m not sure about the formulation, which
seems to me a bit manipulative. But yes, ideally
an LO-LCR axis should have been a pole of attraction
for the best elements from the ex-plural left
and particularly the Communist Party. Unfortunately
“ideally” is the word. In the first
place, LO is absolutely deaf to any idea of
a broad radical anti-capitalist party. It’s
the timeless “revolutionary communist
party” or nothing.
Furthermore
the conception that LO has of the party and
indeed of socialism is anachronistic, sectarian
and deeply unattractive to many on the left.
It is clear that the image of this organisation
was a factor in the bad election results, how
big a factor is a subject of debate. Only a
small minority of comrades in the LCR now see
the road to a new party as via an alliance with
LO. In passing, it has to be said that the comparison
that Callinicos makes between LO and the old
Militant is wide of the mark. Militant was strong
in far-left terms and it was in some ways rigid.
The SWP too has often appeared rigid. But neither
of them is comparable to LO. It is impossible
to imagine LO leading the struggle at Liverpool,
or the poll tax campaign, or the anti-war movement.
All far-left organisations have had some sectarian
traits, some more than others, the product of
being for a long time very much a minority in
the working-class movement. In the new period,
the best of them are trying to overcome that.
With LO the traits of a sect appear to be so
deeply ingrained as to be structural.
As
far as an analysis of the failures of the LCR-LO
lists in the regional and European elections
is concerned, a wide-ranging debate has already
begun in the LCR, and indeed beyond, and that
will continue in the coming months. It would
take much too long to go into that in detail
here. But one or two comments. It is not really
the case that LO and the LCR stood as “openly
revolutionary socialist organisations”
– neither in 2002 or in 2004. Of course
they didn’t deny being revolutionary socialist
organisations. And as Callinicos says, it is
easier to talk about revolution in France than
in most European countries. But the LCR-LO campaigns
were run on radical anti-capitalist platforms,
not so different from other countries. The nature
of the platforms and the way the campaigns were
run is also part of the present debate. Concerning
the regional elections, some of the criticisms
made by Stathis Kouvelakis are very pertinent.
The two documents by him that are published
in the bulletin raise important questions, and
they circulated quite widely on the left in
France after the March elections. Kouvelakis,
though not a member of the LCR, in many ways
situates himself within the framework of its
debates. While he clearly expects nothing from
LO, his criticism of the Ligue, though sometimes
sharp, is constructive.
Kouvelakis
says that the LCR “succumbed to the illusion
of a de facto self-sufficiency, not of its organisation”,
but that it had a “euphoric vision of
a self-sufficient ‘radical left’”.
He also talks of “a far left posing, either
alone or as the dynamic component of a broader
‘radical left’ as an alternative
to a governmental left”. In terms of posing
an alternative to the governmental left –
which is necessary - I think there is a big
difference between the broader radical left
and the existing far-left organisations. The
problem after 2002, as indeed before, was that
many comrades in the LCR saw the Ligue itself
as self-sufficient, at least in the foreseeable
future. The building of a broader anti-capitalist
force, always affirmed, was constantly put off
till the Greek calends for a variety of reasons,
of which the famous “absence of partners”
was only one. The need to act on the crisis
of the Communist party was neglected, especially
after the party’s debacle in 2002, when
the PCF was practically written off as apolitical
force (14).
What
produced a definite change was the movement
of May-June last year, where the need for a
broad anti-capitalist force was being raised
by activists in the movement. That’s what
ultimately led to the appeal of the LCR congress,
which has been widely circulated internationally.
Unfortunately this appeal remained de facto
in cold storage for the duration of the two
election campaigns. This was not totally inevitable
but it was certainly helped by the fact that
the LCR came out of its congress and went straight
into six months of joint campaigns with LO.
The Ligue now finds itself in the situation
where it will perhaps be less easy to take initiatives
towards a new party, but all the more necessary.
Many
elements have to be taken into consideration
in order to explain the LCR-LO results in March
and June. A now widely recognised failure to
grasp the change in the political climate between
the end of the May-June movement and the March
elections, political weaknesses in the campaigns,
the negative image of LO, the positioning in
relation to the SP, will all be part of the
debate. But one thing that seems clear is that
the tactic of a bloc between two far-left organisations
has outlived its shelf life. In 2002 many left-wing
voters were looking for a way to punish the
plural left, and voting for Laguiller and Besancenot
was an option. In 2004, they are looking for
a way to get rid of the right-wing government.
That’s why millions voted for the SP,
many without illusions. But a certain number
wanted also to express their distrust of the
SP by voting for a force to its left that could
pose as an alternative. From this point of view,
the LCR-LO alliance had a credibility problem.
Two organisations of a few thousand members
cannot be an alternative, nor indeed represent
the broader anti-capitalist left, the tens of
thousands of activists who were the backbone
of the May-June 2004 movement.
In
most areas where the Communist Party stood on
its own in March it won back part of the support
it had lost in 2002. To do so it adopted a position
of left opposition to the SP which was not always,
for the mass of electors, easy to distinguish
from the LO-LCR campaign. Kouvelakis gives some
details and he correctly points out that the
vote for the CP cannot be explained as a “tactical
vote” i.e. simply a way of hitting back
at the government, as the SP vote can. Many
voters consciously chose to vote for the CP
rather than for the LCR-LO lists as a way of
expressing opposition to the left of the SP.
The French CP is undoubtedly in long-term decline
but it still represents a serious force, it
is still a mass party, and as long as the radical
left is incapable of appearing as a credible
alternative (and acting on the political contradictions
within the CP), it will have room for manoeuvre.
In these elections, it took advantage of that.
In
a kind of pernicious revenge of the dialectic,
the country which in the post-1968 period had
the strongest far-left organisations in Europe
now seems to be having the greatest difficulty
giving birth to a radical anti-capitalist party.
The forces for such a party exist – it
is impossible to explain the fact that things
are moving forward just about everywhere but
France simply by “objective” factors.
The problem is political. And it is becoming
more and more urgent to resolve it.
Social democracy
Alex
Callinicos finishes on “two broader 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’m
sure he would agree, the social democratic parties
didn’t have to go decisively over to the
side of the bourgeoisie. That’s where
they’ve 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 go over lock, stock and barrel to
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
haven’t disappeared, they have changed.
They won’t actually disappear until they
are replaced. Whether they have changed qualitatively
is another question. The SWP often quote Lenin
to explain that the Labour Party is a “bourgeois
workers’ party”. He did say that;
whether that definition is still appropriate
is another matter. But Lenin also said, as Doug
Lorimer quotes in his reply to David Glanz,
that the Labour Party was “a thoroughly
bourgeois party”. And Trotsky wrote in
relation to the German SPD that “the social
democracy, though composed of workers, is entirely
a bourgeois party” (15).
In
terms of whose class interests these parties
represent, which is the essential question,
those definitions are fundamental. The working
class dimension of these bourgeois parties depends
on the relationship of workers (as members or
voters) to them. For many years workers considered
these parties, which they had built, as theirs,
and they joined them and voted for them. This
relationship has changed over the years. So
should the tactics of Marxists. At certain periods
it was correct to vote for these parties and
even to be members of them. There is no principle
involved. To argue, as many Trotskyists still
do, that we should vote for these parties on
principle - or indeed that we should never under
any circumstances vote for them – leads
to a completely sterile debate.
Do
the recent elections in Spain and France really
show the “capacity of social-democratic
parties(…) to rebuild working-class support
in opposition by exploiting popular discontent
with their conservative successors”. Well,
it depends what you mean by “rebuilding
working-class support”. If you mean that
workers will sometimes be ready to vote for
these parties against the right, yes of course
they will. That’s what happened in France
and Spain, and it will no doubt happen again
until such times as a mass socialist alternative
to these parties is built. But this electoral
support for social democracy is much more fragile
and volatile than previously. In France support
for the Socialist Party has gone up and down
like a yo-yo in every national election since
1981. And for example, the document of En Lucha
points out that on the eve of the 2004 Spanish
elections, up to three million former PSOE voters
were intending not to vote and that Aznar’s
lies about the bombings decided many of them
to do so. A salutary reaction, perhaps, but
hardly a sign of rebuilt positive support for
the PSOE. And there is little evidence that
from an organisational point of view the working-class
base of these parties has been rebuilt. John
Rees wrote recently that “the hold of
Labourism over working people in this country
is dissolving”. I think that is correct,
and not only for Britain. Of course the process
of dissolving the hold of social democracy will
be prolonged. But it seems clear that the process
is well and truly under way. And in spite of
electoral ups and downs that are only ripples
on the surface, I would argue that it is irreversible.
When
the right is in power, workers can vote for
the left parties. But when it is the left that
is in power, the disaffection of its electorate
can be expressed in several ways. By a vote
for the radical left when it is present, by
abstention, but also sometimes through a vote
for parties that are not of the traditional
right and that can appear more progressive than
social democracy on certain questions. In Britain
today, the Lib Dems are clearly the beneficiaries
of this type of reaction. Such support is not
likely to be lasting, but nor is the renewed
support for social democracy in France and Spain.
Revolutionary left, radical left
The
second point on which Callinicos concludes is
the relationship between “the growth and
development of the 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
a stronger 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 development of the SWP.
Alex
Callinicos uses one of my favourite quotes 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 wasn’t 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.
In fact, in the building of new, radical, anti-capitalist
parties there are two pitfalls to be avoided.
The first is the danger of just being a kind
of re-branded far-left group. That is what,
as its first preference, the leadership of the
CWI tried to convince its Scottish members to
do. If they had succeeded the SSP would probably
not exist today.
The
second danger is much more serious. It is to
see the radical left not as the beginnings of
a mass alternative to social-liberalism, but
as a kind of left pressure group on the traditional
reformist parties. There is a strange reference
in the En Lucha document to “the danger
of becoming simply a left cover for the government
instead of being a counterbalance that could
force Zapatero to the left”. Perhaps it’s
just a loose formulation, but the idea of forcing
social-liberalism to the left is a dangerous
illusion. Mass mobilisations can block its attacks,
yes, but not force it to the left. The record
of those in Europe who have tried to act as
a left counterbalance to social-liberal domination
rather than build a socialist alternative is
not encouraging.
For
decades small revolutionary groups defended
the need to “build the revolutionary party”.
Some of them just reduced this perspective to
the linear growth of their own group; some had
a more dynamic view of splits and regroupments
on the road to a mass party. But they generally
had an idea of the future mass revolutionary
party as really a bigger version of their own
group. Today we are faced with the task of building
broad formations while deepening their political
content. Rosa Luxemburg posed the question very
well a hundred years ago: “On the one
hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic
goal, located outside of existing society. On
one hand, we have the day-to-day struggle; on
the other the social revolution. Such are the
terms of the dialectical contradiction through
which the socialist movement makes its way.
It follows that this movement can best advance
by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers
by which it is constantly being threatened.
One is the loss of its mass character; the other,
the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger
of sinking back into the condition of a sect:
the other the danger of becoming a movement
of bourgeois social reform” (16). Those
are still the two dangers that threaten us,
those are still the terms of the dialectical
contradiction through which we must make our
way.
Murray
Smith, 29/07/04
(1)
The article appears in the latest issue (n°
5) of the Discussion Bulletin of the International
Socialist Tendency (IST), to which the SWP belongs.
The entire bulletin can be found on www.istendency.net.
(2) The balance sheet of the SA and the attitude
of the SWP have been largely dealt with in the
debate with John Rees of the SWP in recent issues
of Frontline, International Socialism and Links.
(3) Not all of the partisans of this current
within the LCR would accept this accusation.
Precisely what these comrades are proposing
is far from clear and I disagree with many of
their positions. But it is more than a polemical
exaggeration to talk of the “evident drift
of Picquet’s strategy towards liquidation
into some version of (…) national reformism”.
(4) Stathis Kouvelakis, “Some hypotheses
on the reasons for a (not merely) electoral
defeat” and “A new political cycle”,
in the same bulletin as Alex Callinicos’s
article.
(5) It has to be said that some of the SWP’s
criticisms of the SSP haven’t aged very
well. For example in an article written in the
autumn of 2002, (”Regroupment and the
socialist left today”, published in issue
2 of the IST bulletin and in Links 23), Alex
Callinicos criticises the SSP for counter-posing
“bread and butter” issues to building
the anti-war movement – a claim hardly
borne out by the following months, marked by
the anti-war movement and the Scottish elections
of May 2003, where the SSP clearly appeared
as the anti-war party without neglecting “bread
and butter issues. In the same article, Callinicos
warns of the danger of the SSP finding itself
in a situation of “unnecessary isolation
from the organised working class in Scotland”.
Given the subsequent affiliation to the SSP
of the Scottish region of the RMT and the East
of Scotland CWU and the number of FBU members
who were SSP candidates in 2003, the least that
can be said is that his fears were groundless.
(6) Daniel Bensaïd, “Leaps! Leaps!
Leaps!”, International Socialism 95.
(7) David Glanz, “The Democratic Socialist
Party and international realignment”;
Doug Lorimer, “The Democratic Socialist
Party: a response to David Glanz”.
(8) See the debate between Doug Lorimer and
Phil Hearse in Links 16 and 17 (www.dsp.org.au/links).
(9) See Peter Boyle and Sue Bolton, “Australian
Socialist Alliance takes a new step for left
unity”, Links 24, September-December 2003.
(10) Alan Thornett, “The significance
of Respect”, Frontline 13.
(11) See Socialist Resistance 17, Summer 2004.
(12) In spite of their names, both the Left
Bloc and the Red-Green Alliance define themselves
as parties.
(13) The July-August issue of the French-language
FI magazine, Inprecor, contains much valuable
information and analyses of the European elections,
globally and country by country. Presumable
much of this will also be published in the English-language
equivalent, International Viewpoint.
(14) See my article, “The LCR and the
question of a workers’ party”, written
just before the presidential elections in 2002
and published in issue 1 of the IST bulletin,
accessible on the ISM web site (www.redflag.org.uk).
(15) “What Next? Vital Questions for the
German Proletariat”, in The Struggle Against
Fascism in Germany, London, 1975, pp 122-123.
This was written in January 1932, at a time
when Trotsky was arguing for a united front
between the Social Democrats and the Communists
against Hitler.
(16) Rosa Luxemburg, “Organisational Questions
of Social Democracy”, in Rosa Luxemburg
Speaks, ed. Mary-Alice Waters, New York, 1970.
Quoted in Paul Le Blanc, “The revolutionary
orientation of Rosa Luxemburg”, (accessible
on www.marxsite.com).