There are two major semi-hidden disputes within the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform (SADP). These differences underpin a number of recurring arguments in the SADP around RESPECT; around how we see the SA experience being possibly re-created; and about what our relationship should be with the LRC and the residual left within the Labour Party.
The differences are about
1) what sort of workers party we want to build; and
2) why we intervene in elections.
Comrades talk about building a workers' party but, behind the often-presumed agreement, is a significant difference in understanding. What exactly do comrades mean when they say they want a new workers party? Do they want:
1) A new reorganisation of the revolutionary left or
2) A new working class party that will challenge Blairites in future elections.
I think there at least 3 different views.
a) Some in the SADP, and certainly many who in the past were attracted to the SA, believe that the first is neither here nor there but the second is an urgent priority;
b) some in the SADP want both (including those of us in the AWL) but recognise they are different, although related, organisational entities. And whilst a revolutionary regroupment would certainly be desirable and was implicit in the alliance that previously existed in the SA (and may exist again), nevertheless the important priority is to co-ordinate a class-based election challenge.
c) some, again in the SADP, think they are one and the same thing and that a new electoral party, of necessity, must be thoroughly socialist, with a fully revolutionary marxist programme, significantly centralised etc.
The 'partyist' argument is therefore a confused one with the incredible irony that leads some, in their fight to build 'a workers party', to advocate a vote for a coalition and candidates such as Ridley who explicitly reject class politics. On the other hand it leads others to reject any possible work with mass working class organisations like the affiliated unions of the LRC because they have a naive perspective and are led by frightened bureaucrats.
Although my knowledge is limited about the Liverpool initiative it looks as though this lack of clarity over what is possible and necessary, is shown even more by the Liverpool initiative (the Campaign for a Mass Party of the Working Class). The pre-occupation of the CMPWC with excessive organisational centralism, e.g. presenting conditions to existing organisations on the left that they agree to drop any independent identity, looks likely to repeat the mistakes of the SLP. The first time it was tragic, the second time...?
The CMPWC combines the demand of a mass challenge to Blairism, which is urgent, with a seeming desire for a disciplined party structure on an unrealistic time scale. The likely result, unless they reconsider, is another sectarian rump. I'd be pleased if I was wrong on the Liverpool initiative and await further reports on it.
What conclusion should we draw?
Whatever possibilities there are for revolutionary regroupment we should obviously pursue them but we should not superimpose that process upon the urgent task of co-ordinating an electoral challenge to New Labour.
A working class challenge to Blairism is important. A socialist electoral intervention is urgently important. But 'making common cause' with those repelled by Blair, giving him a 'bloody nose', dealing with elections as if they were referenda on the war, are all protest votes. As a subsidiary motivation in an electoral strategy they may be OK, but it isn't a socialist strategy to try and alter the way that bourgeois politicians run society for the ruling class. Dealing with elections exclusively as an opportunity to protest is precisely that.
A socialist electoral strategy should be a means of advocating and fighting for an alternative way of running society; of saying that the working class must fight to run society according to its own rules and for its own class interests. A way, fundamentally, of politically organising our class.
That is the historical meaning of the demand for a workers' government. A demand developed by the early Communist International, as part of their discussions on the united front strategy.
In the absence of a mass working class party, or parties, we can only make propaganda. But the key element of that propaganda is not advocating merely which organisation advanced workers should join. But how they themselves should relate to other and wider class forces, to mobilise them to fight for a workers' government. That means having more to say than join the SA, or SA mark 2, comprising hundreds or at the most thousands, but incapable of pretending to be a body that can challenge immediately to run society. The key call should be on the trade union movement, which does have the required composition and numerical strength, to mobilise politically and create a party that could challenge for power.
What we can do in an election in the short term is not only to argue for the socialist politics we believe in (although recognising there are different 'socialist politics' even in the SADP!), but also recognise that whatever socialist politics we believe in, they can only be realised by a mass mobilisation of-itself and for-itself of the working class. That is what the AWL understands as a fight for a workers 'party as part of a fight for a workers government. A party that is a genuine political parliament for the working class. Even though most of the forces within such a 'party' would be to the right of us, they would have to be essentially both class organisations and democratic ones.
The key thing worthwhile about the SA experience was that it did advocate working class representation but not in a simple SA sectarian way. "Our policies and our campaign will highlight the need for a new type of government, one that acts in the interests of workers, not bosses. We need a government that supports, encourages and is rooted in the organisations and struggles of working people." (People Before Profit, 2001)
The key thing wrong with RESPECT isn't what socialist politics it has, or hasn't, in its deepest recesses but that is neither democratic nor does it advocate working class representation. It neither identifies itself as a working class body nor does it advocate one being created in whatever form. If it did any of those things it would undermine those whom it is attempting to work with and how it attempts to attract votes.
It has little to do with how obnoxious Galloway and the MAB are, although they are obnoxious to any thinking worker or socialist. Far more important is that Galloway is not representative of any organised workers' movement.
Feeble and pathetic as the LRC is in many ways, it is an attempt by some Labour MPs and trade unions to mobilise an independent movement behind them. If we could get the LRC to mobilise trade unionists from its affiliates in each town then that would be a significant advance. We could have a serious discussion in each town with dozens of important working class activists about electoral challenges and the need to have a clear strategy to create a genuine mass workers party.
It is doubtful whether we can achieve that before the General Election, especially if the election is at the end of the year as some commentators are predicting.
But these remain the reasons why independent working class challenges are important next year and why we can't afford to make sectarian (or centralist) demands, on other working class forces that we might be able to join up with, to bring that about.
