The reports in this week's Weekly Worker on the Socialist Youth Network conference were classics of a genre the CPGB is well-practiced in. Factual and political errors are so interlaced in Ben Lewis and James Turley's contributions that comrades will excuse us if we take space to deal with both.
Members of far left groups made up between two thirds and three quarters of the conference, James? In fact, of the 80 or so people who took part, not many more than 25 were actually members of a group. But of course exaggeration helps to give an appropriate ring to the a priori line of the article, namely that the AWL's strategy in SYN and the LRC is to lurk dishonestly behind a reformist façade, while only the CPGB keeps the banner of Marxism flying. And, no, those who came with the AWL were not an Education Not for Sale bloc (though a few were ENS supporters) but contacts and friends. And no, there were not anything up to ten Socialist Action members present, but three. James might have scored better on these factual points if the CPGB's engagement with SYN had, well, actually existed at all before the conference. In any case, comrades, aren't you embarrassed to print something so spectacularly clueless?
Anyway, on to the main accusation made by both Ben and James - that the AWL's intervention was "left reformist", that our motions were "unambitious", that we "punched below our weight". What is the evidence for this?
Firstly, that we proposed a compromise motion on Venezuela, rather than counterposing to Socialist Appeal's Hands Off Venezuela motion, which James rightly describes as fawning, our full position of opposition to the Chavez government. We decided to oppose the pro-Chavez motion by arguing for SYN, at least at this early stage, to concentrate on the points of agreement - support for the Venezuelan workers and opposition to US intervention. What is unprincipled about that?
And here's what Ben doesn't tell you, even in garbled form. In contrast to members of the AWL, who have made ourselves quite unpopular with some in SYN by repeatedly and insistently attacking the received wisdom that Chavez is some kind of socialist, the CPGB comrades present at the conference could not even bring themselves to vote against the "fawning" Hands Off Venezuela motion, but abstained. Ben thinks we should have "stuck to our guns"? Erm... do we have to explain the irony in this?
Second accusation, that we didn't support the CPGB line on a minimum wage. The conference was asked to choose between a flat formula of "at least £8 an hour" or the amazingly badly worded CPGB amendment calling for a commission to decide (wait for it) "what the working people and oppressed sections of the population actually need to reproduce themselves physically and culturally". Leaving aside the weird, tokenistic nod to the oppressed, what workers need to reproduce themselves physically is the bare subsistence minimum - "culturally" just adds confusion. Evidently a commitment to pseudo-Marxist jargon comes before a commitment to clarity. That is why most of us abstained.
However, there is a broader issue here. Rejecting both the idea of transitional demands and in fact actual campaigning of pretty much any sort, the CPGB's approach to the minimum wage is to set, or demand a body to set, an arbitrarily maximised figure that supposedly fulfils need in the abstract. This is a very odd approach for Marxists, who surely reject the whole concept of an ideal or fair wage, to take. Would the AWL be content with a minimum wage of £8 an hour, or a student grant of £150 a week - or a 35 hour week for all workers? No, and we make no secret of this, but because our bottom line is mobilising the working class and not utopian socialist propaganda, we want to develop demands that both represent a major step forward and can actually bring broader layers of people into struggle.
We're sorry that James didn't get elected to the SYN executive, and no doubt we should have put out a clearer line in favour of second preferencing him, so that all the votes we could influence transferred to him. This simply got lost as we had other things to think about. If some of our comrades didn't get the message, thought the CPGB contingent were making fools of themselves and voted accordingly, we're sorry.
Lastly, Ben asks why we turned up "if not to try and positively shape things". In fact, that's exactly what we did. We proposed or contributed text to motions on organising young workers, free education, abortion rights, asylum and immigration, women's liberation, Venezuela and Iraq, actively promoted a number of campaigns and got several comrades elected to the committee - while arguing vociferously against the right wing in SYN, selling our paper and making propaganda for Marxism.
We have been actively involved in SYN since it started, pushing for it to take up initiatives and arguing the key political points uncompromisingly. At no point have we pretended to be "good Labourites", or any kind of Labourites, or anything other than the revolutionary socialists we are. In fact, our interventions have caused quite a bit of aggravation to those who do not want communist ideas to be a factor in SYN. Our guess is that these folk do not share James and Ben's assessment of our approach (if the comrades really believe it themselves).
Contrast that to the approach of the CPGB: flitting back and forth between the fight for workers' representation and fishing in Respect, doing nothing in SYN and then turning up on the day to get a profile for their organisation.
