I found reading the latest edition of Solidarity a bit confusing, like one of those Dot to Dot puzzles, where the picture only emerges if you connect the dots in the right order.

On Page 2 there is an article about the strike at NHS, Logistics, on Page 3/4 a lengthy article on “Can the Labour Party be Reclaimed?”, on Page 5 an article on the Left at Labour’s Conference, and another on Unions (and actually CLP’s) voting down Blair at Conference, on Page 8 an article attacking Brown’s hypocrisy, on Page 12 an article on the Cuban Revolution, on Page 14 a strange article entitled “Democracy and the Workers Movement”, on Page 18 an article attacking Socialist Action for their failure to attack Livingstone’s privatisation proposals, and finally on the back page a call for support for John McDonnell. All of these constituted the dots, but instead of looking at them and seeing a clear picture what came across to me was confusion and in some cases contradiction.

If we start from the article on the NHS Logistics strike, everything seems fairly normal to begin with. It’s a straightforward report of the background, and why socialists should support the strike and oppose privatisation. Personally, I thought the article was politically weak. It amounts to little more than the kind of “more militancy” anarcho-syndicalism, reminiscent of the SWP in the 1970’s, and 80’s. In fact, there is no real politics presented at all, just raw Trade Unionism; a call for Trade Union action to defend the status quo of a bureaucratic, state capitalist Health Service, which poorly meets the needs of the working class, is run for the benefit of its top bureaucrats and consultants, and from which private capitalist enterprises make millions in lucrative contracts for the supply of drugs and equipment. Yet nothing is said about the latter; nothing is said about extending the fight into one worth waging by the working class, one that seeks to introduce some real democratic accountability into the NHS, and some degree of workers control to ensure that it is run to meet the needs of workers rather than the bureaucrats and capitalists that leach off it.

Yet the demand for Workers Control should be a key demand. There is just two weeks before the contract is taken up by DHL. If the transfer occurs, then, without a fight for workers control, the whole strike will be demobilised as workers will feel there is little left to fight for. A fight for workers control says, whether this business is run by private capitalists or state capitalists we, the workers, insist on the right to ensure it is run in the interests of patients and workers. Better still, workers have around £500 billion in their pension funds. This business is very, very profitable as Solidarity points out. That is why DHL wants it. If workers had control over their own money in their own pension funds, they could buy this business and run it under workers control as a very profitable workers co-operative, ensuring that it was used to meet the needs of workers and patients, and used as a tool in the armoury of the working class rather than a tool in the hands of the bosses.

That was what Marxists used to argue was the basis of socialism; it was what they used to argue was the answer to the Stalinist control of enterprises in Eastern Europe – for the working class to take them into their own democratic control. It should be the basis of a Third Camp position that gives the working class a true slogan of struggle, to coin Marx’s phrase, rather than leaving them at the level of purely reformist struggle contained within a bourgeois framework.
And the contradiction here can be seen when compared to the attack on Socialist Action for their support for Livingstone’s privatisation proposals on the underground. Yes Socialist Action’s position is hypocritical, their almost uncritical support for Stalinism was wrong etc., but if you are going to argue against privatisation of state capitalist property like the NHS or the underground in the UK, especially if you are going to make that argument on the basis of effectively defending its current bureaucratic, state capitalist form, then isn’t the logic that you should defend it elsewhere too? Yet in the USSR, where the AWL believed that property was state capitalist too, they argued for support for Yeltsin and those that wanted to privatise state property! If you are going to criticise Socialist Action for being hypocritical you should make sure that your position doesn’t sit on the reverse side of their coin.

A Third camp position should be too defend state property, and to argue for workers control of it. In conditions where the state is in the hands of an alien class, or a Bonapartist regime – and where therefore, the political power rests on control of economic power – workers should seek also to bring ownership of the productive forces under their control too by whatever means they can. Marx makes clear that the ideological and political superstructure sits upon the economic foundations. The state is in all societies separated out from Civil Society, always trying to increase its own freedom of action. Its function in class society is repression. As long as the state exists as a means of repression workers cannot hand over their property to it, or else it will necessarily facilitate the rise of the state power, and its domination over civil society. It will facilitate Bonapartism. Only when the state has ceased to act as a means of oppression, has withered away under socialism, when the working class has, through its own co-ordinated action, established co-operative economic relations throughout the economy, can it risk handing over administration of that property to a new type of state, a state concerned only with the administration of things.

That was what I felt was lacking in Paul Hampton’s article on the Cuban Revolution. I disagree with the state capitalist analysis for reasons I have outlined elsewhere. A class analysis does not begin with the question of who carried through the revolution – the bourgeois social revolution in Germany was carried through by the Junkers in Russia by Tsarism - but of the facts of the society as it stands, an analysis of which classes exist in society, and their relationship to the means of production. That was Marx’s Historical Materialist method. Lenin’s arguments against the liberal Narodniks use of similar subjective sociological analysis are useful here. Lenin shows that the Narodniks arguments avoided an actual analysis of the condition of the productive forces in Russia, which were clearly bourgeois, and thereby denied their bourgeois nature, instead arguing that these relations had been transplanted on to Russian soil, and so were unnatural. The argument these cannot be socialist relations because they were not created by the working class, they have been artificially transplanted by an alien Stalinist force is just a modern day equivalent of that Narodnik argument, and relies on the same subjective sociological analysis, rather than a Marxist Historical Materialist analysis. But, even if you arrive at the conclusion that Cuba is a state capitalist society, then given the AWL’s position on defending (undoubted) state capitalism in say the NHS, or London Underground then certain other positions logically follow. If it is right to defend state capitalist property in Britain then it must also be right to defend it in Cuba. The question then arises how best can that defence be undertaken? I would argue as I have above that just as defence of the NHS or the underground is best done not by defending its current bureaucratic form, it is best done by advocating a programme, putting forward a “true slogan of struggle” around which workers have an incentive to organise and fight. That slogan is based upon the need in both Britain and Cuba on fighting for workers control of the means of production, and where possible transfer of ownership directly into the hands of the working class. As Paul points out, in the last couple of sentences of his article, given the current situation in Cuba, this is no longer a matter of academic debate, but an important question for Marxists to take up. It requires a clear programme for the Cuban working class, and for the international working class to come to their defence. It requires something along the lines of Trotsky’s Action Programme for France.

Yet Paul gives us nothing around which the working class in Cuba or internationally can organise. In fact, standing on its own, the picture of an anti-working class regime, presiding over state capitalist property, is likely to have the opposite effect, for workers to say well perhaps Cuba would be better off simply returning to capitalism. I think the problem for the AWL as for others that have adopted a state capitalist, or bureaucratic collectivist position is this. The question of defence puts the issue sharply. As Trotsky points out, in regard to the USSR, whilst Trotskyists would advocate the clear political and organisational separation from the Stalinists in such defence, it is highly likely that in practical actions of defence some joint activity would be necessary. But for those that have adopted a SC or BC position this poses a problem. If the Stalinists do form an alien ruling class then such joint action would constitute a Popular Front. Moreover, the SC and BC analysis is based upon a subjective sociological analysis of society, rather than a Marxist Historical Materialist analysis. Opposition to such joint action stems as much from the subjective revulsion of the nature of the Stalinists as does the analysis in the beginning.

The only politics in the article on the NHS Logistics strike is the link up to McDonell’s campaign for Labour Leader, and a call for Trade Union leaders to support him as the only candidate standing up for the things they believe in. But this call appears as mere shouting from the sidelines, it is a vain hope that perhaps the union leaders might do something. And it is union leaders not union members that are being appealed to. That becomes clear in the article “Can the Labour Party be Reclaimed?” It concludes, “It is certain that it cannot unless the unions give a lead.” But, logically, this can only mean if the union leaders give a lead. For the unions to decide for instance to back McDonell would require a majority of union members to vote accordingly in their unions for that commitment. On a straight mathematical basis, that probably means around 4 million union members deciding to commit their unions to supporting McDonnell. If we allow for the fact that few members vote, let us say it requires only 1 million union members. But the fact is that if 1 million union members, committed to supporting McDonnell and a radical programme, simply joined the Labour Party not only would McDonnell get elected, but a raft of Blair-Brownite MP’s would be deselected, and the Party would indeed get reclaimed. As such an eventuality is not being foreseen a call for the unions to back McDonnell and transform the Party can be interpreted in no other way, then, as a call to the union tops to do the job for us.

I thought that the whole tone of the article was too pessimistic to begin with. The Labour Party at a rank and file level certainly has been decimated. But the facts are that the LP still has around 200,000 members. Say only half of those are in any way active; that is 100,000 spread throughout the country an average of around 180 per Constituency, 30 per ward. But, in fact, most of these will be concentrated in the most important working class areas. In terms of being useful as a lever, for example to encourage workers in their communities to establish TRA’s and other organisations, to go out to support workers on strike, or other forms of struggle, that is not insignificant. It is certainly 100’s of times more than the small numbers of revolutionaries can achieve on their own. Nor is the picture of defeat and complete control by the Blairite bureaucracy even borne out by the other reports in the paper, for instance, the fact that not just unions, but CLP’s voted by a majority to defeat the leadership on five important issues at Conference, and soft lefts like Walter Wolfgang and Pete Willsman were elected to the NEC.

The position of ordinary rank and file militants in the Party would be even more strengthened if the revolutionary Left had not abandoned the LP. The Socialist Party bears much of the blame for that. If we consider the conditions under which Marxists operated in Germany in the late 19th century, or the Marxists in Russia, facing not just a Party bureaucracy, but state oppression, the argument that ‘illegal’ work in the Labour party was not possible can be seen to be ridiculous. There is no reason why most members of revolutionary organisations could not have continued to be individual members of the Labour Party. True, things like selling papers would have been pretty difficult, but is selling a few papers that important anyway, its not as though any of them have a mass circulation amongst the working class. And with the Internet, what is the point. It would have been possible, and probably better anyway, to have produced local leaflets, newsletters etc., drawing in other activists and Trade Unionists in their production, dealing with community issues from a political perspective, in the same way that Factory Bulletins are produced.

It is all very well having articles calling for support for McDonnell, but, as we used to point out to the SWP in similar conditions in the past, you are not in much of a position to advocate anything if you don’t have a vote yourself. And you can’t blame the Blairite bureaucracy for that if you have disenfranchised yourself by standing in elections, against Labour candidates, in the name of some other party.

I was also a bit disturbed by the more general politics of the article. Again it seems to suffer from an analysis based on subjective sociology rather than historical materialism. I think it chimes in with other articles in relation to bourgeois democracy, and the strange article on “Democracy and the Workers Movement”. The article paints a picture of a degeneration of democracy, the increasing importance of the position of Prime Minister and corresponding diminution not just of the role of the electorate, but of political parties, and even of their parliamentary representatives. It sets out what it believes a Political Party’s role should be – to organise a set of political ideas, and go out and win support for them – and bemoans the fact that such a role is no longer being fulfilled.

In actual fact, a study of the history of Political Parties would show that rarely have they been of the nature described. They have nearly always been electoral machines, and that is not surprising given the nature of bourgeois democracy. Certainly, in the US they have never been anything else. Only in Europe with the rise of mass Marxist parties, and subsequently with the creation of Stalinist Parties has there been brief periods when parties were clearly ideological, and committed to trying to educate, and organise a political base. Parties such as the Labour Party were ideological to the extent that they set out a programme that was intended to appeal to its core supporters, but the motivation was always that, to appeal for electoral support.

During the 20th century, and particularly in its latter half political parties began to emerge or to transform into parties that political scientists call “catch-all” parties. In other words they no longer attempted to appeal to this or that class base, but sought to appeal to as many people as possible, or at least those floating voters on which they relied in order to get elected. The exceptions are in countries like Spain where regional antagonisms such as in the Basque country give rise to regionalist parties, but even in Spain the “catch-all” parties respond by establishing their own regional parties.

The current state of bourgeois democracy is not an aberration, anymore than the current domination of the economy by monopolistic firms is an aberration from some ideal perfect market economy. The current state of bourgeois democracy as one dominated by show, lack of political content, a drive for uniformity and the centre ground, of the disintegration of the activist base of political parties is not an aberration, it is the mature form of bourgeois democracy, a form that enables the bourgeoisie to do what it needs to do, exercise its rule through its own corridors of power unimpeded by the democratic process. The error, it seems to me, is that which has pervaded past discussions on bourgeois democracy, and which, I suspect, is the motivation for reprinting an article about bourgeois democracy in the US 60 years ago, and that is a subjective sociological analysis of the nature of bourgeois democracy. What that analysis misses is its class content, the purpose of bourgeois democracy. Bourgeois democracy is merely a form of class rule, it is the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. As Lenin points out in “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” the democracy of slave society was only democracy for the slave owners, even feudalism had elements of democracy but only within the ranks of the nobility. Bourgeois democracy is not intended to be democracy for the working class, but only democracy within the ranks of the bourgeoisie, a means for it, to decide how best to rule and exploit the working class. It was forced by the strength of the working class, and for fear of revolution to concede the vote, and it has spent all of its time since developing means of making that vote useless. For the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie, the few thousand billionaires that own the majority of productive wealth, even democracy for the middle class and lower echelons of the bourgeoisie is problematic. The present state of bourgeois democracy is no aberration; it is how mature bourgeois democracy has to be if the bourgeoisie is to avoid having constantly to resort to military coups, or worse to the forces of fascism in order to throw back reforms introduced by workers parties that threaten its rule. Unless that fact is recognised, calls for reform or worse revitalising bourgeois democracy amount to “The Old King is dead, Long Live the King”.

The task of Marxists is not to bemoan the fact that bourgeois democracy is corrupt, but to explain to workers why it has to be corrupt in order to meet the needs of the ruling class. Not to revitalise it, but to seek here and now to replace it with the only democracy that can advance the cause of the working class – direct workers democracy based on their own organisations in their communities and workplaces. That is why I disagree with Martin Thomas in his article which, quite rightly, attacks the hypocrisy of Brown’s “Power to the People” decentralising. Martin says, that in modern societies “democratic control is only possible by having politicians - that is elected representatives – take most decisions.”

I disagree. The most important decisions, the ones that affect people’s daily lives are not taken in Parliament, and would not be taken in Parliament even were it a more democratic institution than it is now. The most important decisions are taken on a daily basis in factories and enterprises around the country. The examples of co-ops in Argentina have shown that workers are quite capable of taking those decisions themselves collectively. Decisions about what is required within a particular community do not require professional politicians to make them, the members of the community can make them themselves collectively, and more importantly having made decisions can use the same decision-making bodies to implement them. Much of the work of bourgeois parliamentary bodies whether at the level of the nation or at a more local level stems from the nature of bourgeois democracy itself. A workers democracy would not require to spend so much time discussing the niceties of legal language etc. because their bodies are executive as well as legislative bodies. They merely have to agree what they want to do and then do it, not have to spend weeks on end putting it into such tight legal language that those who are expected to carry it out do not find any loopholes, or fail to understand what is required. A look at Parliamentary business shows that a lot of it is of this nature, simply going over things that have previously been discussed and decided upon.

Having worked in Local Government, and been a Councillor I have to say that most of this activity is crap. It is pointless. At work I spent a lot of time writing reports, strategies, Action Plans etc. for no other reason than some other bureaucrat in Whitehall had decided that every Council needed to have one. Having produced the relevant strategy etc. several meetings would be needed to discuss it with Councillors in order that they could approve it. Usually, the Councillor – and I include myself in this looked at from the other side – has absolutely, no idea what the right decision to take is because you only have the facts presented to you by the relevant officers – all of whom have had their own pre-meetings to decide what outcome they want the Councillors to arrive at, including then a pre-meeting with the Committee Chair who tends to want to agree with his officers because they are part of his Empire, and he has to work with them. Having then spent several more hours arriving at this decision the report, strategy or whatever is approved, recorded in the Council Minutes, and then goes on to a shelf with all the other reports and strategies, which are likewise ignored for all practical purposes, because those responsible for actually undertaking work do so on a pragmatic day by day basis.

With much of the important day to day decision making removed from that forum, the tasks of Parliamentarians become shrunk down to size, their importance re-evaluated, and for the very few matters that require an important national decision the forums of workers democracy provide the best basis for detailed discussion of these undercutting the influence of the bourgeois media, and allow decisions to be made collectively rather than by atomised individuals.

Socialism is not something that we should put off to some distant date, but something that has to be fought for here and now, and the forms of socialist society prefigured within our present society. Only on that basis can the working class begin to reclaim its life, begin to understand that it has the power to run society without bosses, and their sham democratic form of class rule, only by those means can the working class break out from simply fighting the same battles over and over again within the framework of bourgeois society, and begin to scoop up into its own hands the means of its own liberation. Anything less means perpetual accommodation to bourgeois democratic forms, bourgeois ideology, and consequently a continuation of capitalist exploitation.