Propaganda, activism and politics: a reply to Communist Students

(This is a reply to an article in 'Communist Student', the newspaper of the student group linked to the CPGB/Weekly Worker. It is online here.)

‘Mohsen Sabbagh’’s report on the ultimately fruitless left unity discussions in the build-up to the University of Sheffield Students’ Union elections wilfully mischaracterises the debates and seriously distorts some of the history. Allow me to set the record straight.

Sheffield University is a national anomaly in that Communist Students is roughly as big as the other activist left groups (AWL, SWP, SP) put together; it outnumbers each of the other groups by a ratio of at least two to one. This peculiarity means that anyone interested in cobbling together broad or united left initiatives must deal with CS's idiosyncratic brand of Marxist politics; a politics that in my view can be described, at best, as abstract propagandism and, at worst, as the kind of ultimatistic sectarian dogma that will make anyone not already well-trained in the ins-and-outs of the existing revolutionary left run a mile.

The unexpressed dynamic of the discussions from day one was that any resultant slate would essentially be based on CS politics, tempered by whatever concessions they were prepared to make to the SWP and ourselves (the AWL). This necessarily set me at odds with the process from the off; unlike CS, the AWL does not believe revolutionaries intervene in student elections simply to “make propaganda for Marxism” (as CS put it) but rather to cohere and galvanise a layer of activists from within the existing activist milieus around working-class and anti-capitalist ideas in order to develop a programme for reviving or rebuilding the student movement as a militant, campaigning force. This means relating to leftist elements within organisations like People & Planet on a far more nuanced basis than demanding that they sign up to a full revolutionary programme.

I believed that a slate organised on that basis was possible. To provide some context, there have recently been some significant developments in the (admittedly small) activist constituency at Sheffield, most notably the formation of the ‘Sheffield Activist Network’, which brings together members of the AWL, the SP, the SWP, the Anarchist Federation, various independent activists and has succeeded in pulling in more radical elements from the softer, environmental and social justice milieu at the university. SAN has already organised two worthwhile pieces of anti-capitalist direct action, neither of which CS members at Sheffield took part in or even expressed interest in.

When I suggested that broader activist forces such as those around SAN should’ve been engaged in the discussions around the slate, CS members first scoffed and then reluctantly agreed to email a few P&Pers as a “token gesture.” I doubt the email was ever sent.

To deal with some of the substance of the CS article, I think to retread the Iraq debate here would be a diversion. Suffice to say, however, that at no point did I ask “whether we really thought students would notice if the word ‘immediate’ was not there - surely calling for the withdrawal of troops - at some stage - would be enough?” In fact I made it clear throughout that despite the AWL’s opposition to the use of the “troops out now” formulation, I would not make it a “bottom-line” in slate discussions. I merely expressed my shock and frustration that the CS were more concerned about making fetishes of particular journalistic expressions of a position than they were about some of the fundamental class issues which were shockingly absent from their proposed platform (more on this later).

On the issue of “communism”, I believe that the tradition with which I identify is more clearly invoked by terms like “revolutionary socialism”, which I argued for instead. CS obviously identifies with a different tradition (indeed, its parent organisation – the CPGB – claims the tradition of the Communist Party even after its Stalinisation); fair enough. Again, I was clear that I was prepared to compromise on this issue given that I was in an obvious minority.

I am accused in the CS article of having a “patronising” attitude to students because I imagined that most of them would be disinclined to read hugely text-heavy leaflets – a disinclination which I share. CS’s bizarre attitude to propaganda seems to operate on the rule that the more words (and jargon) are utilised, the more faith you’re expressing in the ability of your audience to deal with heavyweight concepts. By that token, comrades, why should we bother with leaflets at all? Why not just go straight for the jugular and hand out copies of ‘Capital’ on picket lines? I believe students should read Capital, but if someone handed me a copy and said “to understand the political basis on which I’m intervening in the forthcoming student union elections, you must read this”, I don’t think my first reaction would be to thank the candidate for having such an obvious abundance of faith in my ability to grapple with big politics.

But in reality it was never really the length but the content of CS’s platform that bothered me. The purpose of revolutionary intervention in student union elections is to connect the day-to-day struggles students face to a programme for a wider struggle to change society. All CS seem capable of providing is a jargon-riddled critique of capitalism and an abstract assertion that a “communist state” is the answer.

For example, the original CS platform included nothing on students’ rights at work. At a time when more and more students are taking jobs in vulnerable, low-paid and unorganised workplaces, developing their class consciousness by providing clear, specific campaigning tools they can use to stand up for themselves at work is a basic necessity. But this issue – surely of fundamental importance to any anti-capitalist, let alone working-class revolutionary, in the student movement – didn’t get a look in.

The issue of SU democracy was also sadly missing. Although CS had managed to include large chunks of text on the NUS Governance Review (in which they insisted on including esoteric terms like ‘Bonapartist’ without any explanation whatsoever), any specific demands or proposals for democratising Sheffield’s union structures – again, surely a key issue for anyone wanting to engender a culture of mass rank-and-file participation in the union – were totally absent.

The list of glaring omissions also included anything on campus workers’ rights and the living wage demand, the demand for the taxation of the rich and business in the section on ‘free education’ and anything about situating students’ unions within wider working-class struggle and linking up with and supporting local trade union disputes.

Unsurprisingly, Mohsen’s article forgets to mention what CS, well...forgot to mention. It is also a little economical with the truth when it relates how the slate fell apart; the ultimate failure is presented straightforwardly “as a result” of the SWP’s eventual withdrawal from discussions. In reality, though, I pressed the CS comrades to run the slate as a joint left initiative. Both candidates would be CS members and the agreed platform was massively hegemonised by CS’s politics, but if the slate was explicitly run as an initiative that sought to draw in wider forces I believe we still might be able to cohere a new layer of activists interested in anti-capitalist campaigning. I agreed to commit as much time and energy as possibly to promoting a slate run on such a basis. But CS were not interested; freed from the shackles of having to deal with the SWP they preferred to run their own slate as a sectarian propaganda exercise.

CS’s abject inability to develop demands that connect day-to-day struggle to their ultimatistic “maximum” programme is further exemplified by the banner they’re now displaying outside the SU building; the key slogans it raises include “troops out now” and “world revolution”. Fine, comrades, but if I want CS candidates to tell me how – if elected – they’ll help me resist the privatisation of my halls of residence or stand up to my exploitative boss in the bar I work in, “world revolution” is hardly a useful response.

The differences between the approach of the AWL and the approach of CS when it comes to intervening in the student movement are clear and well documented; ours is an approach that is based on rank-and-file mobilisation, direct action, an orientation to the labour movement and an attempt to gather around us a layer of activists capable of turning the student movement into a space more hospitable to the discussion and proliferation of Marxist and other revolutionary ideas. CS’s approach, to be succinct, is based on something different.

It is perhaps worth noting that in hustings speeches leading up to the elections, CS candidates were heard using weak, populist slogans such as “power to the people.” So much for the Marxist programme, comrades.

In the event, CS’s votes for weak and as far as I can make out they have failed to expand their periphery or mobilise any new activists into their work (although given that their on-campus political life is somewhat depleted and subdued of late, there isn’t a great deal of activity for them to be mobilise people into).

But for me, the final, tragic crystallisation of CS’s dogged insistence to abstract themselves from actually existing struggle and reduce themselves to sectarian propagandists came not when the votes were counted but some weeks before the election when two international speakers visited Sheffield during the week in which the slate discussions had been taking place. One was Axel Persson, a member of the French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist League), fast-food worker and militant in the CGT union who came to talk about organising initiatives in his workplace as well as the recent massive wave of student and worker strikes in France. The other was Mike Treen, a former member of the New Zealand section of the USFI and current National Director of the Unite trade union. In case CS readers don’t know (and, if you’ll forgive my pessimism, past experience suggests that many probably don’t), Unite is the union that ran the 2005/6 “Supersize My Pay” campaign that organised thousands of young workers working for companies like McDonalds and Starbucks, mobilised them into militant disputes and won huge reforms. Both of these speakers were revolutionary socialists who have been involved in hugely significant waves of class struggle, and in Mike’s case what is probably the single most inspiring organisation campaign in recent labour movement history. As revolutionaries who’ve organised young workers and working students working for the multinationals driving capitalist globalisation, Mike and Axel offered unique and valuable lessons for anyone interested in organising young people on an anti-capitalist basis. Their experiences hammer home the most fundamental lesson that Marxists could possibly wish to impart to the student activist milieu – that the way to change the world is not through ethical consumerism or letter-writing or meek lobbying but by organising workers against their bosses. The meeting was, in short, essential for anyone who considered themselves anti-capitalist or even interested in changing the world at all – let alone a revolutionary communist.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this; not a single member of CS’s eight-strong Sheffield branch turned up. Their excuse? They were “busy”. Fine; we’re all busy. But as far as I’m concerned, if your political instincts don’t compel you to make time in your schedule to go to a meeting like that then there’s something wrong with your instincts.

I’d like to develop a closer working relationship with the CS comrades at Sheffield, but as long as we’re operating on two entirely separate terrains – they on the terrain of abstract “Marxist propaganda”, me on the terrain of working-class organisation (and talking Marxism with activists I meet and engage with along the way) – I fear that’s going to be difficult.