Who's sorry now? The 'Left List' and the London Elections
The Left List's explanation of the results of Thursday's elections strongly suggests that the SWP is stubbornly refusing to learn the lessons or even face reality. We can only hope that some of its more thoughtful members will notice that their emperors have neither clothes nor answers, and will call them to account and/or join with others in renewing and reorienting socialism.
The Left List's claim that "voters punished New Labour for ten years of privatisation and warmongering" is not exactly wrong, but certainly simplistic. Of course war and privatisation are two of the main issues that have pushed voters away from Labour, major symptoms of the New Labour project of pushing the working class out of politics. But voting Tory, BNP or not voting at all is not a show of left-wing rebellion but of reaction and confusion. If this is 'punishing' Labour, then it is like punishing your husband for his excessive drinking by running off with George Best. This needs a response based not on soundbites about 'punishing', but on the need to renew working-class representation in politics.
Some things in the article are plainly true, such as "New Labour's failure to defend its core working class voters" and "Livingstone also brought this defeat on himself". But it goes on to explain that Livingstone did this by associating himself too closely with New Labour, by rejoining the Labour Party and having Blair- and Brownites, and members of other parties, on his team. Valid points, but the SWP's criticism of Livingstone is limited to who he links up with, not his politics. So there is no condemnation of East London Line privatisation, the creation of City Hall fat cats, siding with the police over issues such as the Stockwell shooting, or Ken's advice to bosses to sack sick workers. Sure, the Left List made some of these points during the campaign, but omitting them from its post-election analysis seems more than careless. There are other unsavoury aspects of Livingstone's politics, such as his welcoming of al-Qaradawi, that we could not expect the SWP to criticise because they agree with them.
And the Left List's explanation for its own dismal vote? "It was too recent an invention to make its full mark on the electoral process" and "many people who voted for Respect did so in error, believing that it was the old Respect". Why bother with a political explanation when a couple of technical ones will do, eh? Even if every single person who voted for Respect did so thinking it was voting for an SWP front rather than a Galloway front, they would still have got only 3ish% of the vote! And obviously, not every single person did. The fact that the Left List was a 'recent invention' is not simply an issue of 'brand recognition' but a product of the SWP's political zig-zaggery, dumping the Socialist Alliance, lashing up with Galloway, then rebranding itself following the entirely predictable split.
The Left List says: "What is necessary now is not a left that runs the line 'Labour at any cost' but a left that stands by working class people and struggles alongside them." That's true enough. But over the last few years, the SWP itself has failed to stand by working-class people, and instead moved away from working-class politics in pursuit of mythical shortcuts based on religious and communal loyalties. If it were now turning back again, then good, but I see little evidence of it.
'The Galloway operation' merits a whole paragraph of criticism, something which would have earned anyone else a denunciation for sectarianism until quite recently. But again, it is devoid of political criticism, and just crunches a few numbers. Nor does it acknowledge any role that the SWP have played in creating the Frankenstein's monster that now upsets them so. There is no attempt to distance themselves from Galloway politically - after all, that would inevitably open the questions as to why they were in bed with him previously - but rather, the SWP leadership is just faintly sneering that it has taken Galloway's footsoldiers away.
And what next? There is a hint of backing away from elections - "This will not necessarily be a primarily electoral struggle" - but also an indication that candidacies will continue - "there will still be an electoral dimension", and claims of a few good votes outside London.
The article claims that "The Left List does have serious trade union support". You are having a laugh. The honest version of this statement would be 'Lots of SWP members hold posts in trade unions, and a few of them are quite popular'. Any notion of the Left List having 'serious trade union support' beyond that is delusion.
And finally ... "We must now use this to assist in the rebuilding of an alternative to New Labour that will not be derailed by the surge in Tory and Nazi support at the ballot box." If this meant, 'We will admit our gross mistakes and turn towards unity with other socialists in renewing the cause of working-class political representation', then that would be great. But hands up who thinks that it actually does.
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This article first appeared on Stroppyblog.
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The Myth of Working Class Representation
First, didn't the AWL actually call for people to support the Left List and Hezbollah/SWP? So don't you deserve some of the blame that attaches? Secondly, the AWL keeps rabbiting on about working class representation, claiming that New Labour has disenfranchised the working class. This is nonsense. If you saw workers being disenfranchised under some totalitarian regime, I assure you you would know the difference! Workers retain the right to vote for whoever they choose. During the period of the Socialist Alliance they could vote for people to the left of Blair and Brown if they chose. Pretty, unoiversally throughout the country they chose not to. Workers were not disenfracnhied they exercised their franchise by voting, but not voting for people they saw as irrelevant. For several years in Scotland they have had the opportunity to vote for the Scottish Socialist Party. Again pretty universally throughout Scotland they chose not to. If they moved away from Labour it was to vote to he Right and support the SNP. Socialists like the AWL have the opportunity, and indeed have doe so, to stand their own candidates. Where they have done so the working class has responded with a huge yawn.
The problem is not that the working class has been disenfranchised it is that socialists have failed to convince it to use its franchise to vote for them. Even worse the BNP has been far, far more succesful in winning over workers votes as an alternative to labour than have the Left. That will continue if the Left contihues to tell itself fairytales about the working class being disenfranchised as an alternative of getting on with the real job, which is to take up the battle at the grass roots, in the LP, in teh community, and in the unions. It cetainly won't come from appeals to today's Anglo-Russian Committee of TRade Union lefts.
Arthur Bough
What?
Arthur, didn't you call on people to vote Labour? Must be your fault that the Labour Party is so crap then!
(Completely illogical, of course, but so are your first two sentences.)
Appeal?
Also, I don't think there is anything in here that constitutes an 'appeal' to the SWP. It may have appeared so because whoever posted the article left out the formatting which indicated quotes lifted verbatim from the Left List article, possibly making it seem that I had written them. I've stuck quote marks in now, so I hope that clears that up.
Absolutely,
Of course, its partly my fault that the LP is so crap. I'm a Marxist and so I have to take my share of the blame alongside every other Marxist that has failed to win sufficent workers over to socialism. I'm happy to recognise my part in the fact that Marxists have failed the working class. But at least I'm trying to do something about it rather than compounding the error.
Marx and Engels told us that "The Communists do not form parties separate from the workers parties." Yet, the history of the last 100 years has been one of people calling themselves Marxists and doing the exact opposite of what Marx and Engels advised. When Lenin and Luxemburg did that at least they had a few tens of thousands of workers behind them. Today the various sects have tens, but not the thousands, yet they continue to live in a fantasy world in which they believe they are today's Lenin and Luxemburg that the insignificant organisations they live in are in any way comprable to the parties of Lenin and LUxemburg. Where they have joined the workers in their party they have done so in the most sectarian manner with the only concern being to use it as a tactic to build their own tiny sect, they have shown concern only for that, and for pointless debates aimed at embarrassing the leadership of those parties rather than trying to do anything practical on a day to day basis that improved workers lives or took the average worker forward one jot. Not surprsingly workers have treated them with the contempt such an attitude deserves.
At the time of their death our great teachers left us a Movement that was ideologicallly and intellectually invincible, even the bouregois intellectuals were forced to recognise its rigour and strength. They left us a movement that was morally superior to a corrupt, and bankrupt capitalism. They left us a movement that was growing by the day, and was winning to its banner tens of thousands of workers. In the hundred or so years sicne their death we have managed not just to squander every single aspect of what they left us, a Movement which throughout at least the last 80 years has been in decline, a Movement which has increasingly been on the back foot ideologically and intellectually against an assault from the bouregoisie, but a Movement which even lacks now the moral superiority it once had over Capitalism. Its not just in the ranks of Stalinism that we find reasons to question the morality of sections of our movement. But, even worse than that. Not only have we squandered what was left to us, but we have managed to take the Movement back not just to the time of marx and Engels death, but to even the very beginning of their active involvement in the Labour Movement. We have a movement that is floundering and rudderless, a Movement where the marxists lack any real influecne on that Movement - apart from the fact that they can get themselves elected in the meaningless rotten Boroughs of the Trade UNion movement - and we have a return to the numerous, sets that characterised the socialist movement - then too largely divorced from the class - that Marx and Engels tried to go beyond in building a real movement of workers.
You bet I think Marxists have failed the working class miserably, and as a Marxist I take my share of the blame including a large part of my political life making those same mistakes. Other Marxists should shoulder their share too, and learn the appropraite lessons.
Arthur Bough