“We are not getting excited about the election.” (Duncan Hallas, a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, in Socialist Worker, on the eve of the 1979 general election which gave power to Thatcher’s Tories.)
One of two things. Either the outcome — the new government — of a May 2010 general election, is a matter of little or no consequence to the working class and to the labour movement and therefore a matter of indifference to socialists. Or it is of consequence, perhaps of great consequence, to the working class and therefore of great importance to socialists. We think it is important.
Only a fool will believe that the Tories are now a “benign party”. At the very least, the Tories in power will drive with special energy to cut working-class living standards. Their commitment to a speedy liquidation of the debt incurred by the government to bail out the bankers implies that.
As the election looms, the Tories are coyly fudging, mudging and backtracking from their bold talk at the height of the economic crisis of 2008-9. They don’t want to play Gordon Brown’s game in the election and let themselves be branded as a party of super-cutters. Don’t believe them!
They have said openly that they will consider extending the anti-union laws to ban public service strikes.
They will target the public sector unions, the conditions they have won, and try to smash them up.
In the narrowest sense they will use government power to cosset the rich. They now have a bizarre international political affiliation: in the European Parliament they are linked with a small cluster of right and far-right parties.
In Northern Ireland, the Tory party is negotiating behind the scenes to create a “pan-Unionist bloc”, that would include the Paisleyite DUP. Though that party has many features peculiar to itself and to Northern Ireland, it would not be too inaccurate to bracket it loosely with the British BNP. A Tory victory may pour petrol on the still-glowing embers of sectarian-national-communal conflict in Northern Ireland.
And therefore, what follows for the working class and for socialists? Hostility to the Tories, certainly. And therefore? Organise to fight them in the election? Apart from a small smattering of socialist candidates, there will be no socialist alternative in the election — no possible socialist government on offer. What follows as the New Labour government seemingly heads for defeat in the general election is a question about New Labour now. This is posed more urgently now than for many years.
Can we regard the Labour Party in any sense as a desirable alternative to the Tories and a new Tory, or Tory-Lib Dem, government? We believe we can and that we must. There are two main reasons for that conclusion.
Political differences
For the first time in many years there are now significant differences in policy and intent between New Labour and the Tory party — between the Labour Party and the traditional party of the British capitalist class.
Shallow, essentially demagogic, “anti-Toryism” has played a malign role in the labour movement in modern times, licensing virtually anything that was calculated to defeat the Tories. In the 1980s and 90s, the Labour Party inched slowly towards neo-Thatcherism under the banner of “anti-Toryism”. Even so, the Tories remain the fundamental party of the British ruling-class.
As ex-Prime Minister John Major once said of his organisation, the Tory party is “one of the greatest fighting political machines” in Europe. It is the “fighting machine” of the British capitalist class. It would be foolish to underestimate it.
Certainly, New Labour in power has, for a dozen years, also acted as a party of the ruling-class, a neo-Thatcherite government of the ruling-class and of the rich. To take one of many notorious examples, it has kept the working class locked in the Thatcher-imposed anti-union laws, which — by banning solidarity strikes — outlaw much that makes for effective trade union action.
If the Tories in power go on to ban public service strikes, they will be building on what the Labour government has preserved of the old Tory anti-working class enactments of the 1980s.
But the Labour government has also brought in important limited reforms such as tax credits. It has raised taxes for the rich in response to the economic crisis.
Symptomatically — though this is now, like everything else in the run-up to the general election, fudged — the Tories have advocated tax cuts for the rich.
They opposed the emergency — pro-capitalist — actions of the government in 2009 to prevent the social catastrophe of a collapse of the banks.
In short, there are now significant political differences between the two parties, one of which will form the government after May 2010. Do these differences matter to the working class? Yes they do!
They do not make New Labour anything other than a boss-serving government and a shackled, trussed-up remnant of the old Labour Party, but nevertheless there are significant differences. These things should matter to socialists. They matter to Solidarity.
That, in part, is the reason we say vote Labour in the general election wherever there is not a credible socialist candidate.
But the fundamental difference between Labour and the Tories is, however, not one of policy. There are important differences in policy between the Democrats and Republicans in the USA; we do not therefore back the Democrats.
Trade union links
The difference is that the big trade unions are affiliated to the Labour Party and finance it.
Even now, despite massive structural changes, the unions retain a considerable degree of power in the Labour Party — power, if they use it, to affect policy and power, to impose structural changes that would put into reverse the quasi-abolition of the old Labour Party over the last fifteen years by the Blair-Brown gang.
The union-Labour link, though altered, and despite a couple of trade union disaffiliations, has survived the grim years of New Labour government. There is now talk — it may be no more than talk — amongst union leaders of restoring like the old Labour Party conference. An all-shaping fact of the New Labour years is that the unions either haven’t used their power or, in the early Blair years, used it to help Blair-Brown-Mandelson destroy the old Labour Party structures.
The tragedy has been that, because of the quietude of the rank-and-file, initiative here has lain entirely with the union bureaucrats, who have chosen to play the role of donkey to rider with the New Labour gang. Socialists must up the fight to change that, to bring the rank-and-file of the unions into the equation.
Even so, in the general election, the Labour Party will be backed and financed by the unions as their contender to form the next government. Make any qualifications you like — and the qualifications are massive — the Labour Party will be the party of the unions in the general election.
If the link between the unions and Labour is the fundamental reason why socialists will say “vote Labour” in the general election, there is an additional reason: the aching lack of any half-way credible alternative on the left of the Labour Party. It is important to assess how this came about.
Weakness of the left
The years of New Labour government — and before the British war with Iraq and the economic crisis and its aftershocks, it looked like New Labour would go on and on — were years in which, as working-class ties to the government party were stretched and snapped, a serviceable socialist left might have been created. The AWL took part in efforts to create it, notably the Socialist Alliance (which had a sizeable presence in the 2001 general election).
The SA did badly in that general election. Workers’ Liberty magazine summed up the results thus: “The Socialist Alliance has little... to congratulate itself for. With very few exceptions our impact on the electorate was not noticeably greater than that which any half-way presentable socialist candidate would have made in any suitable constituency at any time in the last hundred years.”
Any hope of developing from the limited advances won in the 2001 election were destroyed by the SWP and its political satellites. Together with George Galloway MP, they created “Respect-George Galloway” (that was its registered name). Galloway was never more than a self-serving, wealth-chasing, middle-left Labour politician (and in addition one with odious hard-Stalinist opinions).
“Respect-George Galloway” linked itself to Islamic clerical-fascists in Britain, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Muslim Association of Britain, and in Iraq, Palestine and the rest of the Middle East. They celebrated the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian election of 2006!
In a Britain in which the BNP was growing alarmingly, exploiting working-class dissatisfaction with the New Labour government, “Respect-George Galloway” branded themselves as Muslim communalists — “the best fighters for Muslims” — and thus sealed themselves off from the white working class, for whom “black and white, unite and fight” made sense, but adoptive Muslim communalism never could.
All possibility of developing a working-class alternative to the left of the New Labour party and government was thus squandered in reactionary — that is what the alliance with Muslim clerical-fascism was and is: reactionary — political foolishness, rooted in a muddled and reactionary “anti-imperialism”.
They allied the British left not with working-class (or even bourgeois) democrats in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, but with clerical-fascists, Sunni supremacists, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
For its part, the Socialist Party has a disablingly black-and-white, over-simplified view of the labour movement, asserting that there is nothing at all left of the old Labour Party.
In an earlier incarnation, they had a no less simple-mindedly black-and-white — and wrong — view in which they saw the Labour Party as a pure emanation of working-class politics. In office in Liverpool in the mid-80s, the Socialist Party under its present leaders disgraced itself by self-serving timidity in face of the Tory government (see www.workersliberty.org/node/6876).
The SWP has said they want to stand a few candidates in the election. The Socialist Party will stand a handful. It will be a marginal activity in the general election. These candidates will be about building support for these organisations not about building genuine left unity and certainly not about offering an alternative government to the Tories.
In short, there is no credible socialist alternative to the Labour Party in the election. How unpalatable a choice New Labour is, is shown by the fact that Brown too stands for cuts — different cuts, perhaps lesser cuts, at a different rate and tempo, but cuts nonetheless.
But the choice the working class, and socialists who look to the working class and the labour movement, face is either abstention and a vote here and there for socialist candidates, or a vote for Labour. Cynical abstention is a rotten option for workers. We need an alternative political campaign which cuts across that cynicism.
The bulk of the labour movement will rightly call for a Labour vote. Labour movement militants — many “with gritted teeth” — will vote Labour, and call on their workmates to do the same.
We say: “vote Labour and prepare to fight, whoever wins — Tory or Labour.”
Vote Labour, prepare to fight
There may be some anti-Labour socialist candidates who should be voted for. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty is standing one such candidate, Jill Mountford, for the purpose of making essential socialist propaganda (and of course, of building the AWL). But in most places, in general, we say: vote Labour!
Yet, saying “vote Labour" with all the reservations listed here raises a further question for socialists: do we just shrug and say “vote Labour”, and between now and the election, passively accept the politics of the Brown Labour Party and the New Labour government? That is the easy option, but we should not do that!
We cannot do that on pain of political self-betrayal. We need a campaign to stop the Tories and fascists, and for a Labour vote, a campaign that simultaneously advocates and organises labour movement people and socialist and anti-capitalist activists around anti-Brown, anti-New Labour policies.
We need not an indolent, passive “vote Labour” posture, but an active socialist campaign that combines stopping the Tories and fascists now with a simultaneous fight against Brown and New Labour — now, and after the election, whether Brown loses or wins.
Such a campaign should base itself on a class struggle programme of demands: for jobs, against cuts and privatisations, in defence of public services.
There is a precedent for such a campaign. Faced in 1979 with a terrible choice between the Callaghan Labour government and the Thatcher Tories, a choice comparable with our choice in 2010, socialists organised a “Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory”. Its purpose was to campaign actively for a Labour vote and for anti-Callaghan government policies. It organised militants to continue the fight for those policies against the Callaghan Labour leadership, in and out of government.
Many important things are different now. There was then a mass Labour Party which on a rank-and-file level was bitterly opposed to the Callaghan government. There is nothing like that now. But we are where we are.
As the American Trotskyist James P Cannon used to say: the cardinal question in politics is “what to do next”. Politics is always about now. Socialists relate to the “now”, decide what to do next, always with an eye to what best serves the tomorrow we work to shape, what best serves the longer term interests of the working class and of socialism.
Nevertheless we must relate to the political issues now, if we are not to accept relegation to the realm of general, abstract, socialist high-propaganda.
Events — especially the political decrepitude of the would-be left — have for a long time forced the AWL into a heavy emphasis on propaganda, into polemics with the kitsch left. That was necessary but it was not from free choice. Other possibilities are, or may be, now opening up.
The general election will, most likely, one way or another bring to a close the chapter of labour movement political history we have been living through for the last 15 and more years. A new chapter will, perhaps — we say no more than most likely will — open. Many things may become possible that were impossible for a long time. Now, in the run up to the General Election, it is not a matter only of speculation but of action, of doing what can be done here and now, to prepare.
That is why in the run-up to the May 2010 general election, we will be supporting the exploratory efforts to organise a Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists.
Comments
Bye then
And so the AWL announce that they are slithering back into the bowels of the New Labour Party.
Where this and other
Where this and other articles attempt to analyse responsibly the political situation the British working class is in as the General Election looms, Mark P substitutes abusive, loaded - and inaccurate - emotional foolishness for analysis. AWL is not going into the LP, into its bowels or any other part of its anatomy. Very little in the way of a living Labour Party remains to go back into.
What makes me think that he is a supporter of the ridiculous Socialist Party (ne Militant)? Having spent the decades of working class militancy buried in the LP, which it pretended was a straight-forward "workers party", having disgraced itself when in the mid 1980s it controlled the Liverpool Labour movement, this organisation is equally one-sided, equally undialectical in pretending that there is nothing at all of the old LP left now. They don't notice that most unions are still affiliated to the LP, still finance it, and that the Labour-TU link has survived - with a couple of important disafilliations - the 13 years of neo-Thatcherite Labour Government.
Have a look at what this tendency did in Liverpool in the mid-1980s here: The Tragic Fiasco of Liverpool City Council Under Militant-Socialist Party Leadership and at its basic ideas here.
General Election
Without reopening the wider political differences between us I do genuinely welcome this change in the group away from the helpless defeatism that has been its dominant characteristic recently.
A few technical issues:
The continuation of Jill's canditature is not compatible with the overall thrust of this position. In terms of any debate among the left it makes you look daft. Don't Vote for SWP or SP or Beneath the Planet of No2EU because they are not the LP but vote for Jill only makes sense if you start from a position of total acceptance of the AWL. Eminently sensible if you are a member, but if this is aimed at people outside the group what are you trying to say. If they accepted that all left candidates bar Jill are a waste of time they would have joined the AWL and be busy building her campaign. Not only wrong but daft. As those of you who were active in the SCLV will remember it is not imposssible to campaign for even right wing Labour candidates and make socialist propaganda.
There will be very few "far left" candidates if you are serious about this you need to deal with the Greens as the most likely beneficiary of unstructured "anti-capitalist" rage.
Tom
TUSC, and the union link
So, dalcassian, if you get dialectics you've got to call for a Labour vote, yeah?
Original article: "There may be some anti-Labour socialist candidates who should be voted for."
So will you be calling for a vote for TUSC candidates, for example, in areas where they are standing?
Also, I love the blithe lack of self-awareness embodied in these two passages:
"The SWP has said they want to stand a few candidates in the election. The Socialist Party will stand a handful. It will be a marginal activity in the general election. These candidates will be about building support for these organisations not about building genuine left unity and certainly not about offering an alternative government to the Tories."
"The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty is standing one such candidate, Jill Mountford, for the purpose of making essential socialist propaganda (and of course, of building the AWL)."
So, the criticisms of the SWP and SP project are that: 1) their objective is building support for their own organisation (which is avowedly also the objective of AWL's candidate); 2) they are not about building left unity (but obviously neither is Jill's candidature, since it was always going to be an AWL candidacy); 3) they are not offering an alternative government to the Tories (but obviously neither does one AWL candidate in S London). So what on earth's the difference? And, I guess, there's the implication that the AWL's socialist propaganda is "essential", whereas that of other groups is presumably pointless... do forgive the rest of us for not accepting that.
Most importantly, the characterisation of the unions as ciphers of the working class, or even workers (or even organised workers), which is the keystone of the whole piece, is total nonsense. The article totally fails to understand the union tops as having a distinct set of interests from those who they are here claimed to represent. The logic is that because Dave Prentis is formally elected by UNISON members (and if you valorise the bourgeois formalism of elections for leaders every 5 years), and Dave Prentis has a bunch of power he could (in the abstract) use (if you also ignored his material/structural/functional interests), there is therefore some sort of real connection between UNISON members and the Labour Party.
These alleged links are utterly formal, utterly abstract, and totally without concrete, lived reality for the working class in general, and members of the labour movement in particular - not least the 97% (or something like that) of London CWU members who voted for disafilliation, thereby showing an admiral ability to connect their industrial self-interest with broader political reality, an ability sadly lacking in many socialists. Nor has this campaign any chance of doing anything about that (and it would not be a good thing if it did).
In some circumstances (in some constituencies) I might vote Labour. It would depend on the individual candidates. (As it is, I think I'm going to have a TUSC candidate to vote for...) I am not going to abstain from them on principle, just like I'm not going to make them a default. Workers do not need socialists to tell them what to do on election day, in the field of broad injunctions to vote for the least worst of the major parties (or even the party which Prentis and Simpson like most). It suggests workers are incapable of rationally dealing with the situation as it is presented to them (why vote Labour, for example, in a safe Labour seat with a cabiney minister standing?); and that the logic of the least worse is always the rational class logic. Where workers are unwilling, out of class disgust, to vote Labour, it is not the job of socialists to dull that class instinct by telling them to suppress that disgust and vote Labour anyway. Where that disgust exists, we should seek to build on it. If we don't, we'll never get anywhere.
Even if after the election (which is where the above analysis is heading) there is some sort of minor reorientation to the Labour Party (which is highly, highly unlikely to be noticeable on any national or industrial scale), there is no way (given the erosion of formal democracy, which was always pathetic anyway) that this reorientation will be strong enough to break through the layers of LP bureaucracy, and make a decisive (or even indecisive) impact on the PLP. I am willing to put £20 on this with the next AWL member I meet. And given this, shoring up Labour as a default class vote (and building illusions in the "union link") is short sighted in the extreme.
Ignoring the bigger beast
Hi Tom,
You've managed to expound the two most common points of confusion surrounding not just this election but the general issue of working class political representation.
First, the issue of socialist groups standing their own candidates: Jill Mountford is standing as an *AWL* candidate in this election. The campaign is about making socialist propaganda, attempting to build political consciousness and yes, building the AWL. We do not pretend that the campaign is any more than this. But if you read what Socialist Worker has to say about SWPers standing in this election or guff about 'building a left alternative' or whatever formulation the Socialist Party uses to describe TUSC, you'll see they think they're up to something else. Both the SWP and SP are engaged in sect projects because (a) whilst the SWP admits the necessity of a Labour vote, they have no strategy or perspective for making this call politically 'valuable' - all their efforts will go into boosting the chances of their own, small and scattered electoral efforts; (b) the SP, despite being centrally involved in TUSC, have made no serious efforts to use their leverage - which is considerable in places like PCS - to mobilise the labour movement. In fact, for all the talk of a 'Campaign for a New Workers Party' over the past years, they made no serious effort in PCS or any other union to win support. PCS won't make a decision about its political fund until after this election. In the RMT, SP members did nothing to encourage discussion and support for TUSC despite the obvious benefits of having the Gen Sec supporting. In short, the efforts of the SP to stand socialist candidates are completely detached from the issue of working class political representation.
You, the SWP and SP seem to confuse sect projects and efforts at 'left unity' with a serious approach to wc political representation because ... well, because you don't seem to understand or seem able to accept the continuing role of trade union affiliation to the Labour Party. I'd suggest this is because you have a *sectarian* (in the classical sense) view of trade unions and the labour movement. I and other AWLers have written pretty grim prognoses for the coming election, we are not imbued with other-worldly expectations. But we do take the union/LP relationship seriously.
For this reason, we cannot simply dodge the main political tasks facing our class: how to relate to 'things as they are', how to organise on that basis and how to make preparations for the post-election world - whoever wins. The choice - only meaningful choice - is between the Tories and Labour. Either one or the other will form the next government and we will have to fight whoever wins. We can't prepare for this fight by simply retreating into our own fantasy, toy-town projects.
TomU
Cabinet ministers
> Why vote Labour, for example, in a safe Labour seat with a cabinet minister standing?
Such a seat would be a prime target for an independent socialist challenge - indeed, that's part of the reason we chose to stand against Harriet Harman (not only a cabinet minister but New Labour deputy leader) in Camberwell and Peckham. Unfortunately, however, the left has fucked up repeatedly over the last ten years and so will not have a widespread, let alone strong, presence in the election, so in most cases that's not possible.
We wouldn't go to such a seat and campaign for the New Labour minister - ie actually put a lot of effort into getting workers to vote for them - but in the absence of a socialist candidate, who else would you vote for?
Sacha Ismail
SCSTF website
Btw, the site is now up:
stopthetoriesandfascists.wordpress.com
Replies
Thanks for the replies.
Both the SWP and SP are engaged in sect projects because (a) whilst the SWP admits the necessity of a Labour vote, they have no strategy or perspective for making this call politically 'valuable' - all their efforts will go into boosting the chances of their own, small and scattered electoral efforts; (b) the SP, despite being centrally involved in TUSC, have made no serious efforts to use their leverage - which is considerable in places like PCS - to mobilise the labour movement.
Neither of these arguments were raised in the original article, or were even implicit in what was said (so any 'confusion' was hardly my fault), but ok...
The SWP will make a general, propagandistic call for a Labour vote through Socialist Worker, and their activists will make the case in person to individuals they know. The AWL will print up a few leaflets saying "we know Labour are shit but vote for them anyway", pass them out, and make a similar argument at a few union branch meetings, and in some areas of strength may organise public meetings. You will try to persuade LP leftists close to you to join you in this project (no one else will get involved). There is no prospect of making the call to vote Labour as a default politically valuable; the fact that the SWP aren't trying to do the impossible is marginally to their credit. Adding that call to a leaflet denouncing the major parties and advocating a militant fightback adds nothing politically more than advocating abstention or saying nothing at all on the matter of what box to put the X in.
(Part of the reason the call will not be politically valuable is that you are too small to make anything out of this. As Trotsky makes clear every time he discusses the united front, massive size and influence is a precondition of ever being able to operate a united front call effectively: if you're too small for that, the advice is to build the direct influence of communist ideas and independent organisation.)
Your argument in (b) is basically that the SP and SWP aren't working hard enough. For a start, this is not a political argument. Anyway, what do you expect the SP in PCS to do anyway that isn't propagandistic and ad hoc? Until there's a right for individual branches to affiliate to political projects of their choice, there's nothing that can be done (in terms of formal union support) except fight to win that. Of course, some SP and SWP activists - with roots and enthusiasm for the project - will take the argument for TUSC on a mass level into their workplaces, that is into the labour movement. And some won't. Just as, in the AWL, some cadre, bewildered by the idea that they should be persuading their contacts to vote Labour over TUSC, or the local Green Left person (or who just find the obsession with electoral "calls" remote from their activist experience), will just ignore the whole thing. The SP are overly fond of the left union bureaucracy, but to say that they're just pretending to want TUSC to succeed is ridiculous. They will energy into persuading working class people around them to vote TUSC. What would AWL do in PCS if it had the SP's leverage - assuming you didn't want them to affiliate to Labour on the (hopeless) basis of pushing it left?
(EDITED TO ADD: actually, in RMT the thing is that Bob Crow has asked SP not to push the TUSC issue because he's concerned that it will contribute to an organised right bloc forming first in the executive and then in the union. I don't have any time for the sort of tactics that start at the top... but there you are, that's their calculation: they're playing the long game and hoping to bring Crow and the RMT officially on board later.)
And you didn't answer the main point of my post, which was on the naive and totally social democratic understanding of the unions in operation above.
Have you approached Socialist Appeal, for help, by the way? And you didn't answer my question about TUSC - unless the answer is that you do not call for a vote for any TUSC candidate (and you are therefore calling for a vote for Labour against the SP and SWP candidates).
(How does this tally with the call for a vote for Lindsey German as RESPECT candidate for London mayor a few years ago, by the way? Or is the brief foray into RESPECT membership now an embarrassing incident we'd rather not talk about?)
We wouldn't go to such a seat and campaign for the New Labour minister - ie actually put a lot of effort into getting workers to vote for them - but in the absence of a socialist candidate, who else would you vote for?
No one. Is there some point of communist principle I've missed that you always have to vote for someone? I'd vote for no one, and I'd discourage anyone I knew from voting for said Labour candidate. Ridiculously, although it is officially against "British Jobs for British Workers", AWL is actually calling for a vote for John Mann MP who raises this slogan - and if I have it right, would do so against a member of the SP or SWP who was categorically against that idea.
If not us, then who?
'The AWL will print up a few leaflets saying "we know Labour are shit but vote for them anyway", pass them out, and make a similar argument at a few union branch meetings, and in some areas of strength may organise public meetings. You will try to persuade LP leftists close to you to join you in this project (no one else will get involved).'
If it comforts you to imagine that this is the greatest possible extent of the campaign, then what the hay! Stay comfortable. This is not the AWL's method.
If, like us, you want look carefully at what's actually going on around you and - regardless of how 'big' you or your group are, how daunting the situation is etc... - organise in a way that reflects your analysis and intervene accordingly, join the campaign.
The rest of your response confirms my suggestion that you really can't see the bigger beast. To suggest that the SWP's total abstention from the implications of their 'vote Labour' call is to their credit demonstrates as much. It's a call that makes no actual sense unless you can conceive of a way to shape those who follow it. It's posturing, detached from practical organisational questions.
If not us, then who? Certainly not Socialist Appeal who despite their continued deep-entryism have a perspective of slowly building their own organisational influence - in the right conditions everyone will join Socialist Appeal (just as in the past, everyone was supposed to join Militant) - and not organising the labour movement around them.
If it comforts you to
If it comforts you to imagine that this is the greatest possible extent of the campaign, then what the hay!
OK, convince me. What else are you going to do?
If, like us, you want look carefully at what's actually going on around you and - regardless of how 'big' you or your group are, how daunting the situation is etc... - organise in a way that reflects your analysis and intervene accordingly
Can we have the abandonment of Trotky's theory of the united front explicitly in writing please? Because I could have sworn he thought that was quite important. Would you like quotes?
Also, I have looked carefully at what's going on around me, and it leads me to conclude that the working class being fucked off with Labour for lots of good reasons is a monumental subjective factor (and despite what campaigns such as these imply, working class subjectivity is not merely theirs for the remaking), and one with potentially good implications for building something new. I have also concluded that the Labour "union link" has very little material reality at all, and certainly not any reality that amounts to an organic class link. And that the internal democracy has been so gutted that there is no hope of changing it into anything worthwhile, even if the subjective factor could (or should) be overcome - which I believe the AWL also thought a year or two ago, in the "after Bournemouth" period. Sean M asserts, blankly, that the union labour link has "survived". But he doesn't explain why that is, or even what he means by "link".
What on earth have you seen when you look at what's actually going on around you? The question is not whether to look reality squarely in the face. It is: what sort of reality is the AWL executive inhabiting?
Also, still no answer on the characterisation of the unions.
And finally, I'd like to comment on Sacha's question "what can we do to link a Labour vote to a fight back against the bosses?"
Nothing, is the answer. Putting two things on the same leaflet does not an organic political connection make. What else does this "link" consist in?
United Fronts, the Unions
Tom,
On United Fronts: What Trotsky advocated in the specific conditions that existed in Germany at the time was a united front between a Communist party with mass support and a Social Democratic party with mass support in the fight against fascism. He advocated a workers’ united front between two workers parties that, at the time, had the active support of most workers! The political content of the UF strategy is not the 'size' of the groups involved but the fact that working class politics is the core component. Another example: the Teamster 'Union Defence Guard' against the Silvershirts in Minneapolis was not a 'mass organisation'. It had a couple of hundred members at most. It was, however, a working class organisation - involving Trotskyists, reformist trade unionists and workers. If it wasn't a united front, what was it? Please ... find me some quotes. I obviously need educating on the question. Perhaps you could tell me what Trotsky meant by a 'united front from above' and a 'united front from below'?
What would you call the work being done in Nottingham by AWLers, SP members, anarchists, independent reformists, Labour Party members, trade union officials etc... against the BNP? It's not a mass operation. Is it a 'united front'? I'd say it is because it's a working class, labour movement orientated campaign involving a range of essentially working class orientated politics. Let's not get hung up on objective questions of 'size' - that's just unproductive hair-splitting.
The role of revolutionaries in the united front is also important: Trotskyists don't give their politics up in such a formation. We fight for leadership of the united front and argue against the 'wrong-headed' ideas of others involved. For these two-fold reasons, what the SWP calls a united front work – ‘broad’, 'big' and 'splashy' - simply isn't.
On the union/Labour link: Yes, most people are "fucked off" with Labour - and so they should be. Any other response to year upon year of anti-working class measures would be illogical. However, the 'political product' of this "fucked-offness" will be mass abstention from the election. I think this will be Brown's undoing and Cameron's making. When viewed as such, can we say it's a positive state of affairs? No. It's especially bad when no other viable organisational expression of working class politics exists.
So, what do you do? Either (a) paint yourself up as 'The Alternative' a la the SWP and SP; (b) Join the a-political abstention or (c) fight to orientate as many people as possible to the only viable venue of struggle?
But again, here's the rub. You claim that the union/Labour link has very little "material reality". Really? Would you deny that the Labour Party leadership exercises influence on the trade union leadership through the link? Or do they just butter-up the union dum-dums with beer and cake? I'd say that the relationship - wholly negative in my view - between the Labour and TU leaderships is 'real' and 'organic'. What do you think? So what about the relationship in the opposite direction? Does it still exist?
The relationship 'from below' (ie. from the union base upwards) has always been more of a 'valve' than a direct flow. A look at the record of Labour Party industrial relations shows as much. Sometimes the flow up through the valve can exert great pressure, sometimes - like now - it's a downward flow. At other times the valve is completely closed off. At the moment, the link seems to have only a negative effect.
But the potential reality is very different. Despite Bournemouth and the cementing of the New Labour clique at the top of the party, the potential still exists - dependent upon r&f pressure and the whims of trade union leaders combined - for a change in the relationship. In my view, the chances are slim. But the chances are increased, however marginally, by the prospect of a right-wing Tory government and a change at the top of the Labour Party. Even if the full upward flow of the link is restored, I'm circumspect about any short-term 'revolutionising' (with a small r) of political conditions.
So why concentrate on such marginal possibilities? Because the material reality is that the historic expression of working class political representation is through the Labour Party (whether we like it or not); our class has yet to 'overcome', transform (or break!) that relationship and it never will unless we have a fight.
Which reality indeed...
From the Workers Plan for the Crisis pamphlet (AWL 2009):
In “normal”, bourgeois political life, there is a strict separation between direct action struggles by the working class (demonstrations, strikes, etc) and “politics”, which happens somewhere else, e.g., in a Parliament bureaucratically sealed off from pressure from below. A bureaucratic, pro-capitalist working-class party like the old, pre-Blair Labour Party, does partially disrupt and soften this division, but still tends to siphon off working-class politics to a professional caste of politicians insulated from the mass movement they may have come from. (With the downgrading and destruction of party democracy and what remained of Labour’s organisational links to the unions under Blair and Brown, normal bourgeois political service on the American model is being fully resumed.) (ch2)
It also refers to "the destruction of the living channels for working-class representation in the Labour Party" (ch3).
So, the analysis has changed has it? Why? In what documents can we find this theoretical turn documented?
Edit: NB. this posted before I had seen the above post from Tom U. Will try to respond to specifically what is said about Labour TU link there.
Bournemouth
Tom,
I think those formulations were, even then, perhaps a bit flat-footed. But in any case, the Bournemouth decision effectively abolishing the Labour Party conference as a conference has now been reversed - and there has in fact been a small movement towards greater democracy, with the unions pushing through the election of National Policy Forum delegates. There may well be more of this to come.
The AWL made a great deal of Bournemouth at a time when pretty much everyone else on the left ignored it. Now, to our surprise, it has been reversed. Why would we ignore that?
In early 2009 we might also have hoped - in fact it was our duty to hope - that the activist left would get its act together in some form, to create someting like a new socialist alliance. But that hasn't happened. Thus the election is dominated by the Labour vs Tory choice to an even greater degree than we imagined.
Btw, what does your Commune comrade Chris Ford think about all this?
Sacha
Pretty big deal
The reason we made a pretty big deal over the Bournemouth changes is the same reason we see even partial restoration of LP democracy as potentially significant. I, for one, think the NPF changes are pretty small fry as compared to the potential - slim, marginal potential - of organised pressure from below (from the union r&f) on the LP. What the shifts in the NPF and elsewhere represent is an 'accomodation' in the run-up to the elections. Things may - perhaps - change post-election.
So, you think the "formulations were ... a bit flat-footed". How? Why? The section from the workers' plan is a description of 'what's happening'. It's a fantasy land view to say that Labour - old or New - was anything other than "pro-capitalist working class party". The "living channels" of wc political representation within the party have been drastically eroded. Nobody has changed their tune on this.
What is changing is the world around us. The fact that it's changed is connected to the ever-unchanging ineptitude of the left. In a situation where the Socialist Alliance had survived and grown we would have a credible alternative - a 'left unity' project - to offer in the place of a Labour vote. Even if this was the case, the AWL would have fought to orientate any imaginary SA to the labour movement, attempting to win labour movement support and addressing the ongoing LP link. Because ... well, because even with the existence of a large(ish) left unity project, the question of working class political representation, the union/Labour link etc... remains.
In the absence of an alternative vehicle, we fight for a class struggle perspective that addresses itself to the awful realities to come - a right-wing Tory government, a growth in support for groups like UKIP and the BNP - and prepares for a fight. Neither a sect project nor abstention can do either of these things.
PS. I've no idea what Chris and co. make of all this. Perhaps you should find out!
Trotsky's analysis was not
Trotsky's analysis was not specific to Germany in the context of the rise of Fascism, because he said nigh on exactly the same thing about the British ILP at the same time, and about the general tactics of the comintern in 1922. e.g.
QUESTION – Should the ILP terminate its united front with the CP?
ANSWER – Absolutely and categorically – yes! The ILP must learn to turn its back on the CP and towards the working masses. The permanent “unity committees” in which the ILP has sat with the CP were nonsense in any case. The ILP and the CPGB were propaganda organizations not mass organizations; united fronts between them were meaningless if each of them had the right to advance its own program. These programs must have been different or there would have been no justification for separate parties, and with different programs there is nothing to unite around. United fronts for certain specific actions could have been of some use, of course, but the only important united front for the ILP is with the Labour Party, the trade unions, the cooperatives. At the moment, the ILP is too weak to secure these; it must first conquer the right for a united front by winning the support of the masses. At this stage, united fronts with the CP will only compromise the ILP. Rupture with the CP is the first step towards a mass basis for the ILP and the achievement of a mass basis is the first step towards a proper united front, that is, a united front with the mass organizations.
Suggestive, no?
What would you call the work being done in Nottingham by AWLers, SP members, anarchists, independent reformists, Labour Party members, trade union officials etc... against the BNP?
A campaign with working class politics. You can call it a united front if you like. Actually, to be honest, I don't mind if you do. The point I was trying to make was that - whatever you call it - such a thing is totally different from the sort of united front represented by a call for people to vote Labour. And calling for common action with a force as perfidious with Labour is something that only makes sense if the communists stand in a position of sufficient influence to have an organisational impact on what happens next; with the forces that have been drawn out by the call in question. And in the case of the campaign under discussion, that isn't the case, even if it is in the (no doubt admiral) work of the Nottingham campaign.
So, what do you do? Either (a) paint yourself up as 'The Alternative' a la the SWP and SP; (b) Join the a-political abstention or (c) fight to orientate as many people as possible to the only viable venue of struggle?
Well, if you're AWL, you do (a) in Peckham, and II guess what you refer to by (c) everywhere else. If you're me, you (d) don't try to provide a one size fits all tactical answer that leads you into calling for votes for Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, and open racists like John Mann. You don't understand working class people as needing direction from socialist groups on marginal questions of what's the least worst: they are capable of taking sensible choices, given reality as it is. You explain how things really are in your view, and listen to the reasons they have for what they're proposing to do. Where people have moral impulses to avoid Labour and abstain, you don't seek to dull that instinct, but sharpen it. You make communist propaganda, accept the real limits of your influnc for doing anything about the election, and make propaganda for the need for both a militant fightback and an alternative to be built in the future. As the AWL would have it: neither (a), nor (b), nor (c)... BUT (D)!!!
Anyway, on to the most interesting thing, which is what Tom says above about the union Labour link.
You claim that the union/Labour link has very little "material reality". Really? Would you deny that the Labour Party leadership exercises influence on the trade union leadership through the link? Or do they just butter-up the union dum-dums with beer and cake? I'd say that the relationship - wholly negative in my view - between the Labour and TU leaderships is 'real' and 'organic'. What do you think?
You are equating the unions with the union leaders, such that a real "union Labour link" is established by a link between Labour and "the trade union leadership". By "real" and "organic" I sought to indicate a relationship between the LP and union members that is dialogic and dynamic. What is most striking about your reply is that you straightforwardly acknowledge that there is no such relationship, but that you don't mind: a mediated link via TU leaders is in itself significant for you. When I posted those quotes from your own pamphlet above, I thought it would make an impact because you'd care about the relationship between Labour and the working class. But's that's not really what you're fussed about: there your analysis hasn't changed. You're just willing to let the unions stand as disembodied signifier for the working class.
(By the way, if all you want is a relationship of influence between leaders, then you can find that between the leaders of the US Democrat Party and the AFL-CIO leaders: it's slightly less formalised and they are less significant in terms of their financial contribution; but qualitatively it's not very different.)
So what about the relationship in the opposite direction? Does it still exist?
You mean, do union leaders broadly follow the Labour government agenda? Yes, e.g. Charlie Whelan etc. etc.
But the potential reality is very different. Despite Bournemouth and the cementing of the New Labour clique at the top of the party, the potential still exists - dependent upon r&f pressure and the whims of trade union leaders combined - for a change in the relationship. In my view, the chances are slim. But the chances are increased, however marginally, by the prospect of a right-wing Tory government and a change at the top of the Labour Party
We shouldn't be making any tactic for the political recomposition of the class "dependent on the whims of trade union leaders". That is suicide. It's very frank of you to state that, however. There is no prospect for working class independence down that road, none at all.
So why concentrate on such marginal possibilities? Because the material reality is that the historic expression of working class political representation is through the Labour Party (whether we like it or not); our class has yet to 'overcome', transform (or break!) that relationship and it never will unless we have a fight.
Fight to break that relationship?! i.e. run a campaign which de facto seeks to strengthen it, and which is forced, at every polemical turn, to defend that relationship, even against working class people failing to vote Labour for good reasons? Why concentrate on such marginal possibilities when you could concentrate on th larger one, which is that the relationship will not be changed? A tactical approach which recognised that greater possibility would be to emphasise not the need for a Labour vote, but for the need to build for something new - which is (you imply) what you think needs to be done. In short: why bet on picking the Ace from a pack of cards at random, when you could bet for the same stakes on picking a number or J-K?
By the way, I am going to keep a running tally of unanswered questions, just so we don't forget:
1) TUSC? Or is it still under discussion?
2) What more is the campaign going to be than what I suggested?
cross purposes
TomU: So, you think the "formulations were ... a bit flat-footed". How? Why?
It was Sacha who said that, so I guess he should answer.
By the way, not that it matters in the least for your discussion with me what Chris thinks, but I believe this paper from our last aggregate meeting was passed consensually (though I think there may have been a few comments on details in the report of the meeting): http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/theses-on-the-2010-general-election-and-its-aftermath-for-discussion/
In the General Election itself, we should not support the positions: ”Vote New Labour to keep the Tories out” nor “Vote anything but the BNP.” It is possible that there may be some individual candidates worth supporting.
Edited to add, from ch5 of the Workers Plan pamphlet:
In previous years, before the Blairite transformation of the Labour Party, the fight for a workers’ government involved, in part, using the levers and channels of the Labour Party to fight — to push Labour governments, when they were in office, but in any case to rally those decisive sections of the working class that found their political expression in the Labour Party. Today, however, those levers no longer exist.
This was shortly before the campaign for a new socialist alliance (we were asked to sign petitions), which appears to discretely faded away, to be replaced by this perspective.
A few quick points
Tom,
(i) No, you explain why it's "flat-footed" - you saw fit to regurgitate that formulation, so tell me what you think it means.
(ii) Our tactic is not to depend upon the whims of the existing trade union leaderships. Other readers will notice your quoting then omission of the "r&f" - meaning union rank and file. But it's silly to pretend that trade union leaders can't, under pressure, spin on a one pence coin. They have done before, they could again. To ignore this factor is to ignore something of the nature of trade unions. I am not 'equating unions with trade union leaders' but to ignore the role of trade union leaderships is to miss half of the picture. Socialists active in trade unions (are you one of them) organise to shift and when possible replace the leaderships ... are we wrong to do so?
(iii) "run a campaign which de facto seeks to strengthen it [the union/Labour link]" - you just don't seem to understand the relationship: in some situations we may seek to break it. In any case, to "break" the link would require a political campaign around the issues of the existing relationships: concrete issues you seek to avoid through your posturing. Even if you're absolutely certain that the relationship "will not change" - a distinct possibility - what then? How would you organise? How and against what would you ask workers to fight? I think you're suggesting we all just ignore the problem.
(iv) On the 'new' Socialist Alliance: as the person who moved the proposal for a new alliance at the last AWL conference, I can tell you that neither myself nor any AWL member was under the illusion that such a campaign would do the same 'job' as answering the question of working class political representation. In fact, I remember pointing this out in my speech. The fact that you raise Socialist Alliance takes me back to one of my original points: you don't or can't see the difference. The call was made ten months or more ago. Nothing came of it. So, do we just continue to raise the call ... and continue ... and continue ... and continue up until the general election? Or do we adjust our perspectives to material reality? I think the latter. But to adjust, you have to understand what the call was about in the first place.
No, you explain why it's
No, you explain why it's "flat-footed" - you saw fit to regurgitate that formulation, so tell me what you think it means.
First of all, I think it's a bit rich of you to demand answers from me, given that you're consistently ignoring my extant questions, above. But anyway.
I think you're a little confused. I don't think it's flat footed, I agree with the formulations I quoted, which is the point. Sacha thinks they're flat footed, so he's the only one able to explain why it might be so. What do I think the formulations mean? I think that to say that "In previous years . . . the fight for a workers’ government involved, in part, using the levers and channels of the Labour Party to fight . . . Today, however, those levers no longer exist." ... means to say that there are no channels in the Labour Party left for the fight for the workers' government (even if there ever were, which I would disagree with, since the presumption of the workers' government tactic is that there's a communist party with an independent mass following, which obviously can't be built while socialists are muddling round in Labour). When the pamphlet said that even in the old LP, its leaders were "insulated from the mass movement", I took that to mean that even while LP democracy and the class struggle was much stronger, these things were insufficient to provide a strong, real, organic link between the LP and the working class. I don't think that these interpretations are novel, and my interpretations of the other phrases I quoted are similarly conventional.
Other readers will notice your quoting then omission of the "r&f" - meaning union rank and file...
Obviously I'm aware you mentioned it. But you're posing the involvement of the tops as a necessary condition for the changes you believe to be possible, so it's legitimate for me to focus on it. No one could object to seeing the rank and file as central to a strategy... but Prentis and Simpson? That's a much bigger claim to make. Sure, these people can turn on a penny on occasion. But not on just any issue, and not without massive material incentives, generally in the form of militancy. Let's say next year, with a bunch of cuts coming down, member anger causes them to use a bunch of left rhetoric, put a motion to Party conference. So what? How does that take us beyond where things were a decade or more ago? It's all very well talking abtractly about possibilities - and sure, in a sense, anything is possible. But what do you actually expect to happen? (By the way, even if militancy causes a reinvigoration of branch structures in UNISON, for example, it'll likely be heavily SP influenced, so therefor unlikely to lead to a reorientation to the LP.)
On the last couple of points, I'm not suggesting we ignore any problems, just that we don't make them worse. Neither the SA call nor the curent Labour vote one had, or have, any relation to material reality at all. The reason I raised the SA thing is because it was clear that nothing came out of it tactically, or was going to (which I pointed out at the time). I'm still asking you to say what you intend to do with this campaign that will make it different, more than I suggested above.
And, to press the point on TUSC, I can only assume your reticence means you're for a Labour vote against TUSC. That's pretty sectarian isn't it? Will you be asking SP and SWP members in Peckham to vote for Jill?
Thanks for taking the time to continue the debate, by the way.
Options
What are the essential options for socialists in the election?
1. Say nothing at all.
2. Say there's no difference between the main parties, there isn't much we can do about it; we need an alternative, but there isn't one at the moment. (There are different versions, of course, of what the alternative might be: revolutionary party, new workers' party, etc). The alternative is a general strategic aim, but in there isn't much you can do to achieve it in the election (so don't stand candidates).
3. Say there is an alternative, and we're it (and stand candidates to that effect).
4. Say vote Labour.
5. Say vote Labour and try to do something to get the unions to make use of what links remain to fight the Labour leadership (and often, therefore, for union policies, etc)
6. Say vote Labour but use such possibilities as exist to make more immediate propaganda (ie stand candidates, but not in the spirit of 3, above).
7. A combination of 5 and 6.
Tom (without the U) seems to be saying that 7 is an incoherent position. It might be wrong for other reasons, but it doesn't seem incoherent to me. 1, 3, and 4 seem to me entirely inadequate. 2 or 6 would be coherent - and you could imagine situations (countries) where that would be all you could do.
It comes down to whether there is any scope at all for revitalising an opposition within the Labour Party, through the unions in particular. I think the AWL has used formulations which implied there was no scope. The question now is whether that's true. At the very least, if Labour loses the next election it seems *extremely* likely that there will be some debate, if not ferment, in the unions about how this came to be, and what to do about it. It makes sense to try to be part of that debate, starting now.
If combining 5 and 6 is wrong, it is only because it might make doing that more difficult, it seems to me. It certainly doesn't look wrong in principle, and there's nothing incoherent about it, IMHO.
Hi Clive, I always
Hi Clive, I always appreciate numbered arguments (seriously, I'm a geek like that).
I don't think 7 is incoherent, although I think it is wrong for other reasons. I think that 3 would be a false description of TUSC (obviously they know they're not a national alternative, and the larger part of it - the SWP - is calling for a Labour vote). SP pronouncements on projects like TUSC are generally fairly cautious. I think SWP see it as a version of 6, and the SP as a version of 6 minus the "vote Labour" bit. What I think is incoherent is that AWL is doing 6, while refusing to support TUSC doing 6 (by representing them as 'really' doing 3). (In fact, were it not for the parentheses on 6, 3 and 6 would overlap considerably).
What I say is some version of 2, but without the assertion that there is no difference between the parties. There is a difference in some areas (personally, I suspect that in the coming years there won't be much difference fiscally, since the logic of holding up Britain's credit rating will be paramount, but things like LGBT rights, whether it's ok to hit kids, etc. etc. - these things do tend to be different). All I say - personally - as I outlined in (d) above is that i) what it makes sense to do as an indivual will differ constituency to constituency (not only between Peckham and the rest of Britain) and ii) it isn't the business of communists to go around advocating for the least worst of the anti-working class parties in all circumstances. Many people will hold their nose and go to the ballot box. Many people will decide that the stench is still too much; and that decision is implicitly political, even if it may not fit into the tactics of those whose business it is to make advance plans of march for the working class. Perhaps, on a personal level, it is the beginning of something positive.
Communist business
Tom,
It doesn't make much sense for communists to "go around" preaching abstention. The AWL is not advocating the least worst of anything - we're attmepting to organise and fight around the realities of modern British politics.
I think you're fundamentally wrong when you claim little difference on economic questions between Labour and the Tories. In fact, the firt signs of differentiation manifested around economic questions ie. whether or not to intervene in the banking crisis to the extent that Brown did. On this question, New Labour was objectively *more progressive* than the Tories (which is not the same thing as saying they're *less evil*, *better* etc...).
There's an article in our latest paper explaining how and why the Tories will be more reactionary on social and economic issues - take a look at it.
Tom
Is that the argument?
Tom (with a U this time): how relevant is that point - about Labour being objectively 'more progressive'? It seems dubious to me anyway (why is it 'progressive' in a substantive way to intervene to resolve a banking crisis? How was it different to Obama? Right now the only real difference between Tory and Labour on cuts in public spending is that Labour want to wait a bit longer to do it; and then only some of it...)
The real issue, surely, is whether or not Labour is meaningfully still a (bourgeois) workers' party. Clearly, it is. This isn't measured by its policies anyway (the other Tom talks about holding noses against the stench, and for sure the stench was pretty honking in 1979). A lot has changed under Blair - and even aside from formal changes, there has been a quite substantial erosion, I think, in just basic working class identification with Labour. But it hasn't changed completely, and that's the fundamental justification, not only for a Labour vote, but for calling for an intervention by the unions into Labour's processes.
(I think, if we're honest, another part of the argument is that things generally are pretty bad - there isn't even slightly a 'process of recomposition', or whatever, the seeds of an alternative to Labour, etc: the left is in a worse state than it was at the time of the Socialist Alliance).
I don't doubt that as part of vote-Labour argument it's worth spelling out how awful the Tories will be. But that's a slightly different thing.
No, that's not *the argument*
Hi Clive,
You're right, of course, that any objective "progressiveness" is not the argument for doing what we're proposing to do. I think I've explained (above) what we think. Having said that, I still think we need to point out that the "they're all the same" argument isn't true. I think it's right to look at what the Tories will do in government and point it out, not to make excuses for or finesse the anti-working class policies of Labour but "for the record".
Tom
UKIP or socialism?
I disagree - what we need is a libertarian government like UKIP or LPUK. We need to abolish the welfare state and the NHS. I'm all for small government, individual rights and personal responsibility. Daniel Hannan was right to bash our monstrous Marxist NHS.
I also think we need to relax Britain's gun control laws. See www.britainneedsguns.co.uk
“Our real enemies,” said President [J. Reuben] Clark, “are communism and its running mate, socialism. . . .”
Oh dear
What do you mean by a libertarian government? What, in your view, would be the consequence of abolishing the welfare state and NHS? Aren't the phrases "small government, individual rights and personal responsibility" cover for a vicious, uncaring, more exploitative and oppressive society? Daniel "Enoch Powell's my hero" Hannan - do me a favour. Relax gun controls? Why and what will happen then?
Tom
Maggie Thatcher made the
Maggie Thatcher made the excellent point that there is no such thing as society.
Yes, phase out the welfare state (incl. the NHS). This can be done with minimum pain if it is done over a period of a few years. Payments for current recipients can be frozen, while new claimants would have to prove that they have paid into the system for a number of years.
We also need to cut government bureacracy and centralisation. Government has no authority (being of the people, by the people and for the people) to impose wage controls and price controls etc.
Only free men carry firearms. Again, government has no authority to ban the private ownership of firearms. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao et al all disarmed their enslaved citizens before they began killing them. We have a God given right to keep and bear arms. You ask "what will happen then?". My answer is look at Switzerland, New Hampsire, Vermont etc. Switzerland has proactically no gun crime, despite ordinary people keeping assault rifles at home. NH and Vermont are the same. Vermont has no gun control laws, yet it has approx. 1/13th the violent crime rate of socialist hell Britain.
A libertarian country will be free to return to good, old fashioned Christian values. People will rely on themselves, their families, their friends and neighbours, and, as a last resort, they can rely on charity. No state redistribution (theft) of private property. Free Christian men are more loving and caring that brutal socialists like Hitler, Stalin and Mao!
“Our real enemies,” said President [J. Reuben] Clark, “are communism and its running mate, socialism. . . .”
Oh dear ... part II
"good, old fashioned Christian values ... Free Christian men are more loving and caring..."
This is all slightly off-the-point of the article and discussion above but: what do you mean by "Christian values" and can you give us some examples of the "loving and caring" nature of "Christian men"? Oh, and what about women ... and non-Christians ... can't they be loving too? Hang on, are you talking about the same "Christian values" that 'informed' George Bush's presidency, or something different?
As far as guns go, I'd suggest that the relative lack of mass, urban poverty in New Hampshire, Vermont and Switzerland has something to do with the disparity.
As for Britain being a "socialist hell" ... I think you've got the wrong end of the stick on this one. You must have quite a hand full!
I'm all for free speech but you may want to use your time more productively elsewhere - I'm sure Ron Paul has a clutch of websites you could pollute ... I mean, contribute to.
Ok, First of all George Bush
Ok, First of all George Bush is anything but a Christian - just as Tony Blair is not a Christian. Tony Blair is a Fabian Socialist. They claim to be Christians, but they are in reality Satanic puppets of the global socialist government. George Bush was a member of Skull and Bones (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IBjk8FVLj8) while at Yale. He's not a real Christian. Of course there are millions of good non-Christians. Tony Blair is reported to be a 33rd Degree Freemason. That's entirely incompatible with Christianity.
Urban poverty is a result of state intervention. Socialism causes poverty for the masses, while the elite live in luxury. Look at the former Soviet Union, look at North Korea, look at Communist China. The peasants live in hovels, while the party faithful live in nice homes and are well fed. Freemarket liberty encourages and nurtures prosperity for the majority.
Ron Paul is a hero. He speaks the truth - as do members of the Tea Party.
“No true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or a communist or support programs leading in that direction. These evil philosophies are incompatible with Mormonism, the true gospel of Jesus Christ.” Ezra Taft Benson, General Conference—October 1961
“Our real enemies,” said President [J. Reuben] Clark, “are communism and its running mate, socialism. . . .”
Multiple similar posts
UKIP Kris, you've posted substantially similar comments, ending with a quotation about the evils of socialism, on four or five posts. This kind of spamming, or whatever the technical term is, is not ok. It clogs up the website and prevents discussion. Since there's debate about your posts here, I've left these ones up and deleted the rest.
Sacha Ismail
It's my signature. “Our
It's my signature.
“Our real enemies,” said President [J. Reuben] Clark, “are communism and its running mate, socialism. . . .”
Shamefaced political indifferentism?
The Tories won't really be worse? But the pattern for Tory governments following Labour or social-democratic governments which have pushed through right-wing policies, and been able to demoralise and weaken the labour movement, is that they take advantage of the weakening. They are more aggressive because they lack even the very limited ties to the labour movement that those Labour or social-democratic leaderships have.
Consider the Heath government in 1970, and until its will was broken by industrial resistance, about 1972. Consider the Thatcher governments after 1979. Consider the National Party governments in New Zealand after 1990 which, despite being elected on a promise of a more consensual approach than the hard-neoliberal Lange Labour governments of 1984-90 (the Nationals' slogan was "a decent society"), pushed through further cuts and a fierce anti-union law. Consider the Howard governments in Australia after 1996, especially after they got control of the Senate and thus ability to push through measures without having to seek deals with the Democrats or the Greens.
In this case, the Tories even say they will be worse. They have a big government budget crisis and much pressure from financiers to make sure that they keep that promise to be worse. Politically, the liveliest pressure on them is from UKIP and the BNP.
There might be a similar difference between parties, and we might be able to say: vote for a serious rival socialist slate; even a minority vote for that slate will be a more potent political fact, encourage workers more, and put more pressure on the incoming government, than any vote for the "lesser evil". Or we might be unable to say anything much except to advocate voting for a few propaganda candidates.
In this case - for all the reasons summed up in saying that Labour is still, despite everything, and with all the qualifications, a bourgeois workers' party - we can do something like SCSTF.
It would be more left-wing not to do SCSTF, and instead to vote for whomever seems more congenial, constituency by constituency, TUSC here, Labour there, maybe SLP or Green or Respect somewhere else? To proclaim it as a "left-wing line" that there can be no concerted working-class policy in the election, but just a process of individuals opting for whomever they see as individually congenial?
I don't think so. I think that is just a shamefaced form of political indifferentism.
Labour's union links are of no consequence because the union officials are no longer union officials, but instead no different from ordinary capitalist managers? The fact that they are elected, operate within structures of committees and conferences, makes them no different from any other bourgeois figure supporting New Labour?
That is what I understand Tom (not U) to be arguing. At least, he seems to argue it for some full-time union officials, Dave Prentis and Derek Simpson, though presumably not for others (not for himself, I guess! It's strange being lectured by an unelected full-time union official on how bad union officials are).
It is certainly true that life in the unions has declined, and that some unions have become more undemocratic internally. The pressure on the union leaders from managers and (especially until recently, when the New Labour government was coasting on an economic boom) from the government has been much more effective than pressure from the rank and file.
But unions remain unions. Union officials remain union officials. How fast, and how much, the current crop of leading officials can be pushed into more pro-worker stances, or replaced, remains to be seen, and anyway is not just a matter of will. But for sure workers will not be well served by those who tell them: "Nothing can be changed about what your top union leadership does politically. The committees, conferences, and elections of your union are of no consequence. Best ignore them. Industrially, do what you can in your workplace. Politically, vote for whatever candidate seems most agreeable to you, or don't vote at all. Nothing more to be done".
straw
Hi Martin.
I'm not absolutely committed to the view that the Tories won't be any worse, even on fiscal matters. But, as I implied earlier, I think you may be underestimating the extent to which the policies of whatever party will be determined by the need to maintain Britain's AAA credit rating on the one hand, and not destroy aggregate demand - creating a second big dip - on the other. Of course Tories use tough language. That's what they do. I think it is almost certainly true, in relation to the unions, that the Tories will be worse: e.g. I'm sure the Learning Fund and the Modernisation Fund, for what they're worth, will go (though in the current enviroment, I wouldn't count on them continuing very much under Labour). I guess we might see a new industrial relations bill to restrict rights to industrial action further. That would be a bad thing, but it is far from assured. In any case, I have been quite clear that I am not saying "the two parties are the same". What's more, it isn't a particularly productive line of debate, because as the original article makes clear, the material differences in the policies isn't sufficient (or necessary) for you: the important issue is the union link.
It would be more left-wing not to do SCSTF, and instead to vote for whomever seems more congenial, constituency by constituency, TUSC here, Labour there, maybe SLP or Green or Respect somewhere else? To proclaim it as a "left-wing line" that there can be no concerted working-class policy in the election, but just a process of individuals opting for whomever they see as individually congenial? I don't think so. I think that is just a shamefaced form of political indifferentism.
Let's first leave aside the total hypocrisy involved in this line, given that you are running a candidate against Labour, and have totally failed to establish a qualitative distinction between her candidacy and that of TUSC candidates (apart from AWL is Good and will Work Harder - as if - in arguing for a vote for her than SWP or SP will for TUSC). Let's then leave aside the straw men - "individually congenial", for goodness sake, where have you pulled that from?
Even leaving aside these things, this passage is a total non seqitur (or whatever you call it). If it is true that no one call makes sense in all constituencies (cough, don't mention Peckham, cough), then... no one call makes sense: it's a fact. Recognising that fact isn't "indifferentism", or even indifferent. It's just relating to real circumstances. You are actively calling for a vote for Gordon Brown! For John "British Jobs for British Workers" Mann! For the most extremely scummy and electorally safe of New Labour goons! It makes no sense!
Labour's union links are of no consequence because the union officials are no longer union officials, but instead no different from ordinary capitalist managers? The fact that they are elected, operate within structures of committees and conferences, makes them no different from any other bourgeois figure supporting New Labour?
No, I didn't say that (I think you might be confusing me with the ICC?). I said that it was tactically foolish to rely on those leaders, and wrong to use union leaders as ciphers for the working class: i.e. to say that because there is a relationship (formal and rusty) between rank and file and tops, and because said tops have some personal influence over Labour, there is therefore a real, significant dialogic link between the working class and the Labour Party. I said that something similar, in qualitative terms, is true of the Democrat party. The PLP is free to ignore LP conference, even if union members could make the union leaders use their bloc votes as they wished them to. The link is too weak to speak of!
For what it's worth, in my opinion, a worthwhile line to push at union conferences would be to end national affiliation to Labour and give branches the right to dispose of political funds at a local level somehow: effectvely allowing branches in a particular area to stand candidates. That would open up some space workers to organise their own challenges to Labour. Anything positive - which, who knows, in some cases could take the form of deselecting a right wing Labour candidate in favour of a socialist one - will have to come from below. Sometimes positive things do happen from above. But in the current circumstances, anything worthwhile will have to be built from below. As I say, relying on Simpson, Prentis, or Hannett is rank foolishness. There is no long term perspective here; that is the most striking thing. You see that something independent must be built? OK! So when?
workers will not be well served by those who tell them: "Nothing can be changed about what your top union leaadership does politically. The committees, conferences, and elections of your union are of no consequence. Best ignore them....
Sure. Good, then, that I didn't say that. That, you've plucked out of thin air. e.g. The Commune called for a vote for John Moloney in the PCS DGS election.
John Mann and Gordon Brown...
Tom's claim that we are "actively calling for a vote for [...] Gordon Brown and John Mann" is demagogic in the extreme and demonstrates, again, his inability to understand the idea of how socialists might intervene in an election from any point of view other than that of abstract platitude.
The Labour Party has always been full of bad people (or "scum", to use Tom's word), including people with worse politics than both Brown and Mann. But our position on the Labour Party is not about the politics of particular candidates, or about its paper policies but about the extent to which the union link has any bearing on the Labour Party's social character and whether it can, in any way, be used as a channel for working-class political self-assertion.
Our starting point is the question "how can the working class assert itself and raise its voice in this election?" Our answer, based on an assessment of a rather tragic reality, is that the link between the biggest unions and one of the potential parties of government is the best way of doing that - however imperfectly. Disagree with that assessment if you like (although I haven't found very much of what you've said so far - which seems to amount to "the Labour Party is terrible and the unions are shit anyway" - particularly convincing) but don't resort to demagogic posturing about how our position is predicated on "active support" for a couple of the worst elements.
The link between the unions and the Labour Party is nothing like the (actually non-existent) link between the US unions and the Democrats; the US unions do not have directly-elected representatives on the Democrat's leadership committees, for example. When the TU reps on the Labour Party NEC all voted against their own unions' policies and for the war on Iraq, we said that rank-and-file members should make a fuss about that, have those people replaced, elect people who would be bound by union policy. In the event such things didn't happen, but that wasn't because it was impossible for them to happen. What would you have said? Don't bother? "The link is too weak to speak of" so let them get away with it?
Similarly, when unions such as the RMT (while still affiliated to the Labour Party) have cleared out their Parliamentary Groups and replaced their sponsored MPs with only those prepared to be accountable to certain policies, we supported that as one small way in which unions could use their links to Labour Party MPs to assert themselves in parliament and wider politics. What would you have said? It doesn't matter, leave Prescott in the group, "the link is too weak to speak of"?
Nothing of that sort is possible in America, where no structural link exists between the Democrats (which isn't even really a political party in the atrophied, bureaucratised way that the 2010 Labour Party is) and the unions, and where the relationship is based on the unions funding Democratic candidates in return for extracting promises. Certainly, that is what the Labour-TU link has become in most places but the point - our point, and the reason for which we have launched the SCSTF - is that this is not inevitable and that different potentialities (as shown by e.g. McDonnell's leadership campaign, some of what the RMT did when still affiliated, and even policies passed by unions like the GMB around changing their relationship with sponsored MPs) exist.
The Labour Party is shit, it will continue to fuck us over in government and it would be better if the unions - en masse - forced a split and created a new working-class party. But given the imminence of a general election and the certain level of mass politicisation that it will necessarily bring with it, for a left group to just repeat those truisms won't do much except maybe garner a few recruits impressed by its r-r-radicalism. We have to start from where we are, not where we want to be.
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Daniel Randall
not demagogic
I hope I wasn't being demagogic. (And even if I was, what about the numerous misrepresenations of my position by other posters that I've highlighted above, not to mention the many times what I have said or asked has been completely ignored?) I believe it is an inevitable consequence of what you say that you are calling for a vote for Brown. Of course, I understand that you wouldn't be putting as much effort in (if at all, perhaps) in some constituencies. But you can't hide your own words: that is what you are calling for when you say Vote Labour (except in Camberwell and Peckham). If you find me picking on a couple of the worst extremes problematic, you should moderate your policy. It's perfectly conventional in debate to take an extremely obvious case to demonstrate the falsity of a general proposition. In fact, in some ways, I think the decision to call for a vote for New Labour candidates against TUSC candidates is worse - and I genuinely (I'm not being demagogic) don't understand how on earth that is getting glossed as non-sectarian. I mean, are you actually going to go door to door and argue for Labour against TUSC (genuine question)?
Dan says I am "unable to understand the idea of how socialists might intervene in an election from any point of view other than that of abstract platitude." But I have done my best to find out how the AWL intends to go beyond abstract platitude (except in Camberwell and Peckham)! I asked Tom U several times above to fill out exactly what this SCSTF is going to be about, beyond making and giving out a few leaflets, and some union branch motions: maybe there is a cunning plan of which I am unaware, and once I am aware of it I will see the real concrete potential in this. But he has declined to answer. Will you? My scepticism about the SCSTF as outlined above is just that I don't think it does go beyond "abtract platitude". It's a very activist abstract platitude, but no one has outlined what concrete steps they expect it to take during or - more importantly - post election.
And, by the by, my position does not at all amount to "the Labour Party is terrible and the unions are shit anyway". My negative comments regarding the unions have all been about figures in the national leaderships. I don't think you identify "the unions" with their official leaders: so why imply that I do?
The link between the unions and the Labour Party is nothing like the (actually non-existent) link between the US unions and the Democrats; the US unions do not have directly-elected representatives on the Democrat's leadership committees, for example.
But, a) said LP leadership committees are impotent (power is with the PLP); and b) the real power link is established not by committees but by the money that changes hands. The real fact that the LP and Democrats rely on union money in certain areas.
When the TU reps on the Labour Party NEC all voted against their own unions' policies and for the war on Iraq, we said that rank-and-file members should make a fuss about that, have those people replaced, elect people who would be bound by union policy. In the event such things didn't happen, but that wasn't because it was impossible for them to happen. What would you have said? Don't bother? "The link is too weak to speak of" so let them get away with it?
I would have said something like, ok, let's make a fuss about it, but let's understand a) why it happened in the first place; b) making a fuss will be pretty much ineffectual (short of replacing the leadership, and all their ideas, and the structures, which in any case is a broader fight); and c) the same thing will happen next time anyway unless something better gets created - so how about we get to it?
Similarly, when unions such as the RMT (while still affiliated to the Labour Party) have cleared out their Parliamentary Groups and replaced their sponsored MPs with only those prepared to be accountable to certain policies, we supported that as one small way in which unions could use their links to Labour Party MPs to assert themselves in parliament and wider politics. What would you have said? It doesn't matter, leave Prescott in the group, "the link is too weak to speak of"?
That's neither got anything to do with the question in hand, nor the formal union-Labour link, which the example of the RMT adequately demonstrates. It's possible to support such a step, whilst not having any faith in the "link", nor calling for a Labour vote.
What is the SCSTF about?
I'll come back on this point specifically because it seems to be the substance of Tom's objection (i.e. that he thinks the SCSTF is "abstract" and won't do anything); we can return to the stuff about whether to vote Labour and the character of the Labour Party later on.
Part of the point about the SCSTF is that it is barely nascent. What it will do is, to a large extent, yet to be decided.
Our (i.e. AWL's) hope is that it will be a tool for socialist rank-and-file militants in unions and working-class community campaigns to intervene in - or open up - debates in their union/campaign about how to relate to national politics, including electoral politics. We are realistic about what's possible here - clearly we don't imagine that the SCSTF will be calling mass demonstrations. Primarily it will be a lever for intervention into debate about working-class political representation that attempts to go beyond hand-wringing "isn't everything terrible?" or meek falling-into-line behind New Labour.
Militants that get their union branch to discuss and/or back the statement will then have a political jumping-off point in terms of beginning to organise direct-action resistance against the cuts that will inevitably follow the election - "we backed this statement that had all this left-wing stuff in it; shouldn't we do something about it?"
Does that make the SCSTF, in the first place, largely propagandistic? Yes. But there's a big difference between interventionist propaganda designed to open up and attempt to shape political debate in the workers' movement and "abstract platitudes".
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Daniel Randall
ok, the aim to open up
ok, the aim to open up debate is laudible. But it seems such an odd lever to open up debate with. I'm thinking of my experiences with community campaigning in East London and people I have talked to on picket lines last year. I think that if I wanted to start a debate, I wouldn't start by adopting a stance which so many people are hostile to. On CWU picket lines... well, I don't even need to tell you, you know how the vote went. And I'm sure I wasn't the only one to hear that militant branches would be up for arranging an independent challenge with other trade unionists - if they had the opportunity to do so. If I wanted to open up debate, I'd suggest that: a debate at one of the group's or branch's monthly meetings, or specially arranged meeting. Perhaps then you could encourage similar debates elsewhere, then maybe a meeting of key people, then maybe an overall meeting... and who knows what the outcome would be. Maybe it'd be Labourist, maybe not. But we don't have enough time for that now? (You see I've picked up on Martin's confusing style of rhetorical questions...) No. But the left has known this was coming for the past five years. It's not necessarily the case that if you leave something four years and nine months there's still alot to be done in the way of practically opening up debate or anything else. But in short: if you want to open up debate, why start by saying that the solution to the debate is work within Labour?
And what if the community groups or union branches also have SP/SWP people in them, and there is a local TUSC candidate? You're going to open up debate starting by dividing the left, and arguing for a New Labour vote against a socialist? That's the premise for debate?
I'd also like to make another reply to Martin's comment:
It would be more left-wing not to do SCSTF, and instead to vote for whomever seems more congenial, constituency by constituency, TUSC here, Labour there, maybe SLP or Green or Respect somewhere else? To proclaim it as a "left-wing line" that there can be no concerted working-class policy in the election, but just a process of individuals opting for whomever they see as individually congenial? I don't think so. I think that is just a shamefaced form of political indifferentism.
Because something else has occured to me about how dishonest it is. i.e. that AWL has made precisely this call before!
Wherever there is a broadly working-class alternative, like the Scottish Socialist Party or in the small number of English council seats which will be contested by the Socialist Party, Solidarity advocates support for it. . . . Where there are no socialist candidates standing, we advocate a vote for Labour. (http://www.workersliberty.org/node/8257)
The Alliance for Green Socialism is standing 13 candidates in Leeds, and a scattering elsewhere. The Socialist Party, this year, will focus its effort on winning re-election for its best-known elected local councillor, Dave Nellist in Coventry, and is standing 12 candidates elsewhere. The Democratic Labour Party is running a number of candidates in Walsall.
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL) and Solidarity have joined with the AGS, the Socialist Party, the Democratic Labour Party and others in the Socialist Green Unity Coalition, and will support our socialist coalition partners' candidates.
Also in the spirit of pressing for maximum left unity, collaboration, and dialogue, AWL is backing the SWP/Respect "Left List" in the London mayor and Greater London Assembly elections, despite the fact that the Left List's platform is not really socialist. (http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/04/08/vote-socialist-where-you-can-1-may)
we can understand and sympathise with those who vote Green in regions where the Green MEPs or candidates are left-wing. (http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/05/13/why-we-will-vote-labour-and-ssp-euro-elections)
Memory of the class? It'd be better if you could be the memory of your own politics! And what about Tom U's argument, rolled out above, that the reason not to support TUSC was that its partners were not sufficiently active in calling for a Labour vote where they were not standing? In the light of the calls above, this looks rather flimsy, doesn't it?
By the way, the first article I linked to above also read (2007):
A vote for Labour, even though in most places it means voting for an apparatchik fully committed to Blair and Brown’s anti-working class policies, can be part of the fight to force the unions to assert themselves in politics — including in the Labour Party structures, by pushing union policies, fighting the Blairites and supporting John McDonnell’s bid to become party leader.
Three years on now. How did that fight go so far? Any new forces which you expect to augment said fight in the future?
This is exciting news. I
This is exciting news. I want to get involved in this second American revolution! We need small government, guns, God and gold.
Tea Party Movement Spreads To Britain
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/26/brighton-tea-party-tea-pa_n_478684.html
“Our real enemies,” said President [J. Reuben] Clark, “are communism and its running mate, socialism. . . .”