The political and economic consequences of the still-unfolding ‘crisis’ are many and varied. The ‘creative’ – as well as the destructive - function of capitalism in crisis is immense but in a number of instances, the trends and material realities we see around us can be traced far further back than 2008. The crisis has simply thrown them into sharp relief.
One such example is the state of the left. By any calculation the left is numerically weaker, less influential and more politically detached from the working class than in comparable times of struggle in the 80’s, mid-70’s, late-60’s and so on. There is no real ‘socialist movement’ of any sort, no mass party of the left (Stalinist or otherwise) and very little remains of Labour Party and broad labour movement organisational structures. The largest of the ‘Trotskyist’ organisations (a general label for those organisations which see themselves in this broad tradition) are small and essentially sectarian outfits. Amongst those groups that remain in this broad tradition, prospects for genuine and robust left unity currently look remote.
Workers’ Liberty has contributed a significant amount to the explanation of this state of affairs. Understanding that the weakness of the left is a completely rational consequence of decades of identifiable irrationality is of no consolation. That the task of combating this irrationality – in its sectarian, Stalinoid and sub-anarchistic forms – falls to a small group of people is also of little consolation. Nevertheless, these are the facts.
Chris Bambery’s analysis of the state of the left (‘The Left and the crisis – a new strategy’) is a mixed-bag of obvious truths and clear omission. It is a textbook display – for those who know Bambery’s history – of what therapists would call a ‘lack of self-knowledge’. None of this is unexpected but it is necessary to reply to some of the claims and assertions Bambery makes, if only because his recent influence on the trajectory of the left is not inconsiderable.
The left
The ‘left’ is the central focus of Bambery’s analysis but he fails to clearly define what he means by the term. He contrasts the energy and anger of protests in Spain by “students, the young unemployed and precarious workers” with their apparent hostility to the “left”. The “left” was told to stay away from the protests because “[m]any young activists express a fear that the Left seeks only to ‘cannibalise’ rather than build”*.
But it was not only the organised forces of the revolutionary left that were told to stay away. The Spanish protestors held a similar attitude towards the trade unions and the big social democratic party, the PSOE. Such attitudes were replicated on similar protests in France.
So who or what is Bambery talking about when he refers to the left? A further clue comes from the following quote:
“The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France, launched with much fanfare, has been eclipsed by other sections of the Left but rejects appeals for unity. In Italy, the radical Left is in disarray and resistance bypasses it. The British situation is no better, with sectarian rivalries re-emerging in competing anti-cuts campaigns and terrible results in the May elections across Scotland and England. Even hopes for a Labour revival failed to materialise”.
What Bambery means is the revolutionary left in isolation. The NPA, a party that grew mainly out of the French section of the Fourth International and the Italian “radical Left” (by which he means Rifandazione Comunista) are both examples of this. When the “sectarian rivalries in competing anti-cuts campaigns” are noted, he can only mean the machinations of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Socialist Party.
The hostile attitude towards the established left of the Spanish and French protestors is not a historically unique phenomenon – why was a ‘New Left’ conceived in the 1960’s if not as a product of hostility to the old Stalinised Communist and reformist parties? Neither is the parlous state of the French, Italian and British revolutionary left a new feature. So it is interesting that Bambery chooses this example as a reference point. What is he really getting at?
Most readers will be aware that Chris Bambery spent a decade or more as the helmsman of Britain’s largest revolutionary socialist group, the aforementioned SWP. Readers will also be aware the he recently quit the SWP to form the ‘International Socialist Group’ in Scotland. This new organisation appears to have close ties with ‘CounterFire’ – given that the article we are discussing was re-published on the groups website – which itself is the product of an earlier split from the SWP by John Rees and Lindsey German.
Bambery is obviously settling some scores with the SWP. This, along with attempts to orientate his own new organisation, is the real focus of his article. In the course of this score-settling, he demonstrates the shallowness of his analysis.
Example 1. “Many young activists express a fear that the Left seeks only to ‘cannibalise’ rather than build”
This line could have been written by any number of people, but from the word-processor of Chris Bambery it has a special comedy value. The stock-in-trade of the SWP has been and remains a ‘cannibalistic’ attitude towards the campaigning movement. The SWP must enjoy effective control or it will fight tooth-and-nail to either wreck or consume any group or organisation.
Now if Bambery has had a change of heart and recognises that his past thirty years of political activity has been a gross example of what he now criticises, then good. But why not account for this change of heart? It’s not as if people have forgotten who he is and what he represents.
If, as seems more likely, Bambery wants to take a swipe at the SWP then why not name them? … because he can’t without exposing himself as a hypocrite
Example 2. “The British situation is no better, with sectarian rivalries re-emerging in competing anti-cuts campaigns”
Up until his resignation from the SWP, Bambery was the party’s central committee member in charge of the ‘Right to Work’ front group. Not only that, but he was the ‘National Secretary’ of RtW. The SWP set up RtW in an attempt to ‘capture the market’ for a national anti-cuts campaign. In the course of these attempts, SWP activists – under the banner of RtW – stormed negotiations between Unite and British Airways in an idiotic ultra-left publicity stunt.
The first organisational efforts of the newly established ISG (Scotland) – in which Bambery plays a leading, if not the leading role – was to initiate a Glasgow ‘Coalition of Resistance’ group. If not for the fact that more than one anti-cuts group already operates in Glasgow, this move would be fair enough.
So as we can see, Chris Bambery has very little of substance to add to an understanding of the poor state of the left. He’s much more useful as a museum piece than as a curator.
Revolutionary organisation
“The capitalist system, as Marx pointed out, breeds class struggle. But this does not guarantee that the Left will respond effectively to grow its influence and membership. Resistance doesn’t necessarily build the infrastructure of the Left.”
On this point, at least, Bambery is substantially correct. The history of the revolutionary left over the past decade is testament to the fact that there is no direct proportional link between the opportunities that present themselves and our ability to ‘take the advantage’. The same pattern is a feature of everyday life: how many of us have kicked ourselves for not doing or saying something at the opportune moment. Some of us regret it for the rest of our lives.
However, revolutionary organisations should not always be at the mercy of happenchance. Some things, like the prospect of left unity, are straightforwardly good. When golden opportunities are staring us in the face, you would expect revolutionary socialists to take hold of them. That this is not so is a function of political, not personal failure.
The SWP’s relationship with its ‘united fronts’ and the way it operates in the trade unions are examples of the political problem underlining this phenomena. This history has a major bearing on Bambery’s analysis.
“The Left cannot put conditions on joint action; we must always fight alongside the oppressed to win their support on their terms.” The problem with this harmless-looking statement (which, in-and-of-itself, has an important element of truth) is that it has very different implications for revolutionary socialists in the AWL on the one hand and groups and individuals like the SWP and Chris Bambery on the other. What the SWP/Bambery mean by this invocation is that long term alliances and associations can be made with any organisation or grouping that appears – however tenuously – to represent the ‘oppressed’. In order to build these alliances, socialists must downplay or hide their actual politics to win the confidence and support of these groups.
The practice of jettisoning its own politics has resulted in the SWP accommodating itself to – and thereby excusing or finessing – a whole host of unrepresentative and at worst outright reactionary forces. Far from winning the ranks of the oppressed to socialism the SWP dragged itself and larger sections of the left that it influences, into a political cesspool. That the SWP failed to build itself or the wider influence of socialist politics defines the degree to which it has damaged the left more generally.
There is a difference between Bambery’s call to “fight alongside the oppressed” and the call made by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto that communists “do not set up any separate principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.” The most important of these differences is that Marx and Engels were writing specifically about the “proletarian” or working class movement. The reality of Bambery and the SWP’s practice demonstrates an orientation not to the working class movement but to their own party. The Respect debacle is one such example of this.
The main architect of the Respect ‘coalition’ was the aforementioned John Rees, with whom Bambery is again politically associated. Respect remains a perfect example of the sectarian political approach: a group of self-proclaimed socialists make an unmistakeable break from the organised working class and then re-write the terms on which socialists cooperate with the rest of the class. In order to be worthy of political consideration and solidarity, you had to (a) accept the SWP’s definition of anti-imperialism and (b) pledge allegiance to an organisational combination of revolutionaries and self-appointed communal leaders. How much further from spirit of The Communist Manifesto could you get? Only the SWP’s infamous alliance with clerical-fascists in the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ tops this particular example.
In short, Chris Bambery offers nothing of serious substance to the debate amongst Marxists on how to relate to the working class movement and the oppressed. At best, his politics are a demonstration of ‘what not to do’.
Trade unions and the working class
“The problem is the absence of direction, signified by a Left that does not represent popular anger. People do not recognize themselves in the Left, which, far from appearing as integral to resistance, appears to intervene from the outside into the movement.”
If Bambery feels a little sore that for most of his political career he has indeed been intervening into the working class movement from the “outside” – and often to ill-effect – then he has some way to go before he finds a remedy. His comments on the “[s]tructural adjustment” of the working class and the failure so far of trade unions and the left to accommodate themselves to it hint at an important debate.
There is a real political tension between sectarian and non-sectarian analyses of the trade union and labour movement. This tension is worth discussing because much of the sectarianism is generated by a genuine misunderstanding which itself is a product of a sense of urgency. The majority of us on the socialist left are frustrated and angry at the lack of drive and initiative from the trade unions. Such feelings can lead to one of two possible perspectives.
1. Sectarianism
Together with his comments on the Spanish protests, Bambery emphasises the substantial changes in employment patterns on the overall structure of the working class. What Bambery labels as “[p]recarious workers” have been described elsewhere as a new social class in the making, the “precariat”. Writing in the Guardian (Thursday 2 June 2011), Professor Guy Standing announces that “For the first time, the mainstream left in Britain and Europe has no progressive agenda. It has forgotten a basic principle. Every progressive movement has been built on the anger, needs and aspirations of the emerging major class. Today that is the precariat.”
Standing describes the precariat as “not yet a class in the Marxian sense, being internally divided and only united in fears and insecurities. But it is a class in the making, approaching a consciousness of common vulnerability. It consists not just of everybody in insecure jobs – though many are temps, part-timers, in call centres or in outsourced arrangements. The precariat consists of those who feel their lives and identities are made up of disjointed bits, in which they cannot construct a desirable narrative or build a career”
He notes the role of New Labour in the expansion of this layer of society and then calls on Labour’s new leadership to “build a progressive strategy to appeal to the precariat”. Standing emphasises the real risks of mainstream politicians ignoring this layer of society and warns that the precariat could constitute the class basis for a revived “neofascism”. His call for a reformist response is an urgent one.
Chris Bambery uses this newly fashionable section of the working class as a stick with which to beat the trade unions:
“This recession has seen some 2 million workers in Britain forced into part time employment, often against their will, with the subsequent lossof benefits. Part-time workers now make up more than a quarter of the workforce. There are now some 1.5 million agency workers in the UK: the number doubled in ten years to 2006 … Union membership in Britain’s private sector, at one in six, is comparable to Spain. More than half of the public sector is unionised – but as the cuts bite with little action, what state is the formally organised section of the working class really in?”
The answer is: not a very good state at all. However, for Bambery at least, there is a glimmer of hope:
“Some union leaders, like Len Mccluskey and Mark Serwotka, have caught onto the dangers and are attempting to connect with political campaigns like UK UNCUT and Coalition of Resistance”.
That large sections of the working class are often employed on short-term, low paid, precarious and part-time contracts is nothing new. The economic recession and crisis has generated a spike in the number of such jobs and as compared to the overall number of unionised workers, this layer of the working class is bigger than at any time in recent years.
On what he believed to be the dawn of big revolutionary convulsions, Trotsky wrote:
“Trade unions, even the most powerful, embrace no more than 20 to 25 per cent of the working class, and at that, predominantly the more skilled and better paid layers. The more oppressed majority of the working class is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labour movement. During such moments, it is necessary to create organisations ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets.”
(‘The Transitional Programme’, 1938, emphasis added)
Compare Bambery’s glimmer of hope to Trotsky’s comments and you can see a clear disjuncture. Where the former holds out hope for a working class revival on the basis that two trade union leaders have lent their support to a high-profile direct action group and to the less high-profile and CounterFire dominated ‘Coalition of Resistance’, the latter has a more serious grip on the dynamics of class struggle.
Even where Bambery allows himself some positive comments on the prospect of coordinated industrial action amongst teachers, lecturers and civil servants, he verges off-beam, demanding that the day “turn into a festival of resistance … a stepping stone to a general strike.” The gap between the current state of the labour movement, which Bambery appreciates in his own fashion, and the conditions required for a general strike are massive. In his hands, the “festival of resistance” and “general strike” are linked as just two amongst a flowering of hollow phrases.
The shared political methods of Bambery and his former comrades in the SWP speak of a conscious, well-thought-out and explicit sectarianism towards the working class and labour movement. It’s conscious because as self-proclaimed Marxists and socialists they ‘should know better’. In other hands, such misunderstandings of and impatience with the trade union movement is more understandable – in fact, it is a mark of fruitful potential, of people and groups who want to get something done. Rather than accommodated ourselves to, encourage or embrace such views, socialists must win the ‘despondently militant’ to our point of view.
2. non-sectarian working class socialism
“The revolutionary proletarian party must be welded together by a clear understanding of its historic tasks. This presupposes a scientifically based program. At the same time, the revolutionary party must know how to establish correct relations with the class. This presupposes a policy of revolutionary realism, equally removed from opportunistic vagueness and sectarian aloofness.” (‘Unions in Britain’, Trotsky, September 4, 1933)
Bambery offers much criticism of the state of the unions but only fleetingly addresses himself to the role of the bureaucracy. Whilst he finds time to praise McCluskey and Serwotka for their positive attitudes towards two small campaigning groups, he reserves a series of demands for the rank and file:
“Public sector workers on full-time contracts need to break down barriers with temporary and part-time colleagues … what will NUT reps say to supply teachers or even supply teaching assistants? How will UCU relate to the growing number of lecturers denies permanent contracts?”
The method in this section of his analysis combines both “opportunistic vagueness” and “sectarian aloofness”. The first because his selection of phrases and the orientation of his demands is directed towards potential recruits to his own organisation and not the labour movement as a whole – no matter how much his analysis is ‘dressed up’ otherwise. The second because he offers no real answers or strategy: it would appear that he has no firm interest in the matter.
So what orientation should socialists take to the general problems posed in ‘The Left and the crisis’? The June 30th strikes offer the basis for an answer.
There was never any real reason to believe that the onslaught from this Tory/Liberal government would be met on equal ground by the unions. Everything we know about the current layer of trade union leaders and their approach during the New Labour years points towards a group of people who are at best unaware of what effective trade unionism looks like and at worst hostile to a sharp conflict with the state.
During the entirety of the New Labour years – a period of economic growth, relatively high employment and also a period of attacks on our class – strike levels remained at a low ebb. Far from taking the opportunity to drive the interests of our class forward, to extend our employment rights, challenge anti-trade union laws and the rest, the unions took very little action. Where the more militant unions did take action it was in a form that failed to win a single concession or substantial victory. It is these facts that characterise the current state of the unions and they should focus our attention on what should be done.
The struggle over public sector pensions is a winnable struggle. It is vital that we win. The question then is then, how do we win? Will we win by demanding that those unions in struggle combine every leftish demand and preoccupation into their struggle? Will we win by loading issue upon issue into union ballots in the hope of forging a ‘big bang’, winner takes all, universal strike against everything?
Or do we understand that in order to win, unions must commit themselves to a strategy of escalation and coordination that can cause the greatest possible disruption.
Do we argue for “days of rage” and “festivals of resistance” in response to June 30th or do we push from the left to organise strike meetings and the beginnings of rank-and-file participation and control?
Do we orientate ourselves and the rest of the revolutionary left to the biggest possible gains for our own organisations, or do we orientate the left to building and re-building grass-roots working class and labour movement organisation?
The political outlook of non-sectarian working class orientated socialists is a million miles away from the ‘revolutionary rhetoric’ and demagogic approach of Bambery and his co-thinkers.
All quotes from ‘The Left and the crisis – a new strategy’ unless stated otherwise.
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Tom Unterrainer