What is the Alliance for Workers' Liberty?

Submitted by Anon on 5 March, 2006 - 12:38

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty are socialists. We organise our daily activity mainly around two big ideas:

1. Workers' struggles;

2. Consistent democracy.

Working class struggle

Everything we do starts from workers in struggle. Capitalism, the present social system, is based on organising people into wage-labour, i.e. on having their time, energy, and skills used to create fat profits in return for a thin wage. By its very nature, it organises workers in large workplace and urban concentrations, exposes them to ideas and literature, and compels them to struggle for their wages and conditions. Those workers' struggles, once they reach a certain size, can and do spill over into a struggle for workers' control over production. Workers' control points the way to a new society, producing for democratic social provision and not for profit.

By "working class" we mean anyone who lives off a routine wage - not just blue-collar workers in factories, on building sites, in the mines and on the docks, but also white collar workers like teachers, public servants, nurses and shop assistants.

The working class is best understood in the context of other classes. The capitalist class, or bourgeoisie, lives off its ownership of property and by exploiting the labour power of others. Highly-paid executives who control and manage workers on behalf of the capitalists get a slice of the loot.

And then there are the "petty bourgeois", e.g. self-employed professionals like doctors, accountants, or lawyers; small farmers; truck owner/drivers; small shopkeepers, etc. - some of them as badly off as wage-workers, but without the same socialist potential.

Working-class households are more than a third of the world's population, outstripping the peasantry for the first time in history. As capitalism spreads across the globe, new working classes have emerged in South Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, China, etc.

We believe Karl Marx's central idea, that all history is the history of class struggles, is truer today than ever.

Working-class struggle is not a thing of the past. We can see this by looking at the new workers' movements in developing countries, at working-class resistance in Stalinist China, and at
recent big strikes in developed countries like France.

One of the major problems of the 20th century was that much of the left looked to forces other than working-class struggle to bring about socialism. According to this view, Stalinist leaders were OK. So was and is almost any group which opposes the US-dominated capitalist status quo. We think this position is fundamentally incorrect.

The AWL argues for socialist politics based on working-class struggle. In every social or political battle, our perspective is to organise the working-class movement as an independent factor, a "Third Camp" independent of employers and the governments of this or that competing country.

What does this mean in practice? Most of our comrades are active in the trade union movement. When our student members leave college, they're encouraged to get jobs in industry: and that can mean anything from being a civil servant to a postal worker, from a teacher or a nurse to a train driver. We fight to transform the existing labour movement, not build something outside it as some leftists do, or to settle in as patient citizens of it, as others do. We produce regular bulletins and newsletters in particular industries and workplaces. Our Postalworker and Tubeworker bulletins have played an important role in major struggles.

We advocate a fight for the creation of an independent workers' party and for the establishment of a workers' government. This would be a government based on and accountable to the labour movement, which pushes through policies like free trade unions and universal, high-quality public services paid for by taxing the rich, and can thus open the way for directly revolutionary workers' struggle.

We aim to build up working-class solidarity in Britain and all over the world. In international conflicts, we take a position based on international workers' solidarity, rather than simply saying yes whenever our own government says no. During the Iraq war for instance, we said "No to war, no to Saddam", and we are now active in building solidarity with Iraqi socialists and trade unionists.

We have played a central part in No Sweat, an activist campaign against sweatshop labour all over the world - from Britain to Indonesia, Mexico to Haiti.

We also organise in colleges and universities and in the National Union of Students. We campaign for free education as a socialist principle, working with others on the left and pressing the official student movement to fight.

Consistent democracy

The second big idea is consistent democracy. The working class, as a class, cannot govern society without democracy.

Socialism means collective ownership of social wealth. There can't be collective ownership of social wealth without collective democracy. In North Korea or the old Stalinist USSR, the state owns everything. And because there's little or no democracy, a privileged bureaucracy owns and controls the state. So, in fact, a privileged minority owns the social wealth.

In many capitalist societies, a limited amount of political democracy exists. But the majority of people have no say as to the fundamental economic basis of society. At work, capital dictates. We want a much fuller democracy.

Effective workers' struggle is impossible without democracy. More than any other class, the working-class needs its democratic rights - the right to organise itself, to strike, to demonstrate, to
publish freely - if it is going to defend and advance its interests.

Unions will not respond to the needs of their members, will not be effective in struggle, unless they are democratic. Big strikes tend to bring into existence rank-and-file committees far more democratic than either unions (as they are traditionally run) or parliamentary institutions, making possible the establishment of a new type of democracy.

We fight for a socialist form of democracy based on mass workers' organisations, as existed in the early stages of the Russian revolution. In the meantime we campaign to win democratic reforms within the existing parliamentary system - for instance, the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords, and proportional representation - as an essential part of the fight for a workers' government. We are for every gain workers can make, no matter how small.

We believe that the struggle for democracy - in the workers' movement, in society, in the state - is inextricably linked with the struggle for socialism. No real socialism without democracy - and no real democracy without socialism.

We support all struggles for democracy - women's rights and women's equality, oppressed minorities and oppressed nations - both as ends in themselves and as an essential part of building an effective workers' movement.

We are opposed to national oppression. We support equal rights for all nations - including the right to national self-determination. This is an issue on which we disagree with much of the left.

When communities or nations are at war, only a movement that unites workers on both sides in a struggle for democratic solutions can drain the poison of nationalism and chauvinism. During the German occupation of France in the 1940s for example, Trotskyists organised discussion groups with German soldiers. The French Stalinists, on the other hand, said "the only good German is a dead German".

An approach based on "good peoples" and "bad peoples" will never succeed. The AWL is for equal rights for both nations in Israel/Palestine - two nations, two states. The Palestinians have the
right to self-determination. So do Israeli Jews.

Left unity and differences

The AWL's socialism is based on working-class struggle and consistent democracy. These themes underlie all our arguments and activities.

We differ from much of the left in how we organise. Our policies and organised actions are decided by majority vote, but any minority has the right to argue and organise for its ideas inside the AWL and to express its views publicly, outside the AWL, too, so long as it does it in a way that does not disrupt the majority-decided collective action. The AWL website and our printed publications are open for debate. That was the norm for revolutionary Marxists before Stalinism (like the Russian Bolsheviks), but today it is unusual on the left.

Socialists need to be organised. Individual socialists and activists - no matter how correct their politics or good their intentions - can never be as effective as an organised, educated, activist socialist group.

We know that in the last hundred years there have been situations in which socialism was possible - and that because of an absence of effective socialist organisation, opportunities were missed.

We believe in left unity. For us, it is possible for left groups to unite in a single, democratic socialist organisation. In fact, such unity is essential if socialism is to become a real force. We propose our model of democratic organisation - where there is collective discipline in action, but minorities are not asked to pretend in public to believe in ideas different from what they actually think - as the basis on which left unity could be achieved. But we do not believe in unity at any price.

To be effective, the left needs to rethink and redefine its ideas. It makes no sense to ignore the experiences and debates of the 20th century and start from scratch.

The 20th century has left us with many self-styled "socialist" traditions. Some, like Stalinism, discredit the left. That's why an effective socialist organisation needs to redefine the left's political vocabulary, establishing clearly what we mean by words like "socialist".

We describe ourselves as Marxist and Trotskyist, in the same sense that a scientist will say she or he works in the tradition of Einstein and Darwin. We're determined to learn from earlier socialist
thinkers and struggles.

Do we agree with everyone who describes themselves as "Marxist" or "Trotskyist"? No. In practice we're closer to some who do not call themselves Trotskyist. For example, we have more in common with some class-struggle anarchists than with Stalinists and some would-be Trotskyists.

We want left unity wherever different socialist currents can agree. And free and open debate where we can't. So: debate with us. Work with us. And, if you find yourself in agreement with a lot of
what we do, join us.

Comments

Submitted by Keelan Swift (not verified) on Mon, 14/09/2020 - 01:51

I was previously a member of socialist appeal and a branch secretary for them in York. However I left for two reasons. One, they were too ideologically barrow and two, not enough of them were actually storming class and I became heavily alienated.
I am considering becoming involved in activism again, but I’m very hesitant. Not long after Starmer became leader, I quit the Labour Party and pretty much did my best to ignore politics for a while. I still feel pretty crushed. I put it in a lot of time with SA and LP.
I would like to be part of something that actually felt effective or worthwhile.

Submitted by AWL on Sun, 23/01/2022 - 16:19

Dear Keelan,

We're apologies - somehow this comment got missed. If you want, please feel free to drop us an email: awl@workersliberty.org. We'd be pleased to talk.

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