Against the Left (Part 4) (1978)

From the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

SECTARIANISM AND PRINCIPLES

That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party (Socialist Party of Great Britain Declaration of Principles, Clause 7)

The first articles in this series charted the history of the main currents of the British Left: the Labour Party, the Communist Party and the Trotskyists. We have tried to show how each of these movements has failed to represent the true interest of the working class; that however well intentioned a particular group of leaders may have been, their policies led to the continued exploitation of the working class. The only party in Britain with a principled commitment to socialism is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. To understand why this is so we need to examine its origin.

The founders of the Socialist Party in June 1904 were former members of the Social Democratic Federation. They had learnt their Marxism from the SDF which at least paid lip service to the ideas developed by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. The SDF programme aimed at

The Establishment of a free condition of society, with equal social rights for all, and the complete emancipation of labour.

Its revolutionary object was subordinated, however, to a programme of palliatives (a minimum programme) to be enacted while the long-term aim was realised. This dual programme was the reason for the SDFs failure as a workers' party. Advocacy of social revolution and demands for social reform cannot go hand in hand. Once you begin to sacrifice immediate abolition of capitalism for immediate amelioration of its evils and socialism is rejected. A 'reformist revolutionary' party is like a team of workers sent to demolish a building who set about their work by painting over the cracks in the wall and mending the holes in the ceiling. The women and men who left the SDF to form the SPGB were the first to learn this lesson; in doing so they even rejected Marx's lifelong belief that socialists should give their support to certain legislative reforms.

These women and men began to make their voices heard within the SDF but were dismissed as Impossibilists and a number were expelled. Early in 1904 they formed a Protest Committee and held a conference at Shoreditch Town Hall to fully discuss their disagreements with the SDF. They issued a leaflet on their disagreements which was signed by eighty eight members and ex-members of the SDF. In May a meeting in Battersea resolved to form a new party committed solely to socialism. On Sunday 12 June, at the Printers' Hall in Bartlett's Passage, off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, the inaugural meeting of the new party was held, at which was adopted the Declaration of Principles still adhered to today. A leaflet issued in 1905 (reproduced in the June 1974 Socialist Standard) gives a clear indication of the position taken by the new party:

NO COMPROMISE! NO VOTE SNATCHING! NO POLITICAL TRADING! Not so-called reforms. Not alleged half-loaves. These are of no serious account from a working class standpoint. The parties that are endeavouring to secure support for "reforms" and "half loaves" are deluding the working class, wasting its strength, delaying its development. They are all working class enemies, however they call themselves — Liberal party, Social Democratic Party, Tory Party, Independent Labour Party, Labour Church or what not.

SOCIALISM and socialism alone, offers a way of escape from the insecurity and penury and misery that result from the robbery of the working class. Nothing else will avail.

For three quarters of a century that has been the position of the SPGB. The Left have advocated reforms, they have advised workers to accept 'compromise' with their class enemies and to vote for Labour.

The Left have bitterly opposed the consistent principles of the SPGB. We have been called 'Utopians' for envisaging a future based upon an entirely new set of social relationships; we have been called 'armchair philosophers' for advising workers to think and not merely to follow; and we have been called 'sectarians' for refusing to join in the various reformist campaigns of the Left. Let us examine this term, sectarianism.

Shortly before the formation of the SPGB Lenin was writing his What Is To Be Done? in which he stated that only through professional leadership by the educated intelligentsia could the working class develop the consciousness required for socialism. Thus, Lenin saw the revolutionary party as a vanguard, possessing the knowledge which would emancipate the politically ignorant proletariat. This concept of the party was inherited from the nineteenth century Russian Narodniks whom Plekhanov and Engels, as Marxists, had opposed. The Leninist concept of the revolutionary vanguard has been a common characteristic of Left wing parties.

The SPGBs view of the party is radically different. Our role is not to lead, but to be used as an instrument to establish socialism by a politically conscious working class. It must be democratic, without leaders; it must consist of conscious socialists, not sheeplike followers; it must be principled, not opportunist. However, the function of the Socialist Party is not that of a sect. Party members must not stand outside the affairs of society like an enlightened elite but must put the socialist case to fellow workers in every possible situation. A trade unionist who explains the exploitation inherent in the wages system, a member of a tenants association who argues that local councils are powerless to solve the shortage and inadequacy of housing within the profit system, the member of a debating society who puts forward the case for revolution, these are the true revolutionaries, not the "men of action" who are always running and never leaving the same spot.

The SPGB is not a sect, but a revolutionary party which adheres rigidly to principles. This, the Left mistake for sectarianism. How many times in our history have we been asked to join this or that campaign for one or another urgent reform. 'United we stand, divided we fall', we are told. 'Let's forget our differences. We all want the same end. If we all join together think how effective we could be'.

To those who don't understand the nature of capitalism there are no end of urgent problems demanding immediate solutions. Let us consider one which is currently fashionable: The Right To Work Campaign which has mainly been organised by the super-opportunist Socialist Workers' Party. Capitalism is in a crisis. There are 1 1/2 million unemployed workers. Life for the unemployed is tough. So ... demand the right to work, to be exploited by a capitalist. To the non-Marxist the logic and the urgency of this demand are beyond challenge. "How can the SPGB be so pessimistic as to tell us that capitalism only employs workers when it's profitable. At least we're trying to do something about the unemployed" cry our indignant opponents. What they fail to recognise is that we are doing something about unemployment — the only thing which Socialists can do; advocating the abolition of wage labour. "But", retorts our employment-lover, "that will take far too long to achieve. In the meantime . . ." But, we remind our opponents on the Left, reform legislation has not eradicated one single working class problem in the last seventy years. Instead of fighting for what is impossible, why not join us and make the achievement of Socialism an immediate practicality? "You're just sectarians", reply the Left, "More interested in your party than in the unemployed". And then we're back to square one. Can it be that the Left have turned language upside down so that those who support sections of the working class in futile reformist campaigns often setting worker against worker, are revolutionaries, while those who stand for the unity of ail workers are sectarians? Marx, in The Communist Manifesto distinguishes Communists (or Socialists) from other parties supported by the working class in that

1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the

interests of the movement as a whole.

If we will not join specific reform campaigns, why, we are asked, will we not bury our differences with the 'other' Left parties and form a single mass organisation. The question is based on a misunderstanding, as the SPGB is not Left wing. Why should we, a Socialist party with a clear object of destroying capitalism, unite with those who want to make the system work effectively? We might just as well be asked to unite with the Tories and the National Front. When the policies of our opponents are scrutinised it can be seen that Left and Right are united in a fundamental acceptance of the wages system, profits, class property and government.

We reject any offers from the Left to join with us on any issue. Certainly, we are in favour of continuous political debate between all political parties and groups but there can be no question of a united platform. Only those workers who share our understand¬ing of Socialism, including the democratic method of its establishment, will be admitted to membership of this party.

Capitalism is not a system of society which depends upon human beings acting in accordance with honest principles. On the contrary, politics under capitalism is associated with elitism, deception and criminality. Political principles are to be nominally subscribed to and then tossed aside in the name of pragmatism. Only the movement for Socialism depends absolutely upon a rigid acceptance of political principles. Examine the record of the parties of the Left and then consider that of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It will then be clear why the SPGB maintains its hostility to all other parties. 

Steve Coleman

Against the Left (Part 3) (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

III. TROTSKYISM

Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the Central committee on the question of the People's Commissariat for Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability, he is personally perhaps the most capable man on the present Central committee . . . (Lenin's Testament, dictated between 23rd and 31st December, 1922)

Lenin's prophecy that Stalin would not be capable of using the authority of the State with 'sufficient caution" has led some Leninists to believe that had Stalin not achieved supreme power after 1929 the tragic phenomenon which historians have called 'Stalinism' would not have occurred. It is claimed that the political purges, the massacre of millions of peasants in the drive for "collectivisation", the outlawing of effective trade unions, the forced labour camps, the diplomatic pact with the Nazis, were all mere accidents of history, avoidable had the 'distinguished' and 'outstandingly able' Leon Trotsky had his way. But material conditions, not 'Great Men', make history; there is nothing in any of Lenin's speeches or writings to indicate that he would have led the Soviet Union along a different, more humane, course than that taken by his successors. In his dying years Lenin began to realise the impossibility of creating socialism in one country. Capitalism had to be developed.

The euphoria with which the Left greeted the Bolshevik revolution was only matched by its conspicuous silence regarding subsequent atrocities committed by the Soviet dictatorship; the Communist Party defended Stalin to the end. The small voice of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which had asserted since 1917 that the Bolsheviks could only build state capitalism, was generally ignored. The Left's response to the tragic consequences of Bolshevism was Trotskyism. Put simply, the Trotskyist argument was that the Bolsheviks had established a Socialist state, that from 1929, when Stalin took power, the revolution had degenerated and the party bureaucracy taken power away from the masses and that had Trotsky succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet state this degeneration would not have occurred.

After his expulsion from Russia, for opposing the other leaders of the Communist Party, Trotsky helped to set up the so-called Fourth International. The founding congress was attended by twenty one delegates from eleven organisations, the largest being the American Socialist Workers' Party with 1,500 members. The main aims of the Fourth International were to oppose Stalinism and to advocate so-called 'transitional demands' (reforms). Whilst repudiating Stalin, it remained true to Lenin.

Trotskyism was an ideological saviour for the Left who used it to preach the correctness of Bolshevik tactics, but at the same time deprecate their inevitable outcome. It was no longer necessary to go through absurd theoretical contortions to defend Russia; the new fashion was to call Russia a degenerate workers' state and hope that nobody would ask what a 'workers' state' is or the cause of its degeneration from one stage of historical evolution to an earlier stage. 

Today, as the Labour Party exposes itself more and more as a tool of the ruling class, and as the Communist Party is in decline, the most vociferous element on the British Left is Trotskyism. It is worth considering who the Trotskyists are, what they stand for, and where, if at all, they differ from the traditional Left. A recent pamphlet published by Big Flame entitled The Revolution Unfinished?—A critique of Trotskyism contains a glossary of no less than fourteen existing British Trotskyist groups. For factual reference, an abbreviated version is given below.

1. Revolutionary Socialist League. Paper: Militant. Controls Labour Party Young Socialists. Officially does not exist.
2. International Marxist Group. Papers: Socialist Challenge and International. Official British section of the Fourth International.
3. Workers Revolutionary Party. Paper: Newsline(daily). Led by actress Vanessa Redgrave.
4. Socialist Workers Party(previously International Socialists) Papers: Socialist Worker and Socialist Review. Not part of mainstream Trotskyism. Claim that Russia
was Socialist, but became State capitalist under Stalin.
5. International Communist League. Paper: Workers Action.
6. Workers Socialist League. Paper: Workers Press.
7. Workers League. Paper: Workers News.
8. Revolutionary Communist Group. Paper: Revoiutionary Communist.
9. League for Socialist Action.
10. Revolutionary Marxist Current.
11. Chartists. Paper: Chartist. Exists within Labour Party.
12. Marxist Worker.
13. Revolutionary Workers Party. Supporters of Posadas in Fourth International.
14. Revolutionary Marxist Tendency. Supporters of Pablo in Fourth International.

It would be wrong to imagine, from this list, that Trotskyism is a significant political force. Most of the organisations listed are tiny, inactive sects, unimportant in terms of propaganda and effect on working class thought. Attempts have been made to unite them, but unity conferences have usually led to even further splits.

While Trotskyism clearly cannot be examined on the basis of only one group, nevertheless, certain characteristics unite all Trotskyist groups. Firstly, they are committed to the outdated concept of Bolshevism.

They do not see revolution as involving the vast majority of the working class, but as a small, conspiratorial affair in which the party leads the masses to the violent overthrow of the existing State.

Secondly, Trotskyists have a Bolshevik attitude to political democracy. Not only are their organisations based on Leninist democratic centralism whereby power flows from the leadership downwards, but their attitude to revolution is undemocratic:

Such a programme as outlined here will not be legislated through parliament. Whilst we have no objections to framing any of these demands for passage through parliament, we know that this institution is there to serve capitalism, not preside over is destruction. Only a mass mobilisation of the workers' movement can win these demands. Only when this mass mobilisation is able to throw the State and parliament into chaos and when the committees established by the mass movement have taken affairs into their own hands will it really be possible to sort things out. The most likely form of such a struggle in Britain, but not necessarily the only one, would be a general strike. (International Marxist Group Revolutionary Socialism—Why and How, P. 19)

Thirdly, they accept the Leninist conception of Socialism (the dictatorship of the proletariat) as 'the first stage' of Communism. They reject the SPGB's claim that Socialism and Communism both mean a stateless, propertyless, classless society which can be attained immediately. According to Socialist Worker

Socialism is the nationalisation of the land, banks and major industries without compensation and under workers' control.

Fourthly, Trotskyists are reformists, advocating a list of what Trotsky called 'transitional demands'. These range from demands for a minimum wage to giving advice to the Government on how to run foreign policy. 

A fifth characteristic is that they all advise workers to vote Labour when it comes to election time. Despite their professed recognition that Labour is a capitalist party they consistently come to the aid of the Callaghans and the Healeys at the crucial hour. For instance, Red Weekly, then paper of the IMG, stated before the February 1974 election that

Of course this election is not irrelevant. A Tory victory would signify that the working class was divided and hesitant about going into struggle ... A Labour victory would show that the Working class was united against the Tories and create expectations amongst every section of workers that could rapidly be turned into mass action. For that reason we say SMASH THE TORIES ON ALL FRONTS — VOTE LABOUR, BUT RELY ON YOUR OWN STRUGGLES.

Which in lay terms means, Vote Labour. Well, the working class elected two Labour Governments in 1974, one in February and one in October. One would have expected Red Weekly to be doubly jubilant. Not so:

What this election has demonstrated is that the working class must place no confidence in the Labour Party. (12th October, 1974)

Trotskyism might be seen as a synthesis of the politics of the Communist and Labour parties. It reflects the early Communist Party in its apparent militancy, its repetition of empty slogans and its vanguardism. It follows the path of the Labour Party in its reformism and complete dishonesty. Trotskyism has nothing to offer the working class.

Steve Coleman

Against the Left (Part 2) (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

II. BOLSHEVISM, STALINISM AND THE COMMUNIST PARTY

No army at war can dispense with an experienced General Staff if it does not want to be doomed to defeat. Is it not clear that the proletariat can still less dispense with such a General Staff if it does not want to allow itself to be devoured by its mortal enemies? But where is this General Staff? Only the revolutionary party of the proletariat can serve as this General Staff. The working class without a revolutionary party is like an army without a General Staff. The Party is the General Staff of the proletariat. (Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism).

Vladimir Lenin has much to answer for when one considers the political confusion of the British working class. It is fashionable for those who have read little or nothing of either Marx or Lenin to speak of "Marxism-Leninism" — a meaningless term because both bodies of thought were the results of different historical influences and conceptions of class struggle. Lenin's Bolshevism was the product of a semi-feudal society in which the working class was vastly outnumbered by peasants only recently emancipated from feudal serfdom. Marx had looked to the workers of industrialised capitalist countries to organise for Socialism. It is not the purpose of this article to fully explain the Socialist criticism of the Russian Revolution, but to examine the theory which Lenin advanced: Bolshevism. Our argument is not with misguided Russian workers and peasants in 1917, but with the modern successors of the Bolsheviks who continue to advocate a theory which has proved to obstruct rather than advance the cause of Socialism.

Why then was Lenin not a Marxist? Central to Lenin's theory was the belief that to persuade the Russian population of the need for Socialism would take five hundred years. Therefore, the programme of democratically gaining control of the State was rejected and replaced by a commitment to minority insurrection followed by dictatorship.

Let us consider the differences between Leninism and Marxism on the vital question of who makes the revolution, the working class, the overwhelming majority, or the vanguard. In What is to be done? Lenin asserts that

There could not have been social-democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without . . . The working class, exclusively, by its own effort is able to develop only trade union consciousness . . .

Here is what Marx and Engels had to say about such arrogant vanguardism:

As for ourselves, in view of our past, there is only one road open to us. For almost forty years we have emphasised that class struggle is the immediate driving power of history, and in particular that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is the great lever of the modern social revolution; we, therefore, cannot possibly co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement. When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle-cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the middle class. (Letter to the German Socialist Workers' Party, 17th September, 1879).

From the start the Socialist Party of Great Britain recognised that the October insurrection would not lead to Socialism. As evidence of the conditions came out of Russia, our critique was developed. In Britain we alone predicted the State capitalist outcome of the revolution, long before Stalinism was reluctantly exposed by certain sections of the Left.

The Bolsheviks revolution was unreservedly applauded among the Left in Britain. From Labourites like Ramsay MacDonald to Utopian reformists like Sylvia Pankhurst (editor of the Women's Dreadnought, later to become Workers' Dreadnought) to anti-parliamentarians like Hodgson and Bryan of the British Socialist Party, the Bolsheviks were looked upon with unqualified admiration. The smashing of the Constituent Assembly, the crushing of the Left Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the anarchy of so-called War Communism, the attacks on the Russian peasants ... all of these things went unrecorded (or else were justified) in the Left wing press.

In January 1919 the Bolsheviks invited sympathetic European and American parties to form a new, Third International. The Labour Party and the ILP declined the invitation, both hoping to revive the reformist Second International which had collapsed when its constituent parties had supported the war. The Socialist Labour Party, the British Socialist Party and two other small Left groups, the Workers' Socialist Federation and the South Wales Socialist Society, gave their support to the formation of a Bolshevik-styled Communist Party of Great Britain which was established in August 1920. The ILP leader, Ramsay MacDonald analysed the reasons for the support given to the new International:

The Third International is the product of two things — Russian conditions . . . and a dogmatic logic which spins policy from fancied necessity. The grand coup d'etat in Russia and its successful defiance of the whole of armed and financial Europe have properly roused the enthusiasm of democrats all over the world and have particularly affected those who have entered the Socialist movements since 1914. They find it impossible to pay tribute to the courage and strength of will of the Russian leaders and to demand that European reaction and spitefulness shall let them alone, without also supporting the Moscow International. (From an editorial in the Socialist Review).

Looking now at the present image of the openly reformist, pro-parliamentary, eurocommunist Communist Party of Great Britain one could easily forget the militancy and bolshevism upon which it was originally based. Despite the change, the Communist Party has always been committed to three principles: the belief that the Bolshevik method of revolution and the soviet based regime should be imitated in the West; the reform of capitalism; the need for leadership in order to fulfill the first two aims. Their first election manifesto, published in 1929, indicated adherence to the above principles:

. . . the Communist party is not a mere parliamentary party, but the leader of the workers in the class war in all its forms, whether it manifests itself in strikes, elections, demonstrations or other forms. Recognising that the working class can only conquer capitalism and become the ruling class by the creation of its own instruments of power (i.e. workers' councils composed of delegates from the factories and the mass organisation of the workers) and the impossibility of the working class capturing and utilising the capitalist state ... it participates in elections, in parliamentary action, in all forms of political activity as a means to the preparation of the working class for the act of imposing its will . . .

(Our emphasis)

This advocacy of the virtue of the Soviets came ironically at a time when the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under Stalin, was stripping the Soviets of any power they had possessed.

Secondly, on reforming capitalism, the 1929 manifesto advocated 'the seven hour working day', 'non-contributory old age pensions at 60 years of age at least equivalent to the wages when employed', '10 shillings per week for adult unemployed', 'a national minimum wage of £4 a week', 'abolition of tied cottages', 'the raising of the school leaving age to 16' and the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords'. This from the party which criticises the SPGB for getting nowhere in seventy years! Their justification for the sterile list of demands was that

The struggle for reforms in the present period leads to revolution.

Fifty years later the struggle for reforms — many of them the same futile demands — still leads to nothing but the continuation of the capitalist system. Thirdly, the 1929 manifesto proclaimed the CPGB's commitment to the leadership principle:

It has as its aim the leadership of the working class in the overthrow of capitalism.

Throughout the Stalinist atrocities orthodox Communists continued to sing the praises of the Soviet system. When SPGB speakers stated that there was no Socialism in Russia our meetings were often broken up; when we criticised the purges as the instrument of a brutal dictatorship we were called Trotskyists or fascists. In the 1940s a branch of the SPGB invited the Communist Party to debate and received a reply saying that

The Communist Party has NO dealings with renegades, liars, murderers or assassins.

The SPGB, which associates itself with followers of Trotsky, the friend of Hess, has always followed a policy which would mean disaster for the British work¬ing class. They have consistently poured vile slanders on Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party, told filthy lies about the Red Army, the Soviet people and its leaders, gloated over the assassination of Kirov and other Soviet leaders, applauded the wrecking activities of Trotskyite saboteurs in the Soviet Union, and are in short agents of Fascism in Great Britain.

The CPGB refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed.

The SPGB analysed later revolutions such as the Chinese and the Cuban, which were based on the Bolshevik model and praised by sections of the Left, as steps towards State capitalism. The Chinese revolution and the ensuing Sino-Soviet argument caused a split in the CPGB, with the so-called Marxist-Leninist Communist parties supporting Mao whilst the mainstream of the party remained loyal to Kremlin foreign policy.

In the first article of this series it was argued that the emergence of the Labour Party dealt a damaging blow to the political consciousness of the British working class. The birth and subsequent activity of the Communist Party has added to that confusion to an extent which is incalculable. The political fallacies which the Communist party has spread have buttressed the complacency of the ruling class and contributed to the continued political ignorance of the working class.

Steve Coleman

For communism – but what else . . ? (2013)

Book Review from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Communism – An Introduction to the Politics of the Internationalist Communist Tendency. (ICT. £3)

The ICT sounds just like one of the myriad Trotskyist sects which mix and match a dozen or so radical-sounding words (‘workers’, ‘international’, ‘communist’, etc) to create a formulaic name.  In fact, they are not, but are instead one of the main groupings of the left communist political tradition. This was the political tendency criticized by Lenin in his ‘Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder’ in 1920, mainly for their alleged sectarianism. The UK section of the ICT is the Communist Workers’ Organisation (CWO) who have debated with us on a number of occasions this last 30 years or so.

This pamphlet is well-structured and there is much for socialists to agree with, such as this:

‘Socialism or communism (for Marx these concepts were synonyms) is not a condition or programme which can be put into practice by a party or state decree, but a social movement for the conscious overcoming of the capital relation, the doing away of the state, commodity production and the law of value . . .  Communism will destroy the capitalist state and end national borders. It will overcome money, wage labour and commodity production. Communism means doing away with the power of control of a special class. For this reason, communism is synonymous with the liberation of the working class from all forms of exploitation. This liberation can only be the work of the working class itself’ (p.11).

The CWO also agree that the so-called socialist countries were really a form of state capitalism, that attempts to reform capitalism won’t work and that left-wing parties offer no way forward. They also take the same view as us on wars, the futility of ‘national liberation’ struggles and terrorism.

So far, so good. But the CWO (like other left communists) also believe that trade unions are an intrinsic part of the repressive apparatus of capitalism and that socialists cannot use conventional ‘bourgeois’ democracy as part of the revolutionary process, but must create ‘workers’ councils’ instead. More seriously still, the CWO – like other left communist groups – have a broadly Leninist conception of revolution which turns the revolutionary process upside down.

Heavily influenced by a particular interpretation of sections of Marx’s German Ideology, where he wrote that the ruling ideas in any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class, the CWO take the view that a majority socialist revolution is impossible because the mass of the working class in capitalism is always going to be inculcated with ruling class ideas about the system. This leads them to the equally Leninist view that a revolution with only a minority of socialists is all that is possible and that only after this will the working class be able to shake off capitalist ideas.

One of the many problems with this view is that this effectively constitutes having the pregnancy after the birth. Another is that the CWO have made it more explicit here than they normally do that after the minority revolution they will be aiming to set up a workers’ state, which for us is a contradiction in terms. Its role will be to run capitalism while attempting to spread socialist consciousness and move society in some sort of vaguely socialistic direction:

‘A so-called ‘workers’ state’ or the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is, in the first instance, a political category. Nevertheless, a ‘workers’ state’ will take measures for the improvement of the conditions of life of the working class (reduction in the working-day, free access to the health and education system, etc) and try to direct production for the needs of society . . . [but] as long as capitalist commodity production in the rest of the world continues to exist, the diktat of the law of value holds’ (p.38).

Sadly, these were exactly the kind of ideas that lead to the state capitalist dictatorships in Russia, China and elsewhere and the CWO seem to have learnt nothing from these events that goes beyond a romanticist fascination with them. A so-called workers’ state running state capitalism (nationalisation of industry, attempts to plan the market, etc) is no more likely to lead to increased socialist consciousness among the working class now than it was in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, when it ended up setting the cause of socialism back by decades.

It is a great shame that the CWO and others like them have yet to assimilate this fundamental lesson from the history of capitalism.  A shame because some of their ideas are sound enough, but are rendered impotent because of their left communist failure to break completely with Lenin, even if Lenin conversely had no trouble breaking with left communism.

DAP

Against the Left (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN has consistently maintained that the 'left-wing', despite their claims to being socialist are, in reality, reformist rather than revolutionary organisations, with no more than a sentimental attachment to the working class. In the first of a series of articles providing a searching analysis of the left, we begin with the historical origins of leftism. Future articles in the series will deal with — Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Communist Party; Trotskyism; Sectarianism and Principles, concluding with a look at the Road Ahead.

I. ORIGINS OF LEFTISM

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses . . . this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonism. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. (Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848)

THROUGHOUT RECORDED HISTORY there have been oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled. Marx and Engels were not the first to recognise this historic antagonism of interests, nor were they the first to seek a future society based on egalitarianism. Philosophers have sought The Good Society' for as long as there has been human misery. In the middle of the nineteenth century, however, conditions developed which gave rise to the conviction that society based on class division and exploitation could be ended.

The rise of industrial capitalism broke down the complex class relationships of feudalism and created two classes: the capitalists, who own the means of wealth production and distribution and live in comfort by accumulating rent, interest and profit, and the working class who produce the wealth of society in return for wages and salaries that roughly equal the cost of survival. In the course of production workers are exploited by producing a surplus over and above the value of the wages and salaries paid to them. This exploitative system, by using new technological inventions and by forcing workers to expend as much labour as possible for the price paid, created the potential for an abundance of wealth. Such material abundance is a prerequisite for a society based on the satisfaction of human needs. The fruits of this technological progress did not benefit the producers of wealth because, under capitalism, production takes place with a view to profit and not for use.

It was Marx and Engels who, by examining the economic laws of capitalism, were able to see a practical alternative to class society. Their concept of socialism (which was by no means a well developed formulation) was based on the working class winning control of the State machine and abolishing the class ownership of wealth. The new society would be based on 'an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all'. Marxism was essentially different in two important ways from other political philosophies. Firstly, its theory (for Socialism) was inseparable from its practice (political struggle). One can no more be an 'inactive' Marxist than an armchair footballer. Secondly, Marxism has no claim to be 'in the interest of all' — it is the political expression of the interest of the vast majority: the working class.

What was the reaction of the nineteenth century working class to their new-found means of emancipation? The history of the British labour movement in these years was twofold. On the one side was the emergence of the industrial trade union movement for the defence of wages and conditions of employment which has culminated in the well organised trade union movement of today. On the other side was the political movement of the working class from which emerged the Labour party.

In 1824 and 1825 the Combination Acts, which were passed to prevent the organisation of trades unions at the time of the French Revolution, were repealed. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century some workers were beginning to realise that the employed had a common interest to protect and that the defeat of one group of workers could best be averted by the formation of a union of all workers. In 1830, after the defeat of the cotton spinners' strike, John Doherty, an Irish Catholic, founded a General Union, the National Association for the Protection of Labour which claimed a membership of 100,000 by 1831. The NAPL advocated co-operative production (it was a forerunner of modern ideas of Workers' control), but attempts to organise co-operatives by constituent unions, such as the Operative Builders' Union failed when faced with a series of lock-outs. The NAPL collapsed because of divisions which existed between workers, cunningly fostered by employers.

The next attempt to form a General Union was led by the Utopian Socialist, Robert Owen. In 1834 he formed the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. Its significance has been overstated by labour historians; it claimed a membership of 500,000, but was certainly less than half that. One reason for its collapse was the series of lock-outs of its members in Derby, Leicester and Glasgow. Another was the intensification of State action against the unions, such as the famous case of the Tolpuddle martyrs in 1834. The new Whig government, having supported parliamentary reform in 1832, was anxious to demonstrate its loyalty to the ruling class. Its suppression of workers' combination was a most convincing display of class loyalty. The workers, on the contrary, were lacking in confidence and education. Because of the former they were dependent on middle class leadership and because of the latter they were easily misled, as seen in 1832 when they rioted in the streets to give their employers the vote and in the failure of Chartism in the 1840s. The abortive attempts by workers to form a General Union in the 1830s signified the beginning of working-class consciousness. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that in the 1830s there were still more cobblers than cotton spinners in Britain and the concentration of workers into vast, impersonal places of employment was yet to be fully experienced.

At this stage in the history of the working-class movement political ideas became most significant. So far the story has essentially been one of workers struggling to improve the price of their labour-power and conditions. Once this struggle came into conflict with the State, as representative of the employing class, a political question presented itself: How far can the working class improve its position within the capitalist system? Looking at it from a bourgeois point of view capitalism had everything going for it. With progressive reform and scientific development it seemed that the luxury of the ruling class and the condition of the working class could improve infinitely. According to Marxism the system contained irreconcilable class antagonisms which were bound to produce increasing misery for the workers. The Left found itself divided between these two analyses. On the one hand they claimed to accept the Marxist critique of capitalism, but on the other they were tempted by the optimism and immediacy of reformism with its promise of making capitalism run in the interest of the workers. Increasingly, trade union leaders were won to the idea that the unions should co-operate with the State. They were soon to be attracted to parliamentary careers in the Liberal party which cynically exploited the working class vote.

There were two organisations at the end of the last century claiming to stand for Socialism: the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society. Both organisations comprised philanthropic leaders who saw the working class as incapable of changing society for themselves. This was in opposition to Marx's 'Provisional Rules' of the First International which stated

That the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves.

Neither the SDF or the Fabian Society stood for Socialism, but for the reform of capitalism. Socialism was accepted as the ideal, but the sincerity of idealism was no substitute for revolutionary principles.

The SDF was set up in 1881 by a group of disillusioned Liberals, led by H. M. Hyndman. Amongst its main leaders were H. H. Champion, Eleanor Marx, Belfort Bax, Tom Mann and John Burns, both leaders of skilled unions, and William Morris, the craftsman, poet and chief financial contributor to the SDF. Within the SDF there were certainly a number of sound Marxists, but, as an organisation, its effect was negligible and its reform programme was in contradiction to its claim to be Socialist.

The Fabian Society was based far more upon popular Christian morality than on any principles of a serious nature. Its motto described its gradualist approach to social change:

For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.

The SDF and the Fabians failed to win mass working-class support. At the same time the trade unions were becoming increasingly effective, for example in the success of the dockers' strike in 1889. Objectively, the prospects for Socialism seemed quite good. Engels, in a moment of excessive enthusiasm wrote that

The masses are on the move and there is no holding them any more. The longer the stream is dammed up the more powerfully will it break through when the moment comes. (Marx and Engels on Britain p. 523)

Indeed, those who see history as a series of progressions would find it strange that by the dawn of the Twentieth century the stream of working-class consciousness was as dammed up as ever and the moment which Engels predicted showed no signs of coming. History is not simply the record of events occurring when the moment is ripe, but is as much the story of the effect of ideas and movements on material circumstances as that of the environment on men and women.

The first factor in the ascendancy of leftism was the decline of the First International. Marx had worked since 1867 to bring the International Working Men's Association, the international association of trades unions and progressive political organisations, to adopt Socialist principles. At first he had to defeat the followers of Proudhon. From the 1870s until the collapse of the International the anarchist doctrines of Bakunin prevailed and Marxism was rejected. Despite the existence of the International, few British trade unionists were won over to orthodox Marxism. They were more concerned to limit their efforts to the industrial struggle which could never fundamentally alter the cause of their oppression.

More important in the rejection of Marxism was the rise of the Labour Party. The few independent representatives of labour elected to the House of Commons after 1867 were soon seen to be, in the words of Joseph Chamberlain, 'mere fetchers and carriers for the Gladstonian party'. This disillusion led the trades unions to consider forming their own political party to defend their interests. On 13th January 1893, at the Bradford Labour Institute, one hundred and twenty delegates from various branches of the SDF, the Fabian Society, Keir Hardie's Scottish Labour Party and a few trades unions, assembled to consider establishing an independent labour party. The object of its formation was not to unite socialists, but to defend the unions. After the defeat of the engineers' strike in 1898 the TUC received a resolution from the Railway Servants' Union asking it

to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of labour members to the next parliament.

Following the acceptance of this resolution by the 1899 Trade Union Congress a conference took place, on 27th February 1900, at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, which appointed the Labour Representation Committee consisting of two members of the SDF, one member of the Fabian Society, and seven trades unionists. In the election of 1900 the new Independent Labour Party put forward ten candidates of whom two (Keir Hardie and Richard Bell) were elected. In the 1906 election, following the Taff Vale case in which strikers were legally discriminated against, the number of ILP members elected was trebled.

So, by the beginning of the present century trade union representatives were sitting in parliament. Surely, one might think, it was better to elect to parliament people who were at least sentimentally attached to the working class rather than avowed capitalists.

The record of the last seventy years, after six Labour Governments, has proved otherwise. The SPGB argued from its formation (in 1904) that only Socialism can provide a solution to the problems of the working class. Trade union efforts can only provide limited success and reforms can only eliminate aspects of the system and not the system itself. The rise of the Labour party as a political expression of trade unionism has caused inestimable damage to the revolutionary movement for Socialism.

Steve Coleman

Socialists and Local Government (1928)

From the June 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Rimington (Leicester), asks, would the S.P.G.B. fight local elections in view of the fact that local bodies are part of the machinery of capitalist administration ultimately subject to the control of the central government? Another correspondent signing himself "Revolutionist," asks similar questions with regard to Boards of Guardians. He asks : "What actions would a member of the S.P.G.B. adopt on the Board of Guardians, seeing that these institutions exist to issue out charity, thus tending to keep the workers quiet and helping the capitalists by administering capitalist law."

Both correspondents appear to be considering this question from a standpoint which leaves out of account the reason for which the S.P.G.B. seeks to control the machinery of government, and also the method by which we seek to gain control. Our purpose and our method both invalidate comparison with the Labourites, I.L.P.ers and Communists who at present secure election to local and national bodies. None of them has behind him the backing of a majority of Socialists. All are elected on reform programmes, not by Socialists but by reformers of various schools.

Secondly, we want control of the machinery of government, national and local, because that is essential to the achievement of Socialism. This is our reason for contesting elections. We do not invite Socialists to vote for our candidates because of the possibility of getting "something now" on either local Councils or in Parliament, but because we cannot afford to leave this machinery in the hands of the capitalist class. All candidates on local Councils are limited in two directions — by the wishes of the electorate and by the over-riding powers of the central government. The Socialist, provided he carries out Socialist policies, is free from the first limitation. He can justify himself to the electors and retain his seat only by doing what his Socialist backers want. The Labourite or Communist elected on a reform programme, is in an entirely different position. He must please his electors, which means that he cannot consistently carry out a Socialist policy. Almost invariably he is, for instance, compelled to refrain from "wasting the ratepayers' money." The Socialist, backed by workers who understood that rates are ultimately a burden on property owners, not on workers, would be free from this and other restrictions.

The other limitation is control by the central government. While the central government is in the hands of the capitalist class it is obvious that local bodies can act only within the limits which it suits the government to impose. Here again it is for the Socialist electors to decide whether in any given issue it is better to act within the law or defy it and have their powers taken away. The important point to bear in mind all the time is that while Socialism cannot be achieved by local Councils, whether they accept or reject these laws, neither the Socialist members of such Councils nor their electors would be under any illusion. This is not true of the reformist members of local Councils.

With regard to the handing out of "charity" to the workers, "Revolutionist" appears to overlook the fact that the capitalists will see that this charity is issued (for their own sakes) whether Boards of Guardians do it or not.

Does "Revolutionist" seriously hold that starvation makes Socialists, or that Socialists cease to be Socialist when they receive "charity" from the Boards of Guardians? The problem before us is to make Socialists. The existence of a Socialist electorate is a sufficient, and the only solvent of all these minor problems of action. 

Ed. Comm.

No Glory: Remembering World War One in Music and Poetry (2013)

From the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The launch of the No Glory in War 1914-1918 campaign took place in October 2013 at St James's church, Piccadilly in London. Robert Graves was married in this church in 1918 and his wedding was attended by Wilfred Owen shortly before his death on the Western Front. Good-bye To All That was Graves's autobiographical work on his experiences in the trenches of the western front. Owen was famous for his war poetry such as Anthem for Doomed Youth and the condemnatory Dulce et Decorum est.

David Cameron's speech of October 2012 at the Imperial War Museum (see Socialist Standard January 2013) about commemorations to mark the anniversary of the First World War inspired the open letter to The Guardian of 22 May 2013 where the signatories stated 'this was a war driven by big powers' competition for influence around the globe' and the campaign wants 'to ensure this anniversary is used to promote peace and international co-operation'.

The I Maestri orchestra conducted by John Landor with solo violin by George Hlawiczka performed Ralph Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending written in 1914 just prior to the First World War. Although in his forties Vaughan Williams served as a stretcher bearer on the Western Front.

Actress Kika Markham, memorable in the Francois Truffaut film Les deux Anglaises et le continent, read the poem Last Post by Carol Ann Duffy and the poem A War Film by Teresa Hooley who had been inspired by seeing a documentary on the Battle of Mons. Scottish slam poet Elvis McGonagall read the poems Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen, and Matey by Patrick MacGill who was wounded at the 1915 Battle of Loos. McGonagall read three of his own poems about the Black Watch Regiment in Fallujah Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and an indictment of warmonger Tony Blair called No Regrets.

There was unaccompanied singing by Sally Davies, Matthew Crampton, Abbie Coppard and Tim Coppard who performed the poem The Bridge by Edward Thomas who was killed at the 1917 Battle of Arras then a sung version arranged by Sally Davies. The story My Dad and My Uncle by Heathcote Williams was read out detailing the author's remembrances of his father and uncle's experiences in the First World War.

The poet and dramatist Jehane Markham read her poem Inheritance, and then spoke of her and Kika's father, actor David Markham who joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1937, and was a conscientious objector in the Second World War. Jehane read her father's written statement of May 1940 where he stated his 'pacifism was the affirmation of the dignity of mankind and the ultimate aim of brotherhood'.

The 'bard of Barking' Billy Bragg concluded the evening with a performance of songs that included Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream by Paul Simon, My Youngest Son Came Home Today by Eric Bogle, The Man He Killed, a sung version of a poem by Thomas Hardy, his own Between the Wars and Where Have All the Flowers Gone? by Pete Seeger.

Dr Neil Faulkner's booklet No Glory: The Real History of the First World War accompanies the campaign and is a good account of the First World War. Faulkner writes that 'The First World War was caused by military competition between opposing alliances of nation-states. These nation-states represented the interests of rival blocs of capital competing in world markets... to carve-up the world in pursuit of profit and power. The First World War was an imperialist war'.

Steve Clayton

The Party during the war (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

What was never to happen again did in fact happen. In September 1939, after months of negotiations, appeasement and sabre-rattling, war was declared against Germany; a conflict that was soon to engulf the world. It was to prove a testing time for the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The Party's opposition to war had been well-publicised since our formation in 1904. Our Manifesto in August 1914 ended with the classic passage: "Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of Capitalism and the triumph of Socialism The World for the Workers!" A similar manifesto was published in September 1939.

The socialist case against war is unique but logical, arising from an analysis of capitalism and our opposition to it. Capitalism, based on class ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution, generates a relentless search by the various capitalist powers for markets and sources of raw materials. These are essential ingredients in the ever-growing chase for profits — the life blood of the system. The capitalist class tries to solve this antagonism between powers by diplomatic measures, or the turning of the screw by the more powerful on the weaker. But if this fails then war can be the outcome, and even in this age of nuclear annihilation the threat of war still dominates the foreign policies of in particular the major powers. So the socialist opposition to war is not a pacifist or a moral one but an inescapable conclusion of our general case. The total abolition of war and the threat of war will only be realised with the overthrow of capitalism and the restructuring of society on the basis of common ownership and production solely to meet human needs. For a more detailed analysis of our attitude to war there is no better reading than our pamphlet The Socialist Party and War.

Refusing to Fight

During the war our organisation had much to contend with. Our Head Office at Great Dover Street was almost demolished by a bomb, with the loss of many records. Strict paper rationing reduced the size of the Socialist Standard. The introduction of the wartime Emergency Powers legislation restricted what our writers and speakers could say, although this never prevented us from propagating the socialist case including our opposition to war.

But what of our members? We would all have a different tale to tell. Some, due to personal circumstances such as the pressures of family responsibilities, had to take on military service of some form or another. For the overwhelming majority of military age, however, it was a period of Conscientious Objectors Tribunals or of "being on the run". Adopting the latter course, I am sure, needed a certain type of personality. They had no identity papers, or perhaps forged ones, no ration book, and had to take any job where no questions were asked. These members were constantly on the watch for police raids to catch deserters from the armed forces. It was not an easy life. Finally, for those caught up in the military machine who then adopted the socialist attitude to war, it was sheer hell. These members, but a handful, would have a harrowing tale to tell.

For this writer, it meant registering as a Conscientious Objector when the call-up day arrived. The socialist case against war had been argued many times at different Tribunals, sometimes with success, but individual cases were largely a matter of luck. You could win or lose, and I lost. The Fulham Tribunal, where I appeared, was chaired by Judge Hargreaves and included a very nasty trade union representative — Mr Swayles — who certainly had no time for the SPGB and was particularly offensive to those appealing on religious grounds. I was turned down at the Tribunal and again at the Appeal Court and eventually served my sentence in Wormwood Scrubs Prison.

As a kid I had often played football against the walls of this establishment, little thinking I should ever be on the other side. To be locked up in a cell on your own for 20 hours a day is not only frustrating but boring. One library book a week was allowed; my choice one week was The History of Cycling which began at page 28: the other pages had been torn out by other prisoners as cigarette papers. The food, needless to say, left a lot to be desired. My training in sewing mail bags for the Post Office was not quite in the same category as the present government's training schemes; it did nothing for my future. An opportunity, during my daily exercise, to engage in conversation with a member of the Independent Labour Party (also in prison for his opposition to war) was the highlight of my stay. There were other SPGB members in the Scrubs at the same time, but "residing" in different blocks we had no contact. Rumours abounded: that all COs were to be released or moved into the country; that the Germans were suing for peace. Eventually another Tribunal did give me my freedom, and once again I joined my fellow members in the struggle. For a period land work in the heart of Sussex curtailed my activities, but I was soon to return to London to work for socialism, with all the enthusiasm of youth.

Socialist Activity Continues

It was a period of unprecedented outdoor meetings — Hyde Park, Woolwich, Finsbury Park, East Ham, to name but a few in London. Out of London there were Glasgow, Birmingham. Manchester and Bristol. The socialist case was heard by thousands of workers. Most of the audiences were tolerant and by no means antagonistic to the Party. This was very marked at Beresford Square, Woolwich, where a majority of the audience were often soldiers from the nearby barracks. There were of course the oddballs who wanted to drag you from the platform, or even have you shot, but such incidents were rare.

In Hyde Park the meetings were often interrupted by an air raid and we would beat a hasty retreat with shrapnel falling around from the anti-aircraft guns in the Park. The most vicious and unpleasant hostility came from the members of the Communist Party. They had wriggled this way and that way during the first months of war, and when Russia was attacked there was no greater supporter of the war than the CP. They would congregate at our meetings, hurling abuse at the speaker singing tne virtues of Stalin. Do they ever think back on those days?

May Day in Hyde Park was always a great occasion, with hundreds milling around the various meetings. The SPGB on that day hired a coal cart from which to speak, the horse contentedly grazing nearby out of harness. A panel of speakers would enable the meeting to carry on for 5 or 6 hours non-stop, and it was the one occasion when you could get away with selling literature in the Park. In those days the police always required the names and addresses of the speakers and usually asked what the subject was too.

Indoor meetings when the war first commenced were a non-starter because of the fear of air raids, but as things settled down so we filled Conway Hall time and again. There were good literature sales, bumper collections and enthusiastic audiences. I recall my first indoor lecture — 'Can Capitalism Cure Unemployment?' — one of a series run by Bloomsbury Branch at the Trade Union Club near Leicester Square. That I still speak on the same subject today says little for the ability of capitalism to cure this problem. I was soon speaking indoors and outdoors both in London and the provinces, and also ran a speakers' class. Leaving aside the sheer brutality and waste of the war, they were exciting times. Sadness would creep in when the death of a comrade was announced — killed by a bomb.

Competing for capitalism

After the bombing of Great Dover Street we set up headquarters in Gloucester Place, a stone's throw from Hyde Park. It was a grand house with well-proportioned and decorated rooms, and on winter evenings classes would be held on economics, history, politics, etc. Our next home in Rugby Chambers, Rugby Street, was the scene of many heated debates on the Executive Committee with plans aired for extending our propaganda in the provinces. The unofficial HO at this time for many London members was Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch. A pot of tea would last for hours as discussion took place on political matters, and many a speakers' list was drawn up by the Propaganda Committee at those tables.

The war years saw an intense concentration of propaganda, culminating in our first parliamentary election contest, in Paddington North in 1945. The war in the Far East was still going on; the class war in which we were engaged has never stopped. May its end be not too long in coming.

Cyril May