Are there two Socialist Parties? If you type ‘Socialist Party’ into the internet, you might think so. That’s because you come up with our own organisation, the one that’s been advocating a world without buying and selling with free access to goods and services since 1904 and that’s also known by our full name the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). But you also come up with a ‘Socialist Party’ that’s been around since 1997 and was previously called ‘The Militant Tendency’. Historically it was an ‘entryist’ group on the left-wing of the Labour Party and even had its own Labour MPs. One of those MPs was Dave Nellist, who’s still active in this post-1997 ‘Socialist Party’ who took part in a debate this May at the Oxford Union Debating Society with the title ‘This House believes that class defines British politics’. His party’s website has published a condensed version of Nellist’s speech at the debate (tinyurl.com/3pv4a78d).
Stealing a name
When, in 1997, the Militant Tendency changed its name to the Socialist Party, we, the SPGB, objected vigorously. We said they were duplicating, in fact seeking to steal, our long-held name. But to no avail, since they went ahead regardless. The only (truly laughable) argument they could summon was that the name wasn’t really the same, since they were ‘Socialist Party’ (ie, without the definite article) and we were ‘The Socialist Party’ (ie, with the article). Of course we were aware that anyone looking closely at the two organisations and what they stood for would quickly see the difference. We were arguing for a completely different kind of world society to replace the market system of profit, money and buying and selling, while they were campaigning for reforms of the system with more state and less private ownership, but still with production and distribution based on money and buying and selling – and solely within this country too. However, for people not looking too closely, it was likely to cause confusion, especially as this new Party was calling itself ‘Marxist’, even if they were (and are) a million miles away from Marx’s demand for a society of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’. Nor has any of this changed in the 25 plus years since the Militant Tendency changed its name.
Class in society
Nevertheless, reading the summary of Dave Nellist’s speech at the Oxford Union, there is undeniably a certain amount in it that we might agree with. This applies in particular to what he has to say about class in capitalist society. He states, for example, that modern capitalism is ‘a class society based on the market’ and that ‘the two main classes are those with ownership and control of production, the capitalist class, and those who only sell their labour power, the working class’. He also goes on to say, quite rightly, that the capitalist class who dominate the wealth in society constitute a tiny minority and the working class, who are the overwhelming majority, hold only a tiny proportion of that wealth. He further tells his listeners that the ‘system of politics … serves the interests of the minority capital-owning class within society, not the majority’ and that Labour governments are just an alternative team (‘a reliable second eleven’) for running that system with similar agendas and policies to the Conservatives and are ‘wedded to the profit system’.
State ownership
So far so good. We can share the analysis of how class is the overriding feature of the way capitalist society is organised. But from there on Nellist’s ‘Socialist Party’ starts to part company with the socialist (and Marxist) idea of a society based on the satisfaction of universal human needs rather than production for the market. First of all, he suggests that it was Margaret Thatcher’s government that brought about a fundamental change in wealth ownership and she was the one who then drove Labour, via Tony Blair, away from socialism. He seems to attribute at least some of this to the fact that more Labour MPs had Oxford or Cambridge educations and that somehow ‘leads them naturally to defend the current market system, not fundamentally challenge it’. He then goes on to talk about Jeremy Corbyn, for whom he has nothing but praise. In his words, ‘a Labour challenge under Jeremy Corbyn was different’ and it was ‘a brief period when Labour was seen, paraphrasing Shelley, as “for the many, not the few” – fundamentally different from the Tories, and promoting a political alternative for the working class’. If Corbyn had been successful, he argues, it would have led to ‘the public ownership of essential industries’.
And this is the key to that organisation’s ‘socialism’. It is not the completely different kind of society that we in the Socialist Party argue and campaign for – a society of common (not state) ownership, without markets, without money, without governments or leaders and without borders or states, where the production and distribution of goods and services takes place cooperatively to satisfy human needs. The ‘socialism’ of Nellist and his organisation is infinitely more limited than this. It is, in his own words, ‘an anti-austerity political agenda that talks unashamedly about planning the economy through public ownership and transferring wealth far more equally across society’. In other words, a less unequal form of capitalism and one in which the state rather than private companies or individuals seeks to manage economic activity. Essentially it is not the abolition of capitalism, its markets and its system of buying and selling. As to whether such reforms (since ‘reforms’ is what they are) are even possible within the market system, that is entirely open to question. But, even if they were and they somehow had the effect of ‘transferring wealth far more equally across society’, it would still be a case of tinkering at the edges of the endless and manifold problems capitalism throws up and would come nowhere near to abolishing that system and establishing a real socialist society. We said in 1997 that Militant were impostors to call themselves the ‘Socialist Party’. Imposters they still are.
Howard Moss
Blogger's Note:
There is a video of Dave Nellist's speech at the Oxford Union on YouTube.
See also the following article from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard, where the matter of the Militant Tendency stealing the Party's name is taken up.
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