Two questions
Dear Editors.
I have recently read a copy of the Socialist Standard and I am heartened to see that there are still people who are prepared to stand by real socialist principles, without getting caught up by bureaucracies or being prepared to sell-out their class for the £ sign.
I would like to know, what is the Socialist Party of Great Britain's view of ‘Democratic Centralism'' and what do the SPGB think of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?
Neil Duncan,
Peterborough
Reply:
We are opposed to so-called ‘democratic'' centralism, which was an organisational form advocated by Lenin under which there is strict control from the centre. In theory the centre — or leadership, as it is permissible to describe it in this context — is only carrying out the democratic will of the organisation as decided at its congress. In practice, however, the leadership is normally easily able to manipulate the congress to back its line and re-elect its nominees to the leadership posts. As a result, all Leninist organisations, such as the Communist Party, the SWP and the Militant Tendency, are undemocratic, leadership organisations controlled from the top down: when the central committee says turn right then the ordinary members must turn right, when it says turn left then they must turn left.
Our conception of the principles of socialist organisation is somewhat different, as outlined in our recently-published New Members Handbook:
The Socialist Party of Great Britain (usually known these days as the Socialist Party) was established in June 1904 — mainly by workers who were expelled or resigned from the Social Democratic Federation. The SDF was dominated by a leadership. The new party was determined to be fully democratic — having no leader, no central committee with powers over the membership, and no intolerance of open internal discussion. The first organisational principle of the Socialist Party is that all members are politically equal. Some members will have developed greater abilities in certain fields than others, and experience of membership is bound to deserve some respect. But, when it comes to making decisions, all members carry an equal vote. If a majority of members decide that something is to be done, no member or committee can override that, although minorities are always at liberty to argue against majority decisions. The organisational principle which follows from this is that the Party as a whole can make decisions which all Branches and members must implement, and Branches locally can make decisions for themselves, as long as these do not conflict with agreed Party policy.
We are for a world without, not just nuclear weapons but any other kind of weapons either, be they chemical, bacteriological or so-called conventional. But we know that this is not possible without abolishing capitalism since it is the very nature of capitalism that leads to wars, the permanent threat of war and to the need for states to be armed with the most destructive weapons they can afford.
Under capitalism — which exists all over the world including in a state form in countries such as Russia and China — capitalist firms and states are in permanent competition over markets, raw material sources, investment outlets, trade routes and strategic places to protect these. War is essentially the continuation of economic policies by military means. This does not mean that competing capitalist states resort to war at the drop of a hat. but it does mean that they always have to be prepared for it; not only to be able to win should one break out (as over the Falkland Islands in 1982) but also to be taken more seriously — and so obtain better results— in the bargaining and diplomatic jockeying for position that goes on all the time against capitalism's background of economic conflict. As one Labour leader argued in 1959, pleading against those who wanted to commit the Labour Party to unilateral nuclear disarmament, "when I'm Foreign Secretary, I don't want to have to go naked into the Conference chamber'. He never did become Foreign Secretary himself, but he needn't have worried: none of the Foreign Secretaries in the various Labour governments under Wilson and Callaghan in the 60s and 70s ever had to go into any conference chamber unclothed with nuclear weapons. And. we are prepared to bet, nor would any future Labour Foreign Secretary under Kinnock or his successor.
This understanding that capitalism and armaments are indissolubly linked leads us to concentrate on working for the establishment of socialism as the only way to achieve universal and lasting disarmament, conventional as well as nuclear. It is also why we do not support organisations like CND which futilely seek to remove the effect (nuclear arms) while leaving the cause (capitalism) untouched. CND also has other defects, like being heavily infiltrated by people sympathetic to the state capitalist regime in Russia.
But even if nuclear weapons were abolished under capitalism (which we don't believe for one moment could happen). the knowledge of how to make them would remain. So should war break out in a non-nuclear capitalist world, then nuclear weapons would soon come back. As Thatcher, who knows a thing or two about how capitalism works, has reportedly said, “any war in a non-nuclear world would simply be reduced to a race for the first nation to build a bomb" (Independent, 10 February 1988). For once she's right. The only way to rid the world of nuclear weapons for ever is not nuclear disarmament under capitalism but the abolition of capitalism with its built-in drive to war.
Editors.
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