Which Socialist Party are you? (2023)

From the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

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.

The Chumocracy (2022)

Book Review from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chums. By Simon Kuper. Profile Books. 2022. £16.99

Simon Kuper is a writer and columnist for the Financial Times, specifically the FT Weekend magazine. He was also the co-author of Soccernomics, which analysed the finances and tactics of modern football as they have emerged in western Europe in recent decades.

Kuper is an excellent writer, arguably one of the best, and while his politics is not ours, he is a provocateur who thinks seriously about current affairs and trends, always looking for unconventional angles to analyse familiar issues. And in Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, he has done it again.

For a start, 11 of the 15 post-war Prime Ministers (at the time of writing) went to Oxford. And five of these went to the very same school, Eton. In the 1980s and early 90s a group of politically minded students were at Oxford at similar times and Kuper – who was at Oxford himself then – has dissected their influence, political trajectory and growing power.

The incubating role of the Oxford Union debating society for toffs and aspiring toffs is paramount, the infamous and élite Bullingdon Club that Johnson, Cameron and Osborne were part of arguably less so, but Kuper chronicles it warts and all. His key insight is about Brexit, because in many ways it was at Oxford at this time that Brexit was conceived. Patrick Robertson, the founding secretary of the Bruges Group, was prominent at Oxford in this period, as was fellow Tory and later MEP Daniel Hannan, who set up a similar organisation of his own and was also to help Michael Spicer found a grouping of anti-EU MPs that became the European Research Group. Alongside these came Dr Alan Sked’s Anti-Federalist League, the forerunner of UKIP – and hence an entire Brexit ecosystem was formed.

The later role of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in Brexit has been well documented and Kuper does not spare them:

‘Brexit was the sort of grand cause that Johnson and Gove had lacked all their political careers. It would give them a chance to live in interesting times, as their ancestors had… It would be a gloriously romantic act, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, only with less personal risk. The Oxford Tories would reclaim parliamentary sovereignty, the birthright of their caste, from the Brussels intruders. In private, they understood that Brexit might not work out brilliantly, but Britain had no natural predators and would survive even a blunder’ (p.160).

Whatever we may think of the Brexit/Remain debate and its ultimate futility, Kuper spots trends that others have missed here. Fascinatingly, there is a close alignment between the subjects that Oxford politicos studied and their subsequent position on the issue. Of the prominent Remainers that were at Oxford nearly all studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) – Cameron, Hunt, Hammond, Hancock, Truss, etc as well as the Milibands, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and in an earlier period, Mandelson. Yet as Kuper explains:

‘By contrast, all the leading Tory Brexiteers studied backward-looking subjects: classics for Johnson, history for Rees-Mogg and Hannan, and ancient and modern history for Cummings. Gove’s degree was English, which mostly meant the canon’ (p.40)

The overwhelming sense here is of a group of privileged Tory students who thought of themselves as rule-makers not rule-takers, and who were looking for the next grand project once Thatcherism was complete, and one that could hopefully restore their birthright and entitlements. That they succeeded as much as they did is a remarkable testament to the UK’s enduring class system and its networks into business and the press. But as they say, all political careers ultimately end in failure – and this cohort of political careerists has clearly been no exception.

Dave Perrin

Proper Gander: Tory Teenagers (2012)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leave a Petri dish in Oxford or Cambridge and chances are it will spawn a few young Conservatives along with other bacteria. The universities there have always been infected with teenage Tories, and two of these irritating germs featured on Young, Bright and On the Right (BBC2). Cameras followed them both as they tried to gain influence in their respective Oxbridge University Conservative Associations – CUCA and OUCA.

Joe Cooke hangs portraits of Thatcher and Churchill on his bedroom wall, where other teenagers might have posters from Nuts magazine. Nineteen-year-old Chris Monk describes himself as “a wild firebrand of the right”. Alas, he’s too ‘wild’ to ingratiate himself among CUCA, with his flailing arms, gawky demeanour and strange obsession with cheese and port. The most striking thing about each of them is their voice. Chris speaks in a whiny gargle, like Boris Johnson with a helium balloon. Joe’s decided to dilute his Yorkshire accent to fit in better with his posh, plummy peers.

Both want to start playing among the infighting and intrigue they find in their Conservative Associations. In their minds, they’re practising for when they’re in Parliament. In reality, they’re behaving like they’re in a sixth-form drama production of Yes, Minister. The game turns more serious when Joe gets revenge on those who mocked his real accent. He goes to the papers with evidence that OUCA sang racist and anti-Semitic songs at their meetings. He says he’s now seen through their “warped reality”.

Young, Bright and On the Right reveals that both Joe and Chris have grown up feeling isolated, and this led them to seek acceptance in the Conservative Party, of all places. Why there, rather than anywhere normal people go? Perhaps feeling some resentment towards their peers has contributed to their joining an organisation famed for trampling on people. It’s as if Conservatism is a symptom of their teen angst. Thankfully, it’s a phase both Joe and Chris should grow out of. By the end of the programme, they’ve both abandoned their political aspirations. Hopefully, in years to come they’ll be suitably embarrassed about being young, bright and full of shite.

Mike Foster

Atheist (2013)

Book Review from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shelley at Oxford by Heathcote Williams. (Huxley Scientific Press, Oxford.)

Sadly, for this reviewer, Heathcote Williams disdains the discipline of what would have been called prosody in Shelley's day. Still, in these 30 pages of free verse, the language is Shelleyian, as is the anger and contempt for the latter-day version of capitalism.

Sub-titled ‘Blasphemy, Book-burning and Bedlam’ Williams's poetic narrative depicts the reaction among the bishops, aspiring bishops and potential managerial functionaries of the Christian church in 1811 when confronted by a pamphlet written by a 19-year-old Oxford student which challenged the sacred bona-fides of their founder.

A young upstart of impeccably aristocratic descent had written a pamphlet affirming The Necessity of Atheism here! In the sacred precincts of class-orientated, male-dominated Christian culture. Obviously there had to be a Christian response to this attack on the sinews of faith in God and the church system. Oxford bristled with divine erudition and an abundance of faith. But faith was simply belief without knowledge and the core beliefs of Christianity were logically unsustainable; so the holy men of Oxford and its wider hinterland turned to its traditional processes of defence: fear, intimidation and suppression

Heathcote Williams says now, with the forthrightness of Percy Shelley:

‘A theological mafia with every whim indulged
By their colleges' underpaid servants
Which is hired to cook up the date of Creation
Or to invent the location of Eden.’

Oxford and its professors of myth abandoned argument in favour of direct action. The single bookshop that had been persuaded to take The Necessity of Atheism was threatened and ostracised; the book was publicly burned and the author expelled for thinking out loud. Ten years later, when the news of his death by drowning was made public the holy ardour and charity of Christianity was expressed thus in the columns of the London Courier:

‘Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry has been drowned; now he knows whether there is a God or no.’

Richard Montague