Revolutionaries and Elections

Revolutionaries and Elections

The decision in the final round of the recent presidential election of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists to vote for Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, against Shafiq, the candidate of SCAF and the counter revolution – a decision I think absolutely correct – has led to a storm of debate, and condemnation, on the international left as well as much controversy in Egypt itself.

My principle aim in this article is not to defend this decision but to review the more general question of the attitude of revolutionary Marxism to elections under capitalism. First however I have to say that while much of the debate in Egypt is fueled by, entirely understandable, youthful ultra-leftism it is my strong impression that a good deal of the international criticism (not all of course) is based on a combination of ignorance and veiled Islamophobic prejudice.

For example in one debate with a veteran leftist in Ireland I was informed that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were like the Russian Black Hundreds (proto-fascist bands used to carry out pogroms in Tsarist Russia). This is manifestly not the case and could only be asserted by someone who had no knowledge or experience of the MB – and, by the way, if it were the case it is inconceivable that the either the Egyptian RS or the SWP or the International Socialist Tendency could recommend a vote for them. [You can accuse the SWP of a lot of things but an inclination to vote for fascists is not one of them!].

In another argument with a long standing leftist I was told the MB represented ‘reaction incarnate’ and were in no sense ‘reformist’. I asked the comrade concerned if he had ever read anything published by the MBs, heard a speech by any of their leaders, met any of them, or knew what programme they were standing on in the election. The answer to all these questions was ‘no’.[At least he was honest]. In other words in both these cases, the comrades were simply responding to the name ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ and the associations, or prejudices, that this conjured up in their minds without any awareness of the facts or the real situation on the ground.

But leaving that aside I want to turn to my main theme: how Marxists relate to bourgeois elections.

Why Participate?

Revolutionary Marxists do not believe that it is possible to transform capitalism into socialism through the mechanism of parliamentary reform or parliamentary elections. We do not even subscribe to the ambiguous formula that what is needed is a combination of a left parliamentary majority supplemented by, or backed by, extra-parliamentary working class mobilization. Rather following Marx’s conclusion from the Paris Commune that the working class ‘cannot simply take over the existing state machinery and wield it for its own purposes’, and Lenin’s reinforcement of that position in The State and Revolution, we hold that the working class needs to destroy the existing state apparatus, including parliament, in a mass revolution from below and replace it with a workers’ state based on workers’ councils elected from workplaces and working class communities. As Lenin put it in Left Wing Communism ‘only workers’ Soviets, and not parliament, can be the instrument whereby the aims of the proletariat will be achieved’[1]

We also understand that parliament (or the presidential palace) is not the main locus of power in capitalist society: real power is concentrated in the boardrooms of the giant corporations, banks, and financial institutions and in the state (the chiefs of the armed forces, judiciary, police etc). Consequently the parliamentary arena is not the central focus of the class struggle or of our activity as socialists. To quote Lenin again ‘the action of the masses – a big strike for example – is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or revolutionary situation’.[2]

So why should revolutionaries participate in bourgeois elections?

First, because the fact that elections are not decisive in determining the fate of society does not mean they make no difference at all. To argue that elections and their outcomes make NO difference is both an obvious exaggeration and a form of mechanical economic determinism, clearly repudiated by Engels (along with all the other leading Marxists):

According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form[3]

The victory of Francois Hollande over Sarkozy in France does not transform French society or change its basic trajectory but it makes a difference; the victory of Syriza in Greece would also not have transformed Greece but it would clearly have made a significant difference to the circumstances in which the Greek working class has to fight. Socialists cannot be indifferent to these real differences, anymore than we are indifferent to small reforms (limiting the working day, wage increases, the retirement age and so on) which don’t change the system but do affect workers’ living standards.

The second reason for participating in elections is that it is part of the battle for working class consciousness. We revolutionaries may not have faith or illusions in parliament, but millions of working people do; we may understand that real power is not held by parliament or MPs, but millions of working people do not understand this yet. Consequently for these millions elections are time of heightened political awareness when their minds are focused on political debate, in a way they are not much of the time. Revolutionaries, therefore, should not allow this time to go by without intervening in it to make socialist propaganda; above all we cannot afford to abandon this terrain of political activity to the reformists, liberals, conservatives and fascists (especially as the last mentioned have always combined parliamentary and extra - parliamentary struggle, often very effectively).

Third, actually getting revolutionaries elected as deputies or councilors, enables them to act as ‘tribunes of the people’, as ‘megaphones’ for socialist ideas, and as rallying points for campaigns by working people and the oppressed.

Lastly, and this point is often forgotten because we haven’t yet reached this stage of the struggle but is stressed by Lenin, it is very helpful to the struggle against parliament to get ‘pro-Soviet politicians into parliament’ who work at ‘disintegrating parliamentarism from within’, and ‘for the success of the Soviets in their forthcoming task of dispersing parliament’.[4]

When to boycott

If in general it is right to participate, in some form, in elections – and this has been the view of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Lukacs, Gramsci, Cliff, Mandel, Harman and virtually the entire serious Marxist tradition – there are nonetheless certain circumstances in which it is correct to mount a boycott. When? Such a question is by its nature tactical and must always be based on a concrete analysis of the concrete situation – it is impossible to formulate any absolute rule. However, on the basis of the history of the Marxist movement, it is possible to say that the boycott position should be the exception, not the rule, and that the principal exceptional circumstance justifying an ‘active’ boycott is when it is an integral part of preparations for a more or less immediate insurrection. The boycott of elections, therefore, is seen as an action leading directly to the overthrow and dispersal of the parliament concerned.[5]

Probably the most instructive historical episode for this question is the development of Lenin’s attitude to the Tsarist Duma in the period 1905-6. This is described in detail in Tony Cliff, Lenin, Vol 1, Building the Party, (London 1986) pp.248-52. The main points are as follows. The Tsarist Duma was a highly undemocratic parliamentary body with a franchise openly and heavily weighted in favour of the landlords and against workers and peasants. In August-September 1905 Lenin advocated and the Bolsheviks decided on a boycott as part of preparing an armed uprising. After the defeat of the insurrection in December 1905, the Bolsheviks continued to support a boycott in the expectation of a renewed uprising. When it became clear this was not going to be possible Lenin, in August 1906, changed his position and supported participation, even going as far as to vote with the Mensheviks, against the Bolsheviks, on this question at a Party Conference in July 1907. Lenin concluded:

Active boycott …is correct tactics …only under conditions of a sweeping, universal and rapid upswing of the revolution, developing into an armed uprising…in the absence of these conditions correct tactics call for participation in the elections.[6]

A similar episode occurred in August- September 1917 in the relation to a Council of the Republic, or Pre-Parliament, which was to represent the nation until the Constituent Assembly. Trotsky comments:

What attitude to adopt toward the Council of the Republic immediately became for the Bolsheviks an acute tactical problem. Should they enter it or not? The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semi-anarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing régime.[7]

But, of course, this was an immediately pre- insurrectionary situation and the debate within the Bolsheviks reflected this, with the majority of the Bolshevik leadership against boycott, and Trotsky, supported by Lenin (who was in hiding), in favour of it – at this moment Lenin had not yet won the Bolshevik CC to the idea of actually launching the insurrection.
These examples demonstrate the tactical complexities of the boycott question but they also reinforce the point that generally speaking revolutionaries are in favour of participating in elections.
How to Participate
Revolutionary participation in elections can take a number of forms, and once again, which form or forms are adopted is a tactical question which must be decided in each

case on the basis of concrete analysis, and is considerably affected by the nature of the electoral system in place.
Ideally a revolutionary socialist party would participate in elections by standing candidates in its own name. This is the simplest, clearest and best option. Unfortunately, for many decades now, the weakness of revolutionary socialist forces have made this impossible or very difficult. It is not helpful, as the British SWP found out in the late 1970s, to stand candidates who receive completely derisory votes. Nor is it useful to have several far left candidates standing against one another and splitting each others votes to the confusion of the electorate and the detriment of the left as a whole.
For this reason is often necessary for revolutionaries to stand as part of coalitions of the left as, for example, Richard Boyd Barrett (of the Irish SWP) did in Ireland in 2011 as part of People Before Profit and the United Left Alliance, or the Greek SEK did as part of Antarsya, or the British SWP did at various times with the Socialist Alliance, Respect and TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Coalition). Such coalitions and alliances are often necessary but invariably present their own complex strategic and tactical problems which cannot be gone into here.
Nevetheless it is possible to outline some general guidelines for these campaigns: 1) We should mount serious campaigns with the aim, if possible, of winning; 2) to this end we should stand on programmes of concrete demands which make sense to large masses of working people not a purely abstract maximum programme; 3) but we should resolutely reject opportunist concessions to the pressures of electoralism, eg populist law and order campaigns, or any compromise with zenophobia, racism, sexism etc, 4) we should make clear that the election campaign is just one (subordinate) part of the struggle to mobilize the masses.
However there is also the question of how to vote when or where we are unable to stand ourselves and, even when we can stand, how to use second preference votes or to vote in second rounds if we are eliminated. Obviously this gives rise to a multitude of questions, sometimes tricky, sometimes crucial and sometimes much less important. For example in the general election in Ireland in 2011 I had a number of discussions with comrades as to how, after voting first for United Left Alliance candidates, we should use our second and third preferences: should we vote second Sinn Fein and third Labour or second Labour and third Sinn Fein. Here, even less than on the question of standing candidates, can there be a one-size fits all solution but once again it is still possible to make some general observations.
Deciding who to vote for
First it is necessary to understand that revolutionary socialists decide how to vote on a different basis from liberals or others who actually believe that parliamentary representatives or presidents really do run society. For a start the ‘personal’ characteristics of a candidate are of very little importance and certainly not the starting point for making the decision. If, for example, the main candidate of the left in an election is George Galloway in Britain, Ralph Nader in the US or Hamdeen Sabbahi  in Egypt, it is not a good argument to say ‘I won’t vote for this guy because I don’t trust him, or even because I can’t stand him because he did this or that bad thing three years ago’.
Secondly a vote in an election constitutes a preference for a particular outcome in circumstances usually not of our choosing, not an overall political endorsement. The concept of critical support – variously expressed as ‘voting without illusions’ ‘voting and preparing to fight’ or even ‘support like a rope supports a hanging man’(Lenin) is crucial here. It is an unfortunate habit of polemic on the left to attack a decision by another left organization to vote for party X or candidate Y   in terms of denouncing their ‘support’ for party X or candidate Y as if this meant full blooded political support, even when it is made perfectly clear that this is not the case. (It is, of course, incumbent on the revolutionary socialists to make their criticisms clear). Thus in 1997 I (and the British SWP) voted for Tony Blair’s Labour Party. This was because in that election I/we judged it very important for the British working class to remove the Tory Government who had been in office for 18 years, and this was the only means of achieving this objective. It did not mean that I/we had the slightest illusions in what Blair or the Labour Party would do and to interpret this vote as the SWP or John Molyneux ‘supporting Tony Blair’ is simply a travesty.
Lenin wrote as follows about an earlier generation of Labour leaders:

It is true that the Hendersons, the Clyneses, the MacDonalds and the Snowdens are hopelessly reactionary [Labour Party leaders in 1920- JM]. It is equally true that they want to assume power (though they would prefer a coalition with the bourgeoisie), that they want to "rule" along the old bourgeois lines, and that when they are in power they will certainly behave like the Scheidemanns and Noskes [German Social Democrats – the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and betrayers of the German Revolution- JM]. All that is true. But it does not at all follow that to support them means treachery to the revolution; what does follow is that, in the interests of the revolution, working-class revolutionaries should give these gentlemen a certain amount of parliamentary support.[8]

Anyone who interprets this to mean that Lenin was, in general, a supporter of Ramsay MacDonald or Scheidemann and Noske is foolishly or deliberately missing the point.
The key thing is to determine the political meaning of the vote in any particular political situation, based on examining the situation as a whole.

It demands that account be taken of all the forces, groups, parties, classes and masses operating in a given country, and also that policy should not be determined only by the desires and views, by the degree of class-consciousness and the militancy of one group or party alone.[9]

In my opinion three elements are particularly important in making this assessment: 1) the class nature of the parties/candidates involved; 2) the class and political nature of the support, among the masses, for said parties/candidates; 3) the political consequences of a particular vote and/or of a particular outcome to the election concerned. The matter would be relatively simple if the answers to all these questions always pointed in the same direction, unfortunately life is not that easy.
Thus, as Lenin explained, labour and social democratic parties are, typically, neither simply capitalist parties nor simply workers’ parties but rather ‘capitalist workers parties’ or ‘bourgeois labour parties’[10]. They combine a thoroughly pro-capitalist leadership with (typically) an organic link with the trade unions (especially with the trade union bureaucracies) and mass electoral support in the working class. On this basis Lenin, as we have seen, argued in favour of a vote for the British Labour Party against the main parties of the British bourgeoisie ie the Tories and the Liberals. But there are nuances and variations: there are left reformist parties whose leadership is not simply ‘pro-capitalist’ in the sense that Blair, Brown, Miliband, Hollande, Papandreou and so on are, even though they are very likely to capitulate to capitalism  eg Syriza in Greece, or Front de Gauche in France; Syriza however though much more radical does not have a comparable trade union base to British Labour. Often the case for voting for the Labour type party against the outright bourgeois party is overridden by the need to develop a left or revolutionary socialist alternative to the reformists. Sometimes, as in Ireland, the electoral system allows one to do both (by using second preferences etc); other times, as in Britain (with first-past-the post), it does not and a choice has to be made.
Another complication is the fact that in ‘third world’ or ‘developing’ countries and former colonies the political space filled in Europe by social democratic parties is often taken by nationalist or Islamist parties that combine support for capitalism in practice, with anti-imperialist rhetoric (and sometimes struggle) and mass support among the working class, the poor and the peasantry – examples range from the ANC in South Africa to Hezbollah in Lebanon and, at different times, the PLO and Hamas. In Ireland we have the unusual role played by Sinn Fein.
Sometimes factor three – the political consequences of a result- can seem to pull in a different direction from factors one and two. For example when the second round of the French Presidential election in 2002 was reduced to a run-off between the right wing Chirac and the Fascist Le Pen. Obviously no socialist would normally contemplate voting for Chirac. Equally obviously a Le Pen victory would be a disaster. Opinion among revolutionary Marxists was divided. The British SWP argued against a vote for Chirac , calling for extra parliamentary mobilization against the fascists. The French LCR (Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire) voted for Chirac. At the time I accepted the SWP line but now think I was probably mistaken. As it happened Chirac won by a landslide with 82% of the vote on a 79% turnout, so clearly the vast majority of French workers, including its more class conscious layers voted Chirac.
Left Wing Communism
In my opinion the best general guide in the Marxist tradition to the whole issue of revolutionaries and elections is Lenin’s Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, (1920) from which I have already quoted on a number of occasions. Written to combat the ‘Left’ Communist tendency which was then a considerable force in a number of the newly formed parties of the Communist International (German, Dutch, Italian etc) it is a superb manual of strategy and tactics, and should be studied by everyone who aspires to make serious judgments on these issues. Just as one can’t be a serious Marxist economist without having studied Capital, so one can’t be revolutionary socialist political leader without having read Left Wing Communism.
Its main arguments are: a) that a refusal in advance of all ‘compromises’ is not a serious Marxist position; b) that it is absolutely necessary to work in trade unions, including ‘reactionary’ trade unions [11]; c) that it is obligatory to contest elections and participate in bourgeois parliaments; d) that it is necessary to vote for the social democratic parties against the openly capitalist parties in order to side with the mass of workers against the right, to expose the reformists before the masses by putting them into office, so as to win over the rank-and-file workers from the treacherous reformist leaders; e) that the art of revolutionary leadership involves learning how to win the majority of the working class not just its revolutionary vanguard (‘Victory cannot be won with the vanguard alone’[12]) and that this means being one step ahead of the masses not out of touch and round the corner.
But just as Capital is a prerequisite for a Marxist economic analysis but not a substitute for studying the economy today, so arriving at correct decisions in relation to elections cannot simply be read-off from Lenin (or Trotsky etc) but involves an assessment of the concrete balance of class and political forces.
Back to Egypt
It is precisely because, sat in Ireland, I am not in a good position to make such a concrete assessment that I did not want to make Egypt the main focus of this article. However some of the arguments developed here have clear implications for the situation in Egypt.
First they suggest that a number of reasons given for an abstentionist or boycottist position, either in the parliamentary or presidential elections do not stand up. Not only is it false (because untrue) to argue that it is impossible to vote for the Muslim Brotherhood against Shafiq because the Brotherhood represent extreme reaction, it is also mistaken to argue that we shouldn’t vote for them against Shafiq because they have sold out the revolution or will sell out the revolution (though they have and will), or because they are religious or have backward attitudes to women etc. History shows that serious revolutionaries have had to vote, against outright reaction and counter revolution, for such sell outs and backward elements on many occasions. (Does anyone imagine that Irish Republicans who had to be supported against British imperialism were fighters for women’s rights and workers’ power? Not to speak of innumerable social democrats who backed imperialist wars from 1914 onwards and imposed racist immigration controls amongst many other crimes.)
It was also a mistake to argue that the left should not participate in the elections unless the Political Isolation Law was upheld[13]: it was wrong as an absolute or ‘moral’ principle since all bourgeois elections, all elections held under capitalism, are flawed and biased and it was meaningless as a ‘threat’ or bargaining counter since why should SCAF care if the left boycotted the elections.
It is also interesting that there are strong parallels (not exact, of course) between the revolutionaries advocating abstention in Germany in 1919/1920, who Lenin wrote Left Wing Communism against, and the revolutionaries advocating non-participation in elections in Egypt today. In both cases they tend to be (mainly if not exclusively) young recently revolutionized workers and street fighters. These are entirely admirable people without whom revolution is impossible, but they lack experience and training in revolutionary strategy and tactics and, crucially, they cannot make the revolution – the socialist revolution- or even bring down SCAF, by their own courage and will power alone.
Carrying the revolution through to victory involves the heroic revolutionary vanguard winning over the masses – the workers in the workplaces, the urban and rural poor, a substantial section of the peasants – not just in their hundreds of thousands but in their tens of millions. Doing that requires not only street fighting but also political strategy and part of that strategy has to be an electoral strategy, so as to relate to the millions of working people who voted for Hamdeen Sabbahi and Mohammed Morsi. Formulation of such a strategy will therefore be an important task facing the Egyptian left in the period ahead.*


*This raises the issue, as it has done in many other countries (Greece, France, UK, Ireland etc) of electoral coalitions or united fronts between revolutionaries and left reformists of various kinds. In many cases this is clearly necessary in order to make an effective electoral intervention but, as experience has shown (not least in Britain) it can also generate a host of problems. For reasons of time a general discussion of these problems cannot be undertaken here and my knowledge of ‘the left’ and radical forces in Egypt is inadequate to say anything concrete about the situation there. It does seem likely, however, that revolutionaries in Egypt will need to address this question at some stage.

John Molyneux
July 23, 2012

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[1] Lenin adds. ‘And, of course, those who have failed to understand this up to now are inveterate reactionaries, even if they are most highly educated people, experienced politicians, most sincere socialists, most erudite Marxists, and most honest citizens and family men’. Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Peking 1965, p.80.

[2] As above, p.55.

[3] Engels letter to Bloch, 1890, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm

[4] As above,p.81.

[5] There are also, exceptions to the exception. The Bolsheviks, as Lenin points out in Left Wing Communism (see above pp.53-4) participated in the elections to the elections to the Constituent Assembly in September-November 1917, ie before and after the insurrection and prior to dispersing the Assembly.

[6] Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p.60 cited in Cliff, as above p.251.

[7] Tortsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, London 1977, p.541.

[8] Lenin, Left Wing Communism, as above p.81

[9] As above,p.81

[10] ‘The fact that is that “bourgeois labour parties,” as a political phenomenon, have already been formed in all the foremost capitalist countries, and that unless determined and relentless struggle is waged all along the line against these parties—or groups, trends, etc., it is all the same—there can be no question of a struggle against imperialism, or of Marxism, or of a socialist labour movement’.Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism’ http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

[11] I have discussed this at length in my article ‘Marxism and Trade Unionism’, Irish Marxist Review 1, 2012.

[12] Lenin, Left Wing Communism, as above p.97.

[13] The law excluding Mubarak’s NDP and other ‘feloul’ (remnants of the old regime) from standing.

A Sad Book

A Sad Book

Review of Jim Higgins, More Years for the Locust: The Origins of the SWP, Unkant Publishers, 2011

I was sold this book by Andy Wilson at The Association of Musical Marxists stall at Marxism 2012 in London. I have to admit my first thought on seeing it what to wonder if Andy and his collaborator Ben Watson realised what the Jim Higgins I remembered (from when he was the International Socialists' national secretary in the early 70s) would have had to say about them, or how he would have mocked the very idea of an ‘Association of Musical Marxists’. But maybe they do realise and maybe they don’t care: it being more important to have a book to have a go at IS with. Anyway I found it a sad work.

Its main theme and animating spirit is the conflict in the IS between Jim Higgins and his supporters ( Roger Protz, John Palmer etc) and Tony Cliff and his ( Chris Harman, Jim Nichol etc) in 1974-75, which led to his removal from the group’s leadership and later to his voluntary departure. If it had been written at the time, in the heat of the factional struggle,  it would not have been very good (far too much title tattle and far too little political analysis) but published, as it was, in 1997 – that is a quarter of a century later and a few years before Higgins’ death – it is sad indeed. It meant he spent the last third of his life chewing over this episode, quite unable to move on.

Of course someone will say that I, or the SWP, should answer the book ‘politically’. But since it consists of over 200 pages of jokes, sneers, sarcasm , ad hominem abuse and tendentious arguments this would require a point by point refutation of similar length. This is not undertaking worth even a fraction of the time or effort it would take. (A bit like Marx’s immense reply to the racist police spy Carl Vogt – but at least Marx was defending himself against serious slanders). Instead I will give one example a make a couple of general observations.

The Central Committee is uniquely qualified to pronounce on anything and everything, containing as it does that renaissance man, that Marxist Leonardo Da Vinci, Chris Harman. Not long ago he pronounced, ex-cathedra, as it were, on the question of anthropology and now that is the line, although why the SWP should require a line on anthropology is beyond me. The anthropologist member of the SWP – there could even be more than one of them – who accepts the modern academic wisdom on the subject, now contradicted by Harman, is under a vow of silence on his own specialisation. One recalls Lysenko, who, at Joe Stalin’s command, stood Darwin on his head, inducing genetic changes in plants over a few generations by altering their environment…The SWP’s cultural climate is strangely reminiscent of those halcyon days when Zhdanov wielded the cultural hatchet for Joe Stalin, a triumphant outing for philistinism. (p.192)

This is a tissue of easily refutable nonsense and lies.  The article concerned (unreferenced by Higgins) is, I presume, Chris Harman’s ‘Engels and the Origins of Human Society’, http://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1994/xx/engels.htm, an outstanding piece of work which if it didn’t correspond to the conventional academic wisdom, (why should it?) was certainly based on the latest scientific research. Moreover, as Higgins would know perfectly well, the SWP didn’t have ‘a line’ on anthropology which anyone was obliged to accept – but it did and does publish material on the subject because it is of considerable importance to the socialist argument – which is why Engels wrote outstanding texts on it (which Higgins must also have known). The academic anthropologist is unnamed by Higgins but, assuming my guess as to his identity is correct, was far from accepting ‘the modern academic wisdom’ (much further than Chris Harman) and instead espoused a whacky theory involving the notion of an imaginery sex strike by women about 50,000 years ago. 

As for the stuff about Lysenko, Stalin and the SWP’s cultural climate resembling the days of Zhdanov, this is complete fantasy. I will answer it from my own direct and verifiable experience. In 1998 I published an article in IS Journal on ‘The Legitimacy of Modern Art’, which as its title suggests, was strongly anti-Zhdanovist. Chris Nineham wrote a critique of one aspect of the article (not its anti-Zhdanovism which he endorsed) and I published a reply to Nineham and Chris Harman then replied to me. Nineham and I also debated the issues publically at Marxism. Later I went on to organize and curate four exhibitions of contemporary art at Marxism (2006-9) without the slightest attempt at direction, let alone, censorship or political control, by the leadership. No debate! Zhdanovism? It is nonsense and, as I said, easily refutable provided one is prepared to take the time. Since I am not I will just make two final comments.

At the time of the split between Higgins and Cliff I was a member of the IS in Portsmouth in my mid twenties but due to difficult personal circumstances not very in touch with what was going on nationally and I had great difficulty in getting my head round the issues involved in the faction fight, which were very unclear at the time.

However, I did know the main protagonists, and made up my mind partly on the basis of who I thought would be most serious about building the party in the future. Here I thought there was very little contest. And it has to be said experience has proved me right. Cliff went to build and maintain what, for all its many faults, has remained the largest and most active revolutionary socialist organization in Britain for the last thirty or more years. Higgins and his supporters built absolutely nothing. Compare also their respective intellectual production. A glance at that splendid resource, the Marxist Internet Archive, shows that between 1974 and his death in 2002 Jim Higgins produced, apart from this one book, a number of short journalistic pieces (some for The Spectator[!], mocking the left), a few book reviews and a couple of polemics with Sean Matgamna about Zionism (on which I am 100% on the side of Higgins). In the same period Cliff, who was thirteen years older and also engaged in full time agitation and organization, produced a four volume biography of Lenin, a four volume biography of Trotsky, a book on Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation, a book on the history of the Labour Party, a book on Marxism and the trade union struggle, shorter books on Trotskyism after Trotsky and his autobiography, plus a huge number of articles on subjects ranging from the balance of class forces to why socialists should support gays.

So why did Higgins use what energy he had to write this book. To point the way forward? No, to do that he would have had to analyse the outside world, not the IS in the seventies. To set the historical record straight? To do that he would have to have been far more scrupulous about his facts and references, far less personalized in his abuse (on both scores compare Ian Birchall’s meticulous biography of Cliff) and above all have paid more attention to analyzing what was actually happening in the class struggle that was conditioning Cliff’s and his own behaviour. No, I think he wrote it to scratch an itch that had been tormenting him down the years.

On the last page Higgins writes that ‘the happiest times of my life have been in the movement’ and herein lies a clue. I would hazard a guess that those happiest times were when he was centrally involved in IS. Deprived of that, as he saw it by Cliff, he could neither forgive nor forget. And that’s sad. But he is by no means alone in this. I have known quite a few former comrades unable to sustain their commitment but still haunted by the most meaningful time of their lives. That’s sad too.

John Molyneux

22 July 2012.

Greece and Egypt: the Struggle Goes On

Greece and Egypt: important elections but the struggle goes on.

Greece and Egypt both saw very important elections over the weekend.

Greece

The narrow victory of the right wing New Democracy party in the Greek elections meant that all across Europe, including Ireland, bankers, capitalists, establishment politicians and ruling classes generally, slept easier in their beds on Sunday night. The ‘threat’ of a radical left Syriza government, vehemently opposed to the austerity imposed on the Greek people and brutal terms of the bail-out, had been averted, at least for the moment. This was reflected in the fact that the infamous ‘markets’ surged forward first thing Monday morning.

However, the fact that after a couple of hours those same markets immediately fell back again showed that nothing fundamental had been resolved. As Reuters put it:

Relief over the Greek election result gave way rapidly to concerns about problems in Spain and the wider eurozone on Monday, with European shares and the single currency reversing early gains…Spain's key 10-year government bond yields shot up 22 basis points to 7.14 percent, the highest level in the euro era and above the rate at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were forced to seek international bailouts. Equivalent Italian bond yields rose 15 basis points to 6.08 percent.

 The crisis, which Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the EU Commission admitted was a ‘systemic crisis’ not a crisis of Greece, Spain or Ireland etc, continues unabated.

New Democracy’s win was marginal indeed – 29.7% versus 26.9% for Syriza – and in no way can be claimed as a mandate for the vicious cuts and austerity which it will now attempt to impose. Moreover it was obtained only by the kind of intense scaremongering familiar to us in Ireland from the Treaty Referendum. Far more significant is the fact that Syriza’s vote rose ten points from 17% in the first previous election, which in turn was a spectacular rise on its 4-5% a few years ago.

New Democracy have yet to form a government and to do so need a coalition with PASOK (Labour) and the (not very) Democratic Left . PASOK have initially said they will only join a coalition if Syriza is included but this is probably only a manoeuvre and Syriza have rightly refused to enter a pro-austerity coalition. In any event the struggle to defend the working people of Greece, who are being put to the sword, now continues on the streets and in the workplaces.

Even if Syriza had won it would have been the mass mobilization of the working class from below that would have been decisive in repelling the onslaught that would have been launched by the European and Greek ruling classes. Now that mobilization is more necessary than ever and in this the revolutionaries of ANTARSYA and the SWP’s sister party SEK have a huge role to play. Particularly important is the struggle against the neo-Nazi, Golden Dawn, who held their dangerously high 7%, and have the support of large sections of the police. Golden Dawn are not only a deadly threat to the immigrants they scapegoat, but to the left and workers’ movement as a whole and to any future government of the left.

Egypt

Socialists, and indeed democrats, everywhere can be relieved that in the Egyptian Presidential elections Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last PM and the candidate of the military, would seem to have been defeated by Muhammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is clear that a victory for Shafiq would have significantly strengthened the counterrevolution.

But it is equally clear that Mursi’s win solves nothing because the counterrevolution, led by SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) is moving forward regardless. Last week the Egyptian Supreme Court, under the influence of the military) ruled that the Parliamentary Elections (Egypt’s first free elections in more than 30 years) were ‘unconstitutional’ and that parliament was dissolved. Then on Sunday night, just hours after the close of polling –by which time they would have known that Shafiq had lost – the military issued a Constitutional Declaration.

This declaration a)drastically limited the powers of the incoming president denying him any say over the armed forces, b) asserted the right of the armed forces to deal with ‘civil unrest’, c) asserted the right of the military to oversee the drafting of the new constitution, d) asserted the right of SCAF to rule until a new parliament is elected, e) postponed any new parliamentary elections till one month after the approval, by referendum, of the new constitution, (so if the people don’t vote for the constitution they don’t get a parliament and are stuck with the military anyway). It is in effect a ‘soft’ coup by the military.

Every step it takes makes it clear that the military is unwilling to cede power to the people or to any representatives of the people not under its control. So as in Greece the struggle will have to continue on the streets and in the workplaces. Here it is necessary to stress that the active participation of the working class and not just the heroism of the young revolutionaries in Tahrir Square will be necessary to bring the Egyptian Revolution to a successful conclusion.

What both the Greek and Egyptian elections show is that while elections matter and should not be ignored by socialists, they are only one aspect of the class struggle and not the decisive one. In the weeks and months ahead both the Greek and Egyptian working people may need our solidarity and, of course, we must remember that the best form of solidarity is to stoke the fires at home.

 John Molyneux

18.06.12

Irish Marxist Review 2 and The Politics of the Socialist Party

Irish Marxist Review 2 is now available online at www.irishmarxistreview.net

Here is a summary of the contents

Almost inevitably IMR 2 focuses first on the linked issues of recession, austerity and resistance. For nearly four years this nexus has been the central question in Irish politics – north and south. In our lead article Kieran Allen analyses and assesses the new spirit of resistance that has been evident in the Irish working class since the beginning of 2012, as manifested in the Household Tax campaign and a number of workers’ occupations. This is accompanied by articles from Peadar O’Grady and Marnie Holborow on the deeply damaging impact of the recession/austerity on two key areas of our society – health and higher education.

At the last election the Labour Party, with its slogan ‘It’s Frankfurt’s way or Labour’s way’, was one of the main beneficiaries of working class anger at Fianna Fail and the bankers. However from the moment they took office it was Frankfurt’s way all the way. But this total embrace of capitalism and neoliberalism has not prevented Labour laying claim to the legacy of Ireland’s greatest socialist, James Connolly, as they mark the centenary of the party’s foundation. Donal both exposes this nauseating hypocrisy and examines some of the problems in Connolly’s, and the wider movement’s, understanding of reformism, drawing out the implications for socialist strategy today.

Despite the fact that by rights the crisis of 2008 should have utterly discredited neoliberalism it has retained its grip on the economic policies of governments internationally. Brian Kelly examines how neoliberalism, with the active collaboration of Sinn Fein, is damaging and distorting the project of a ‘new’ Belfast, serving to entrench sectarianism rather than uproot it.

Another aspect of the crisis is the opportunity and challenge it presents to socialists. A ‘Letter from France’ by Lorcan Gray looks at the very serious setbacks experienced by the NPA (New Anti Capitalist Party) compared to the relative success of Melanchon and the Front de Gauche, while Donal Mac Fhearraigh contributes a background piece on the rise of Syriza who, as we go to press, have a chance of forming the next government of Greece in conditions of extreme crisis. John Molyneux contributes a piece on the history and politics of the Socialist Party (Ireland).  See below.

Central to the Marxist tradition, and in particular to the International Socialist tendency that the IMR is part of, is the principle of working class self-emancipation. James O’Toole examines how Marx himself arrived at this position through real engagement with workers’ struggles, i.e. how the greatest of our educators was himself educated.

On a different note, the airwaves this summer, in Ireland, and round the world, will be dominated by that supreme capitalist ‘spectacle’, the Olympic Games. Gareth Edwards disposes of the fallacy that sport is, or can be, ‘non-political’ and analyses the real Olympic spirit from Baron de Coubertin to today. And finally, in what will be a regular feature, Dave O’Farrell, Memet Uludag and Cathy Bergin revue some interesting recent books.

Here was my contribution.

The Politics of the Socialist Party[1]

Why are there two main organisations on the Irish radical left – the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party? This is a question that many ask today.

Both organisations work together in the United Left Alliance which currently has five TDs in Dail Eireann. But while working together in a common front against the right wing parties, neither the SWP or SP hide the differences that exist between them.

The purpose of this document is to trace the connections between the current political line and conduct of the SP and its fundamental politics developed over decades. Such a document is necessary not because we have any desire to quarrel with the SP – rather we wish to be able to work with them in a comradely and cooperative way where any divergences of perspective and tactics are debated openly and settled. Rather, its purpose is to clarify the differences in politics and methodology.

Given that this document, by its nature, is going to make a series of criticisms of the SP it is necessary to make one thing clear at the start: the members of the SP, both leaders and rank-and-file, are undoubtedly genuine and sincere socialists and working class militants who serve the cause of socialism with dogged determination, hard work and real commitment; this is precisely why we have been and remain keen to work with them in campaigns and strengthen our unity in the ULA. None of the criticisms presented here alter this

.

The Roots of SP politics

The SP is the Irish section of an international Trotskyist tendency called the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) which consists of a number of affiliated socialist organisations – most of them very small – in a variety of different countries. Its ‘parent’ organisation was what was then known as the Militant Tendency in Britain and its political and theoretical leader was Ted Grant, a South African Trotskyist who came to Britain in the 1930s and who became a leading figure in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) which for a short period in the late 1940s united most of Britain’s very few Trotskyists.  In the sixties, seventies and eighties what distinguished the politics of Ted Grant and of the Militant Tendency was their strategy of ‘entrism’ into the Labour Party, which was also adopted by virtually all their international affiliates in relation to their respective social democratic parties. 
In Ireland, the Militant first appeared in 1973 with a paper bearing that name and proclaiming in its banner headline, An Independent Programme for Labour. The Labour Party was entering a coalition with Fine Gael at the time and many left wingers had left in disgust. Militant, however, warned against any attempt to build any alternative party to the left of Labour. The only place socialists could usefully be, they claimed, was in the Irish Labour Party.
This policy came to an end in the early nineties after the expulsion from the Labour Party of a number of their leaders. Like the rest of the CWI, the Irish Militant then took the view that the Labour Party and social democratic parties everywhere had become capitalist parties. In Britain, the change to open party building was strongly, but unsuccessfully, resisted by Ted Grant, who was expelled, and in the mid- nineties the name Socialist Party was adopted in both England and Ireland. In Ireland, former leaders of the Militant such as Finn Geaney also departed at this time.
The current politics of the SP are a product of this whole long development. In particular they have been shaped by the following factors: 1) the legacy of Trotsky’s Fourth International; 2) their analysis of Russia and Eastern Europe; 3) their prolonged ‘entry’ into the Labour Parties; 4) the poll tax campaign their turn to open work in the nineties. We shall look at each in turn.

The Legacy of the Fourth International

When, in 1933, the Comintern or Third International, failed to mount any serious resistance to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, Trotsky decided that it was dead for the purposes of revolution. From that time on he sought to build a new revolutionary socialist international. Unfortunately circumstances were very much against him – this was a period of terrible defeats for the working class – and the Trotskyists made little progress. However in 1938 they decided to proclaim a new Fourth International. The founding conference in September 1938 was attended by only twenty one delegates from eleven countries (only one of whom, the American Max Shachtman, represented a substantial organisation) and met for only one day in a house in France.
They compensated for their actual weakness on the ground by adopting a grand name, ‘The Fourth International (World Party of Socialist Revolution)’ and an even grander programme, written by Trotsky, entitled The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International which also became known as ‘The Transitional Programme’. Since then the Trotskyist movement has undergone many splits and changes but in understanding the SP it is important to know that they and the CWI see themselves as the true ‘orthodox Trotskyists’ who still stand on the ground of this document and proclaim their adherence to its political method.  They see themselves, and themselves alone, as the true heirs of Trotsky and of the whole Marxist tradition.
This is unfortunate because there were major flaws involved in both the founding of the International and in its programme. In the first place it was highly problematic declaring the existence of a ‘world leadership’ without any serious base in the working class and bound to lead to a misplaced pride and arrogance. It led in turn to an over emphasis on, almost a fetishisation of, the importance of the programme at the expense of the movement of the working class from below. It also led to a belief that ‘the leadership’ can draw up the programme of the revolution in advance of, and without interaction with, the actual working class struggle. Marx, by contrast, used to say ‘One step forward of the real movement is worth a dozen programmes.’
 Moreover the economic and political perspectives on which the Transitional Programme was based, though plausible at the time, turned out to be mistaken. The programme declared that capitalism was in its ‘death agony’ and that, ‘The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be achieved under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate.’ From this Trotsky drew the conclusion that ‘there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms’ and that the reformist organisations, both Social Democratic and Stalinist ‘will depart the scene without a sound, one after the other’. In reality none of this happened: the Second World War brought the end of the economic crisis and was followed by the massive post-war boom in which the productive forces grew rapidly; there were substantial reforms (such as the establishment of the National Health Service in Britain and a Welfare State throughout much of Europe) and improvements in living standards across Europe and the USA; and in general the Social Democratic and Stalinist parties grew in strength.
Finding themselves having to deal with these difficulties, and with Trotsky no longer alive to assist them, many of Trotsky’s followers retreated into a conservative frame of mind in which defending the programme and maintaining the letter of Trotskyist ‘orthodoxy’ became all important. In 1946 Ted Grant was still repeating Trotsky from 1938:

The definitive decline of Europe, already begun in 1914, has been aggravated in the succeeding decades, and World War II has put its seal on this decline. While cyclical upturns will take place and are taking place at the present time, there can be no real growth of the productive forces as in the past. The chronic crisis and death agony of capitalism will once again be revealed in its full scope... The programme of the Fourth International will become the banner of the European and world proletariat.[2]

Indeed Grant was still echoing the words of the Transitional Programme in 1979. ‘...we are now in the epoch of the death agony of capitalism. There will be a tendency for living standards to fall in all the countries of capitalism, including the industrial countries, with only temporary exceptions. [3]
It is a dogmatic and mechanical approach which still affects the leaders of the SP today. They still believe they have the correct Marxist programme and that advancing this programme is the key to the socialist transformation of society This leads to a top down view of the relationship between the party and the working class. The party is in possession of vital insights which it must teach the working class because it has studied Trotsky’s transitional programme. Less emphasis is placed on a party learning from a working class which has entered struggles and which will throw up its own demands.

Russia and Eastern Europe: the Stalinist States

As ‘orthodox’ Trotskyists the Socialist Party, have always felt obliged to defend Trotsky’s characterisation of Stalinist Russia as a ‘degenerated workers’ state’. They argued that the Stalinist bureaucracy had betrayed genuine revolutionary socialism in Russia but that the survival of state ownership and state planning meant that, despite Stalinism, Russia remained fundamentally non-capitalist and a workers’ state. When in 1948 Tony Cliff first produced his analysis of Russia as state capitalist, it was Ted Grant who wrote the main reply to him.[4]
What was at stake in this argument was not just what label to attach to the Soviet Union, but what constituted the essential, the fundamental, difference between capitalism and a workers’ state. For Cliff it was which class controls production and therefore runs the society, for Grant it was the form of property (private versus state property). This became especially clear in relation to the establishment of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe. These regimes became ‘communist’ not by virtue of the working class in these countries taking power but by virtue of the advance of the Red Army. If state ownership was the decisive criterion for a workers’ state these countries had to be regarded as workers’ states, even if ‘deformed’ and not fully socialist, and this was Grant’s view and the view maintained by the whole of the CWI to this day. So fixated was Ted Grant with the state property criterion that even concluded at one point that Burma and Syria were workers’ states with planned economies. In other words the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of the economic foundations of socialism did not have to be ‘conquered by the working class itself’, as Marx put it, but could be established from above by a ‘leadership’ (in this case the Red Army). The subsequent military victories of ‘Communist’ forces, armies based on the peasantry rather the working class, in North Korea, China, Cuba ,Vietnam and Cambodia , all of which established state ownership of the main means of production, reinforced the point that making this the key criteria led away from the self emancipation of the working class from below as the essence of socialist transformation*. This in turn has dovetailed, in the political practice of the SP, with the focus on ‘the programme’ over and above the struggle.
Moreover if the Red Army can establish a series of workers’ states over the heads of the workers, why shouldn’t this be possible for a ‘socialist government’ with a ‘socialist programme’ in parliament?  Here we see one of the original roots of the SP’s current electoralism.

The Effects of Entrism

The tactic of entry into the mass social democratic parties was advocated by Trotsky, and adopted by his supporters in 1934 (it was known as ‘the French turn’ because it was first based on the situation in France) as a short term measure to relate to the masses of workers who, at that point, were joining these reformist parties. It was adopted by the Militant tendency as a long term (indeed more or less permanent) strategy and raised almost to the level of a principle. The long period, lasting more than three decades, during which entrism was pursued had a profound effect on shaping the politics of the Militant Tendency, the CWI as a whole, and the SPs of Britain and Ireland.
In the first place in order to remain in the Labour Party and not be expelled they had to disguise some aspects of their Marxist politics. In public they denied they were a revolutionary socialist or Leninist organisation, insisting they were only a current of thought around the Militant paper (when in fact they were a very tight democratic centralist party). They also presented themselves in the Labour Party, not as revolutionaries who wanted, a la Lenin in The State and Revolution, to smash the capitalist state but as left reformists who believed socialism could be brought about by electing a Labour Government pledged to socialist policies. No doubt, in private, the Militant leadership told a different, more revolutionary story, but since they recruited publicly on the ‘Labour Government with socialist policies’ basis there is little doubt that many of their members and, even more so, of their supporters accepted the left reformist parliamentary perspective.
The fact that they stood candidates, and got them elected as City councillors and MPs in Britain (such as Derek Hatton, Terry Fields and Dave Nellist) as Labour Party members, who had to be especially careful what they said, only reinforced this tendency.
As entrists they also adapted to their Labour Party hosts in other ways. They adopted a very narrow economistic approach to the working class. By economism we mean a near exclusive focus bread and butter issues and a failure to raise more difficult issues concerned with repression in the broader working class movement. For Lenin:

Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected ...  the Social-Democrat’s [i.e.  Marxist’s – JM] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects;[5]

But, in practice, this was not at all the approach of the Militant Tendency. All issues other than straightforward economic and class issues were either ignored or massively down played. Thus while they played a leading role in the Anti Water Charges campaign in the 1990s or in the fight against bin charges, they did not play a substantial role in anti-war campaigning at any time. They joined the Irish Anti-War Movement only after the massive mobilisation on 2003 and then left afterwards. Instead of targeting US imperialism as the main enemy, they tried to balance a condemnation of ‘terrorism’ with opposition to the US war efforts.
Anti- imperialism has always been a particular weakness (as it was for Social Democracy historically) .Thus they treated the anti-imperialist IRA as equally as bad as the pro-imperialist UVF and UDA. They refused, for example, to support political status for republican prisoners during the hunger strike of 1981 instead demanded a labour movement inquiry to determine who was and who was not a political prisoner. This, despite the fact, that many of the union leaders played an active role in conniving with the British and Irish states in trying to breaking the H Block movement. 
On Palestine they tend towards two statism, advocating both a Jewish and Arab state despite standard socialist objections to ethnic exclusivity, and to equal opposition to Hamas and Zionism. They oppose the boycott of Israeli goods as a concrete way giving support to the Palestinian cause. In both these cases they covered their effective abstention by reference to Trotsky’s opposition to individual terrorism and by, formally correct, but completely abstract calls for socialism.
Often what motivated these choices was a reluctance to offend or challenge the prejudices of ‘ordinary’ workers in the Labour Party or trade unions whose votes they needed in elections or for positions in the movement. For example, at the start of the great Miners Strike of 1984-5 in Britain many of the miners (for very understandable reasons) held very backward sexist and homophobic views and would chant sexist slogans on their demonstrations. The Militant comrades were unwilling to argue with the miners about these things, saying they were just part of working class culture, and criticised SWP members, who did challenge these ideas (in a comradely way) as being middle class.
Unfortunately this is a habit that persists to this day in the practice of the SP in both Britain and Ireland and it is linked to their ‘socialism from above’ approach and their electoralism. If you see the mass of workers as essentially a passive army of supporters because socialism will be introduced by a government with the correct socialist programme, then it doesn’t matter very much if their heads contain various backward and reactionary ideas, but if you see the working class as emancipating itself in revolutionary struggle then the fight for the consciousness of the class is of paramount importance.
Obviously the SP comrades believe their approach is correct but this leads them to defend it by attributing more backwardness to the working class than is justified and by quietly going along with conservative ideas when they can be used against others on the left (especially the SWP). Thus for example, they have been happy in the past to denounce the SWP as ‘all middle class students’ or ‘supporters of the IRA’. Indeed during their period in the Labour Party they used to argue that since the Labour Party was ‘the mass party of the working class’ anyone not in Labour Party (again, especially the SWP), were not really part of the labour movement at all.
Another legacy of entrism was that to operate semi-secretly under the hostile gaze of the Labour leadership Militant had to operate with a highly trained, strictly centralised core membership or cadre. This is in some respects a strength, and one which they retain, but unfortunately it went hand in hand with training their cadre in sectarian contempt for others on the left (especially their main rivals i.e. the SWP). Obviously any small left wing party needs its members to understand its political differences with other left parties but it does not need to educate them in a spirit of arrogant contempt which makes working together very difficult. This is what Militant and later, the SPs have tended to do.
Finally, the experience in the Labour Party led to a strategy of organising that stressed manoeuvring in back room committees to win control of particular campaigns. All the emphasis is on gaining key positions and bizarre alliances are sometimes formed in pursuit of this objective. Thus in the current anti-household campaign the SP have formed an effective alliance with anarchists and left republicans to gain control of key positions. They have even argued against the United Left Alliance intervening in the movement with coherent tactics that have been debated democratically within the alliance.

The Poll Tax, the Water Charges and the Turn to the Open Party

The abandonment of entrism and the turn to open party building was basically a product of the expulsions they experienced in the Labour Party in both Britain and Ireland. What made this particularly hard to cope with was that this was not supposed to happen. For years the Militant leadership had proclaimed that it was virtually a law of history that workers would flood into the Labour Party and that the party would move to the left.
The move out of Labour was preceded in 1989-90 by the struggle against the Poll Tax. First in Scotland (it was the making of Tommy Sheridan) and then in England and Wales, Militant were able to launch and lead mass campaigns of non-payment. Similarly, in Ireland the Socialist Party played an important role in the fight against water charges and managed to secure the election of Joe Higgins to the Dail, primarily as an anti-water charges candidate.
These two struggles have provided a mainly positive experience for the current fight against household charges. However this is not the whole story. There are other aspects of the anti-poll tax struggle which the SPs are less keen to remember or celebrate and which could have a bearing on their behaviour in the current household tax campaign.
The first is that the campaign by no means consisted just of mass non-payment and the poll tax was not defeated just by non-payment. On the contrary, from the start of the struggle there were mass demonstrations and protests at town halls, some of which turned into attempts to storm those town halls. Then on 31 March 1990 the Anti-Poll Tax Federation (under Militant leadership) called a national demonstration in London. In the run up to the demo Militant started to worry that it might turn violent. They did their very best to try to prevent this. On the coaches to London Militant stewards tried to get everyone to pledge not to be violent. In the event, however, the police attacked the march and it turned into a massive riot in and around Trafalgar Square.
Inevitably there was a media storm against ‘violence’ and calls for ‘exemplary sentences’ by the Labour establishment like Roy Hattersley. Sadly the Militant leadership also condemned the riot and blamed it on anarchists. Steve Nally, Militant member and secretary of the Anti-Poll Tax Federation, said they would ‘hold an enquiry and name names’. Subsequently Militant attributed the defeat of the Poll Tax exclusively to non-payment and denied that the mass demo and riot had anything to do with it. Tory Minister, Alan Clark, in his diaries, tells a different story. ‘Civil Disorder. Could cut either way, but I fear will scare people into wanting a compromise – just as did Saltley Colliery [in the 1972 Miners Strike]. In the corridors and the tea room people are now talking openly of ditching the Lady to save their skins.’ Doubtless the SPs are now embarrassed by this rather shameful episode but the memory of it may be a factor in their original hostility to mass protests in the Household Tax campaign.
It is already noticeable that the move of the household campaign to mass civil disobedience has taken place in areas where the SP has little influence. In New Ross and Donegal, for example, crowds of people have invaded council chambers. The SP, by contrast, has emphasised public meetings and a national indoor rally rather than a mass national demonstration to the Dail.
Two other things need to be said about this period. The first was that the election of Joe Higgins to the Dail on an anti-water charges ticket opened up a huge opportunity for the SP but they proved unable to adapt their party to dealing with a huge influx of workers. Political education remained confined to the grooves of a narrow propagandist group and those who joined as fighters against wage charges soon found it difficult to adapt to the long meetings discussing the Transitional Programme. After an initial surge of recruitment, many left.
 Unfortunately, the current SP leadership drew the conclusion from this experience that an even deeper immersion into sectarian politics was required. In 2004, against the background of the bin charges dispute, for example, the party produced an extraordinary pamphlet attacking the SWP and former key figures that had left, including Joan Collins, currently a TD and Dermot Connolly, the former party secretary. In it, they proclaimed that ‘Based on experience going back many years we do not believe the SWP has a positive role in the re-development of the movement’. The aim was to clearly inoculate their membership against any genuine dialogue with others on the left. The result of this experience has led the SP to adopt a dual approach.
On one hand there is a genuine attempt to engage with mass movements and to encourage them into existence. But this is often combined with a political methodology of manoeuvring and denouncing perceived rivals on the left.
 The second is that the combination of the extremely hostile environment in the Labour Party and the success of the Poll tax and anti-water charges campaigns convinced the Militant leadership to make a final break from Labour. However entrism had been so central to the Militant and CWI tradition, so much their political trademark, that this created a substantial political/theoretical problem for them. Were they to concede that decades of entrism had been a failure? Or perhaps they could acknowledge that the strategy was more problematic than they had previously acknowledged? Neither of these options seemed to have appealed. Instead they opted to argue that entrism was no longer appropriate because the Labour Party had qualitatively changed. From being ‘the mass party of the working class’ it had become, they said, a purely capitalist party, indistinguishable from the Tories or Fianna Fail. This merely exchanged one mechanical position for another.
The Labour Party had never been simply a working class party. It had never had a predominantly working class leadership; it had never fought consistently for working class interests; and it had never governed in the interests of the working class when in office. On the contrary it had always propped up capitalism and accepted all the key priorities of the capitalist class. There was no heyday of working class politics in the Irish Labour Party. Labour, for example, had led the campaign against Noel Browne’s Mother and Child scheme in the 1950s and even when it turned left in the sixties, it was led by a member of the Knights of Columbanus, Brendan Corish. 
Lenin described the British Labour Party as follows:

...most of the Labour Party’s members are workingmen. However, whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does not depend solely upon a membership of workers, but also upon the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat. Regarded from this, the only correct point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party. [6]

Lenin summed up the contradictory character of the Labour Party by defining it as a ‘capitalist workers’ party’. So when Labour moved rightwards under Blair or Spring it was a quantitative shift rather than a fundamental change. Moreover what constituted the ‘workers’ element in this capitalist workers’ party, namely its working class base -  as expressed in its vote, its membership and its organic relationship to the trade unions -  was weakened but clearly did not disappear.
By adopting the undialectical view that the Labour Party was now a purely capitalist party the SP threw away decades of Marxist analysis of  Social Democracy in favour of a position they would previously have denounced as ultra-left.
This is what lies behind the Irish SP’s current dogmatic and sectarian refusal to contemplate sharing a platform with even former Labour Party representatives in campaigns. These, it is argued, must first prove, their genuine socialist credentials before being allowed to share platforms. This sectarian approach misses out on opportunities to bring many more people over from Labour to the radical left. 

The SP today

The politics of the SP in Ireland today are a product of all this history. Yes, they are committed and hard working socialists who undoubtedly are genuine in their desire to end capitalism, but they have a mechanical formalistic view of how this is to be achieved. They emphasise the question of the programme over struggle from below, and the ‘socialist programme’ they so exalt emphasizes nationalisation and state planning over self –emancipation of the working class. They retain an economistic view of working class struggle, showing little interest in other issues. They are still weak on issues of anti-imperialism, especially in the North where they equate republican nationalism and orange loyalism, and demand that any united left formation in the North must be based on acceptance of their position. In their own words:

The opposition of the Socialist Party to the extension of the ULA into North has nothing to do with being slow to move on the issues that affect the working class, but is based on having a principled and sensitive approach to the conflict of national aspirations  [Note ‘conflict of national aspirations’, i.e. loyalism – loyalty to British imperialism - is regarded as a ‘national aspiration’] that exists in the North.

We believe that a new workers party in the North, even more so than elsewhere, must be based on the emergence of a layer of working class activists from struggles. It is vital that a new formation is rooted in the understanding of the need to oppose both loyalist and republican sectarianism,...and for workers unity against sectarianism and capitalism.

While sometimes over the last years, the SWP have argued for workers unity, that does not mean that they have overcome their one sided view of the national question [i.e. opposition to imperialism] which has been a hallmark of their position.

The SWP approach has been infected with the view that republicanism as it emerged during the Troubles is progressive, and that includes an approach that tends to excuse Catholic sectarianism while highlighting and condemning loyalist sectarianism. [7]

In the history of the Marxist movement there is a particular term, ‘centrism’, which accurately describes the political character of the SP. The term comes from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) which at the time of the First World War contained three currents – the right, led by Scheidemann and Noske, who were openly reformist, supported the War and helped suppress the German Revolution (including being complicit in the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht); a revolutionary left led by Luxemburg and Liebknecht, who opposed the War, and became the Spartacus League and then founded the German Communist Party in 1919; and vacillating between the right and the revolutionary left, the Centre led by Karl Kautsky. In words Kautsky proclaimed his commitment to Marxism and ‘revolution’ but in practice he always avoided drawing revolutionary conclusions or pursuing revolutionary action. Hence Lenin and Trotsky developed the term ‘Centrism’ to describe political tendencies that waiver between revolution and reform; that in the abstract adhere to a revolutionary programme but are conservative and cautious when it comes to action.

 This is the Socialist Party. They are formally committed to revolution but in practice highly electoralist. They have a top down and controlling attitude in campaigns such as the household charges where they originally insisted on drawing up ‘the plan’ in advance and on everyone else adhering to it. Originally they tried to discourage protests and national demonstrations and arguing that all the mass of working class people need to do is ‘stay at home and stay away from their computers’. Working people transform themselves and their consciousness in struggle. That, Marx says, is how they fit themselves to run society. But if what you really want is just for them to vote for you, why not ask them to ‘stay at home’, so long as they remember you when it comes to the election.

The same electoralism is shown in their role in relation to the ULA. After much prevarication they agreed to the ULA before the last election – as an electoral alliance- but since the election they have opposed any development of the ULA beyond a mere electoral alliance, blocking virtually all proposals in that direction on the Steering Committee.

As true believers, sincerely convinced that they and they alone are possessors of the true Marxist method inherited from Trotsky, they are reluctant in the extreme to put themselves in a position in any campaign or in the ULA where they might be democratically outvoted by the rank and file. [The Socialist Party in Britain literally walked out en masse of the Socialist Alliance when that body adopted the democratic principle of one person one vote – and claimed this represented the SWP wrecking the organisation!].

A useful insight into the SPs real modus operandi is provided by Dermot Connolly’s account of their behaviour over the question of a list of anti-bin tax candidates.

Having been members of the SP until very recently, and involved in its leading bodies, we can state without any doubt that the SP has been and remains absolutely determined not to become involved in any sort of election pact or list which would involve the SWP. However, given the events of last autumn, they had to respond to the pressure from working people that the bin tax campaigns should put up a united front and really put it up to the right wing parties, and labour, in the June elections.

They therefore came up with the public position that they were in favour of a slate of anti bin tax candidates, provided it contained genuine people who had actually had involvement in the struggle. On paper this sounds fine. Why give a platform to political opportunists to jump on the band wagon? It is also the case that if a slate was open to anybody and everybody that some people with no real creditability would have stood, getting derisory votes and weakening the overall effect and thus the campaign.

The reality though was different. the SP were not concerned with putting forward a creditable list of candidates, but of ensuring that there was no list. At a meeting of the four campaigns to discuss a possible all Dublin list, it was quickly clear that we were not facing a situation where anybody and everybody was trying to get themselves onto this list. There could have been a list of twenty plus candidates, all of whom had played some role in building the various campaigns, and were likely to be nominated as candidates by local campaigns...


Instead the SP insisted on a limited list, which included only those SWP candidates who they couldn't argue against. When it was proposed by people at this meeting that areas where there was a question mark over the local campaigns' level of organisation and activity, such as in Ringsend or Coolock/Artane, we could write to the membership, calling a meeting and then judge whether to support candidates on the basis of the level of turnout and local support, This was rejected out of hand. So was a proposal to facilitate a meeting between the SP and SWP (who had made clear their willingness to co operate and withdraw one or two candidates) to try and resolve differences. The SP eventually gave an ultimatum; either their version of the list or they would not participate in it.  [My emphasis - JM] [8]

Despite all these problems the SWP remains willing and committed to working in a comradely way with the SP in the interests of Left unity and the wider interests of the working class. We hope that joint work will improve trust and even help the SP to overcome some of its more mechanical approaches to issues. Doubtless we will also learn much in the process. We believe the Household Tax campaign can win and that the ULA, if it develops, still has the potential to be a pole of attraction to working people. But we are not willing to be tied down or restricted to the limits imposed by the SPs mechanistic approach to the struggle.

[1] Dermot Connolly, ‘The Socialist Party, Joan Collins and the Bin Tax Campaign’

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[1] This article was originally written as an internal briefing document for the SWP. Thanks are due to Kieran Allen for his assistance with the piece.

[2] Ted Grant, ‘Economic Perspectives’, 1946, http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1946/04/economy.htm

[3] http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1979/08/world.htm

[4] ‘Against the theory of State Capitalism – Reply to Comrade Cliff’ http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm .

[5] V.I. Lenin, What is to be Done?, Collected Works, Moscow, 1961, Vol.5, pp.412-23

[6] V.I.Lenin, On Britain, London 1959, p.460)

[7] What programme for the United Left Alliance? www.socialistworld.net, 14/07/2011 .