CS Exec response to Revo proposal for a “student coordination”
Revolution (Revo), the small youth front controlled by Trotskyist group Workers Power, have recently circulated a proposal amongst the student left calling for a “student coordination”.
The way this has been circulated was at times cynical. When the statement was distributed at the Stop the War student activists meeting in London on February 7 many activists did not know of its origins because it was not signed by any groups or individuals, it simply ended asking those who were interested to get in touch “by emailing studentcoordination@gmail.com“. The statement simply described itself as being drawn up by “student activists”.
Much more positive was the fact that Revo contacted us directly on February 9 asking Communist Students for our “views” on the proposal. We publish below an open letter we have sent for distribution amongst Revo members responding to the statement. In it we outline why we think the statement is flawed and urge the comrades to seriously consider the question of revolutionary unity on the basis of Marxism.
Back in the heady days of 2003 Workers Power were insisting upon the importance of a revolutionary programme: “How can we attract mass forces from the reformist Labour Party if we adopt a revolutionary policy? Should we not reach a more limited agreement first? This argument, which sounds so realistic at first sight, is in fact a council of despair. It assumes that mass forces cannot be won from reform to a revolutionary policy. Every attempt to make headway by presenting a halfway house programme to the working class has ended up strengthening reformism” (Workers Power, May, 2003). The statement they are distributing today is a far cry from that!
Their proposal can be read here: http://lseoccupation.blogspot.com/2009/02/call-for-national-coordination.html
Our response:
Dear Revolution comrades,
thank you for contacting us regarding your proposal for a radical student coordination.
You highlight the significance of the ongoing wave of student occupations in solidarity with the people of Gaza, the broadening out to other political issues which is both necessary and beginning to occur, and the deepening recession which means a likely prospect of “increases in education cuts, student unemployment and poverty, even racism and war.” In all of this we agree with you. These are significant times and they cry out for a serious response from the left. However, whilst you mention some of its most noticeable recent symptoms, you do not mention what is the defining feature of the period we are entering into – that capitalism as a system is in its most profound crisis since the 1930s. Indeed your statement does not even mention the word “capitalism”, let alone the positive revolutionary socialist alternative that we must fight for.
You claim that all of these factors “point to the need for the networks of activists formed around the Gaza movement to form a national coordination to bring all our struggles to the next level.” While we would not be against such a move, we have to point out that what all this really points out “the need for” is a united revolutionary Communist Party, and a united revolutionary communist student organisation. This is not an issue that we can put off until some undefined point in the future. It is an urgent necessity now! Without such an organisation and the level of revolutionary unity that it entails any activist networks that are set up will be unable to put up the fight that our class – the working class – needs.
You hope to base this coordination on “the networks formed around the Gaza occupations”, the existing left student groups, “Antiwar groups and many other student societies”. But nowhere do you mention what political basis you seek to found this coordination upon. It is almost as though the prime issue for you is who is involved, not why. Of course, both are important. An activist network based upon any politics would be pretty worthless (except perhaps as a recruiting ground for this or that sect) unless it involved enough people to put up a serious fight. But for revolutionary socialists the politics upon which any activist network is based are hardly unimportant – they are central to what it will go on to do. So why is there no mention of what politics you want this coordination to be based on?
We are sure that you see this coordination as being significantly different from other student “networks” which have been set up, such as Education Not for Sale and Another Education is Possible. But we can see little real difference between them, and neither will the majority of students. Certainly, without laying down a clear political marker any new activist network will struggle to come to much. It will be unlikely to get off the ground at all without the involvement of the larger left groups, but just as in other networks they will be out to dominate it and use it for their own sectarian advantage. They would either succeed, or the network would be consumed by a crippling stalemate. If you fail to get them on board the most you could hope for is a Revo-plus (in terms of numbers) on a substantially sub-Revo political platform (if your current failure to raise a political basis for such a network is anything to go by).
Let's fight for what we believe in
We are convinced that there are no short-cuts. The fight for the revolutionary unity that is necessary to provide effective action is a tough one. But it cannot be dodged. Not if we are to remain true to our goal of communism. We can only win revolutionary unity with a hard fought political struggle against the sectarian and opportunist ideas dominant on today’s left. This requires a sharp, polemical intervention into the left that wins you few friends in the short term. But it is nonetheless vital. Without recognising where the left is today and accounting for its past we cannot move forward. This does not mean a shirking of our duties regarding the class struggle. Communists must always be at the centre of the struggles of our class. But we do not seek to deceive advanced workers through concealing the differences and divisions amongst the left (including within our own organisations). Not least because these debates are not the private property of the left, but concern the working class as a whole. If our class is to become a class for itself, able to make revolution and lead society, then it cannot be mollycoddled, it must master the debates of the left, not have them hidden from it. In absolute contrast to the stultifying regime of Workers Power where political differences can only be expressed internally, Lenin insisted that the working class have full access to the political debates of the Bolsheviks in order that they may educate themselves to a position where they were capable of leading the fight for the emancipation of humanity. And all of this in a situation far more dangerous and repressive than that which we find ourselves in today.
If an activist network or student coordination is to be of any use today, it must as a priority make itself a centre for the thoroughgoing discussion of differences on the left. Not in the form of some abstract debating society. But as a forum which directly connects these debates with what we need – revolutionary unity in a Communist Party.
For our part, we accept your invitation to attend a national meeting provisionally dates April 18. We wonder – why were we not invited to the meeting on February 7 which drew up this statement? Who was present? We have made clear the kind of orientation we think the student left needs to making, however we are practically alone on the left in this view at present. Just because we view proposals and forms such as activist networks and the coordination you call for as insufficient, and at present unviable in a successful form, this does not mean that we will absent ourselves from the discussions and forms that exist and are thrown up. It must be said that this proposal is very reminiscent of Workers Power’s flawed call regarding local social forums.
It is positive that various left groups have been able to cooperate enough to organise the free education demonstration for February 25, but this process has not been without problems and the politics upon which it is based are insufficient. We do not think it is likely that these groups will be able to work together constructively in a permanent network or student coordination at this point in time. For the reasons we state above we view your proposal as being insufficient and will not put our name to it. We will attend the proposed national meeting, arguing as we have consistently done, for the unity of the left around the acceptance (not agreement with every dot and comma) of a Marxist programme – a crucial distinction in the history of the Marxist programme. We will consider involving ourselves further based upon what happens at that meeting and in any discussions between now and then. We hope that you accept these criticisms in the comradely spirit in which they are aimed and that you seriously consider the issue of forging revolutionary unity on the basis of Marxism. We look forward to your response and the opening of a serious discussion on this.
“Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists and opponents and distorters of Marxism” (Lenin, ‘On Unity’, 1914).
Communist Students Executive.
It’s fairly typical for WP/Revo to set up some front or other and then hide behind it completely. This goes back to Revo’s “original sin”: WP hides behind an “independent youth group” that makes no mention of WP. There’s no link to WP on the Revo homepage, even though the overlap in the membership is (according to the last WP member I asked) about 80%, i.e. 80% of Revo is in WP and 80% of WP is in Revo.
Maybe it is possible to set up a new students’ organization in Britain now. But what is the difference between this initiative and the students’ fronts of the SWP, the AWL etc.?
What is the difference between them? Next to nothing.
What do they have in common? Classic ‘broad front’ groups to build the ‘revolutionary party’ – the smaller cog driving the bigger wheel etc etc
The movement needs Marxism not more of this nonsense which has failed, and will fail, time and time again.
http://www.worldrevolution.org.uk/index.php?id=24,1013,0,0,1,0
Thats not a response Luke?
No, its not. Be patient. Treat it as background reading or something.
So basically ENS without social imperialism.
This would definitely be a step forward, but if that really is your “vision” for student politics revolutionary unity then you really do need to think again.
Marxists as Marxists. We look forward to a proper reply Luke.
Ben
Dear Communist Students,
Here is our response to your article criticising our proposal for a national student co-ordination.
We believe that the meeting on the 18th April is an excellent opportunity to gather together activists radicalised by recent events, particularly around the university occupations, and to unite in action around common goals.
This co-ordination has been called not just because of the anger at the attacks on Gaza, which has seen the largest anti-war mobilisations since the invasion of Iraq, but also because these protests come at the same time as the severe attack on democracy within the NUS.
To top this off we are seeing the recession bite even harder. Students have seen £200 million cuts in their grants, face a push to lift the cap on tuition fees, which could see some universities charging up to £10,000 per year, and vicious cutbacks to university budgets, with London Met and Liverpool University, already hit and many more facing similar attacks once attacks on public sector spending get really underway.
It is against this background of an historic crisis in the capitalist system, with the bosses demanding workers pay for the crisis in the system, that the student movement has an opportunity to develop and coordinate a united resistance on the streets and in the campuses that links up with workers’ struggles.
The development of the student movements abroad provides great lessons as to how we can organise here. The prime example is the non-CPE movement in France of 2006 where well organised national delegations of students united with workers and immigrant youth against government attacks.
Communist Students have wrongly counter-posed the need for uniting students in struggle to the need for a revolutionary communist students organisation.. It is through organising against the injustices that are part and parcel of the capitalist system that students and workers will turn to communists for answers. We need a strategy that links the fight for the most immediate and pressing demands of students, workers and youth, with strengthening our organisations and making real incursions on the economic and political power of the ruling class.
Unless we fight to build a united front with layers far wider than the small organisations of the far left, and, in particular fight for real organs of struggle, like co-ordinations at a national and local level, then we will never be able to show in practice that revolutionary communists have a programme that represents the fundamental and historic interests of the working class. Steps we can take towards strengthened organisation and unity in action – even though they may alone be small steps at first – are an absolutely essential part of this. One that false counter positions between a united front and revolutionary organisation cannot grasp.
You say you argue for principled Marxist politics, yet you fail to see the need to unite with other forces to fight for common goals. Rather, CS appears to shout from the sidelines on the need for Marxism with no message at all as to what the the next step for the movement should be at any time.
But the inconsistency of CS is astonishing. When wildcat strikes took place at the Lindsey oil refinery and Staythorpe brandishing the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’, CS decided to support the strike. We are now left with the bizarre situation in which CS does not support a ‘radical coordination of student struggles’, but does support a strike with a reactionary goal: British workers first, before migrants.
This is, to be honest, what happens when Marxism ceases to act as a guide to action for the class – i.e a real revolutionary programme – and becomes instead a comfort blanket that the CS comrades use to make up for their failure to advance a perspective and strategy for the concrete struggles of workers and students today.
Revolution NC
This completely fails to address the issues covered in the letter we sent you, and ignores all of the direct questions we posed. We will of course put together a reply in due time, but comrades, you really must do better than this.
Hi comrades,
I hope that Communist Students can attend the meeting on April 18th as it is looking like it will be quite a an important step forward in coordinating various struggles and left forces in the NUS and wider student movement. There was an organising meeting on Monday at KCL which was attended by comrades from Revo, Workers Power, AWL, SWP and several students not in a group but involved in occupations from universities like Strathclyde and KCL.
On Ben’s point
This meeting is not intended as a step towards ‘revolutionary unity’, it is however a necessary, open and democratic forum for students from campaigns and universities across the country to share experiences and ideas, as well as to engage with key debates on issues such as Gaza, the economic crisis and so on. It will not be a top table heavy or tightly controlled meeting with manoeuvres behind the scenes. It will also not be setting up a new campaign or a new organisation as such, i.e. it will not replace ENS or another education is possible, but will instead act as an opportunity for discussion and ‘unity’ around action and broad political goals.
Therefore all left wing, radical and democratic students are invited to attend. The egroup is at studentcoordination@googlegroups.com – I can send you the minutes of the organising meeting held on Monday if you like which contains a draft timetable for the event.
There will be another meeting, maybe in Manchester or London in early April to try and finalise the time table.
Simon,
Thanks for your cordial invite. I have finally been added to the discussion list now. Thanks.
I am rather taken aback by your comments that “it will not be setting up a new campaign or a new organisation as such, ie it will not replace ENS or AEIP, but will instead act as an opportunity for discussion and ‘unity’ around action and broad political goals”.
Why then is the statement you have put out on this co-ordination entitled “For a New Student Movement!”? There is even a Facebook Group, set up by a leading Revolution member in Leeds!
We are for a new student movement – a mass movement of the inspiring and revolutionary project of Marxism. This is what we have been fighting for since our foundation. We are convinced that there are increasing amounts of students and youth who are seeing through the rotten system of capitalism and looking for answers. Setting up politics we know to be insufficient has palpably failed and will not work this time either.
This stuff about “unity around action and broad political goals” or the “united front” strikes me as just some sort of fig leaf for another of these failed ‘broad front’ projects with Revolution as the ‘small cog driving the bigger wheel’. Indeed, your sentence on “unity around action and broad political goals” could just have easily have come from the SWP, the AWL or the SP. It is a very similar method.
Maybe you can clear this up though and – unlike the ‘Revo NC’ response – actually address some of the political criticisms we made of your initiative?
I appreciate that Workers’ Power’s version of ‘democratic centralism’ may be problematic in actually allowing you to publicly articulate what you actually think, but a proper response would nonetheless be very useful.
For the unity of Marxists as Marxists!
Ben
Well we agree that a new movement must be built, what organisational form it takes is of course the question which must be resolved in debate and discussion, principally amongst the already existing organisations and activists. The AWL want to put a motion into the April meeting calling for a steering committee and a new student federation. We will see what the result of that is!
Indeed, your sentence on “unity around action and broad political goals” could just have easily have come from the SWP, the AWL or the SP. It is a very similar method.
Yes there is a general method in that phrase which most of the left adopts. We agree with it – although in practice most groups practical campaigning work can be quite opportunist.
And we do not want to be a small wheel turning a bigger wheel – we genuinely want to work to take a step forward to establish a large, dynamic broad movement – not just of Marxists but of many different progressive schools of thought. This is called the united front – the Comintern wrote about it extensively. I think there is a methodological error in your schematic view of Marxists unity as a predicate to building a united front. The stop the war movement was built without ‘marxist’ unity (by that I suppose you mean programmatic unity) and mobilised millions. How could we have built that if the left instead focussed its energies on debate and discussion as an a priori process before action? That is a recipe for passivity and paralysis. How can Revolution unite with the AWL as ‘Marxists’ when we fundamentally disagree on major issues (imperialism, resistance movement, Palestine) and so on.
Anyway, you know all this so won’t get into a long drawn out discussion on it (that is what people always say though;-) !) so will leave it at that and just urge the CS and their contacts to throw their weight into this initiative and help get the ball rolling.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the posts. Sorry I haven’t responded sooner – I’m in the thick of writing my dissertation right now. They are in many ways a bit more helpful than the Revo NC initial response where you write:
“[But] The inconsistency of CS is astonishing. When wildcat strikes took place at the Lindsey oil refinery and Staythorpe brandishing the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’, CS decided to support the strike. We are now left with the bizarre situation in which CS does not support a ‘radical coordination of student struggles’, but does support a strike with a reactionary goal: British workers first, before migrants”.
We are quite clear – despite the lofty hyperbole there is not actually a real radical coordination to support – if there was then we would be in it arguing for the politics of Marxism.
We are also clear that Lindsey was a strike that required critical support. Yes, many of the workers may have had all sorts of strange ideas and illusions in their heads but that is the nature of things when workers move for the first time: it was similar at the outbreak of the Great Miner’s Strike of 1984-85, where some miners’ groups initially ran page 3 girl posters in publications. It is struggle and politics that decide.
Moreover, it is slightly odd that you lump us together with the out and out uncritical supporters of the strike, such as the Communist Party of Britain, who have banned us from their new electoral adventure. Why? Our ‘ultra-left’ opposition to the strike, apparently.
So now onto the serious questions for discussion.
It is good to hear you say that a new movement will have to be built “in debate and discussion, principally amongst the already existing organisations and activists”. In my past experience many Revo members have been dismissive of the approach of going through the existing left. It is good that you recognise that they are important. But we cannot build unity and a new movement through some lowest common denominator lash-up. To achieve real unity on the left we must first challenge all the wrong-headed opportunist nonsense that passes for common sense on the left today. That does not mean that we cannot work together in common actions in the mean time. Indeed this is very important, and can actually heighten the discussion of differences and pin-point exactly where we agree and where we differ, as our comrades involved in the Sheffield University occupation have experienced recently. But these issues of dispute cannot be pushed to the back in order to facilitate some cosy compromise deal. How we unite in action is of fundamental importance.
The Revo ‘response’ to our letter says that “Communist Students have wrongly counter-posed the need for uniting students in struggle to the need for a revolutionary communist students organisation” – something we explicitly argued against in our letter. But then you go on to argue that:
“The stop the war movement was built without ‘marxist’ unity … and mobilised millions. How could we have built that if the left instead focussed its energies on debate and discussion as an a priori process before action? That is a recipe for passivity and paralysis.”
What? You take action before thinking and discussing what you are going to do? This is voluntristic anarchism, not Marxism.
It is quite shockingly honest of you to concede that you share a political method with the SWP, SP and AWL on this – despite the disclaimer that they tend towards opportunism in practice.
Without any qualifications you hold up the Stop the War Coalition as a positive example. Certainly we agree that its programme of opposition to war was not one that was based on Marxism. But this is not something to celebrate! STWC’s politics were based upon pacifism, Stalinism, labourism, along with overtures to outright liberalism and a cosy seat at the table for Islamism.
Now we would not have opposed the involvement in STWC actions of people with any of these ideas. But that the ‘Marxists’ of the SWP (who you share a methodology with) uncritically promoted those with these politics and failed to put forward a Marxist/proletarian internationalist alternative is not something we applaud. It was not an example of the united front – certainly not in the way that the Bolsheviks described it.
On the issue of numbers, perhaps the fact that STWC had such broad, shallow politics meant that some people who would not have been comfortable with a proletarian internationalist stance got involved when they wouldn’t have otherwise. But the opposition to the war was going to be massive anyway, reflecting a genuine anger.
Yet the involvement of the masses swiftly ebbed away. Was this down to a hard turn to Marxism on the part of STWC? Of course not. But it can partly be explained by the absence of Marxism – a politics that could genuinely explain the world situation, the nature of imperialism, and the route to success – in STWC.
“How can Revolution unite with the AWL as ‘Marxists’ when we fundamentally disagree on major issues (imperialism, resistance movement, Palestine) and so on.”
1) Simon, were there no differences on “major issues” in the Bolshevik party? Imperialism? Insurrection? To a large degree these differences can be ‘overcome’ through democratic centralism as an organisational principle.
By this we do not mean gagging critical minorities in public, getting members to sign up to an almost religious set of beliefs. What we are interested in is a programme of definite demands and goals of Marxism – which members are asked to accept as the basis of common action, not necessarily agree to. This is a crucial distinction that Lenin and the Bolshevik faction upheld as the basis for revolutionary unity at the start of the twentieth century.
2) Nowhere do we suggest that revolutionary unity can be won without a fierce ideological battle against opportunism on the left. Unity is not a slogan which can be won with a flick of a magic wand, it is something we have to fight for in a culture of open, sharp and frank exchange in front of the class. Again, read the Bolshevik press and its open publication of disagreements and differences between leading members.
Lastly, while debating the united front is useful and throws some light on the issue, it does not directly address the issue of this student coordination as this will not be a united front. The Comintern policy of the united front is about unity of the working class movement as a whole – as a way for the Comintern’s parties to win over the rank-and-file of mass organizations the majority of workers were aligned to such as the SPD or the Italian Socialist Party.
It is not about the small campaigns or blocs composed of tiny sects and individual activists. This is what today’s left tends to call ‘united fronts’, but they are wrong. That does not mean to say that such campaigns and blocs cannot take us forward and be useful, but we are kidding ourselves if we think they are united fronts.
As we have said, this particular bloc – the student coordination – is being proposed on vastly insufficient politics. As you yourself admit, they are to be consciously set up on a non-Marxist basis. This is why it is risible for you to suggest that our Marxism is a “comfort blanket” which we can snuggle around to avoid having to put forward a strategy for students.
Our strategy is that radicalised students need to be won to the politics of communism – ie the mass party, the fight for extreme democracy, independent working working class action, proletarian internationalism.
This – something that cannot be achieved through false diplomatic unity – is what we patiently argue for in all of our work, which is also why we look to expose opportunism in its various manifestations from the SWP’s class-collaborationism to the AWL’s left-Zionist social imperialism.
This co-ordination call is counterposed to the politics of Marxism, and is unlikely (to say the least) to gain a mass response.
We will attend the meeting on April 18, argue for what we think is necessary, and see what happens.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Comradely,
Dave.
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