Harley Filben heard a debate initially consisting of filling in blanks

As part of its (often basically nominal) commitment to revolution, the SWP arranged a bloc of three Marxism sessions devoted to that subject. The first saw SWP veteran Colin Barker give some answers to a fundamentally important question – what is a revolutionary situation? His views were in many ways more sober and considered than one has come to expect from an organisation that exists in a more or less permanent state of slightly forced excitement.

He began with two definitions: one from Trotsky, who argued that a revolutionary situation was characterised by dual power; and another from the bourgeois political scientist, Charles Tilly, who identified three factors – the old regime’s loss of a distinct part of its power, contenders to power enjoying a substantial level of popular support, and an inability of the old regime to immediately repress the contenders.

It was important, he said, to be clear on what did and what did not fit these overlapping definitions. May 1968 was not a revolutionary situation, for example, as the old regime never lost control. Conversely, there are some conjunctures that “don’t smell right” to revolutionaries, but nevertheless fit the bill: comrade Barker cited the fall of Franco, the end of Stalinist rule in Poland and the end of apartheid as stitch-up transitions that nevertheless were real responses to real revolutionary ferment.

In 2011, with the Arab awakening and mass revolts in Greece and Spain, we are clearly not faced with such a situation – yet. The process is drawn out – there is no “straight line” to a resolution, and everything is still to play for. These processes begin, Barker argued with reference to Egypt, with a great show of mass popular unity around the immediate demand of the masses, before dividing, as the generalised crisis reasserts itself along the lines of particular social interests. This results in what Trotsky calls the “politics of flabbiness”, with neither side able to fully assert its authority.

A side effect of this pattern is that the initial revolutionary vanguard is almost invariably a minority. In 1917, it was the workers of Petrograd in advance of the great masses in the Russian countryside; in Egypt, it is estimated that at most 25% of the population took part in the spring protests in some way – a not insubstantial fraction, to be sure, but a socialist revolution requires the support of the majority.

Drawing on Rosa Luxemburg’s The mass strike, Barker argued that a major consequence of the opening of a revolutionary situation was the “interplay of politics and economics”. This is true enough, but comrade Barker seemed to imply that our response should be to focus on the economic demands and wait for the politics to follow, though he did not come out and say it as such. He concluded by contrasting the revolutionary situation with the insurrectionary situation, when the question of taking power is immediately posed.

The debate initially consisted of some filling in of blanks; SWP student leader Mark Bergfeld reintroduced the idea of the party to the revolutionary process, albeit in somewhat vague terms (ie, we need one – of some kind or another …) I attempted to emphasise the international character of revolutionary situations – 1917, after all, came out of the general crisis issued in by the great war, and followed the Easter rising and major mutinies among the belligerents. Even 1968 had its roots in international dynamics.

As such, we should not focus unduly on the immediate economic demands in this or that workplace – in fact, quite the opposite. We should put forward the general interest of the working class, which means ultimately bringing the international dimension to revolutionary struggle.

On cue, SWP debating norms were enforced – the very next speaker drew on an inane dispute at his workplace over the quality of furniture in the staff room (Marxism clone interventions, as ever, are getting increasingly difficult to parody). Many other speakers returned to this example, incredibly. The monotony was partially broken by a contribution from Jeremy Drinkall of Workers Power, who seemed to imagine that his defence of the transitional programme and soviet-fetishism would seem less stale and dogmatic if he spoke really, really loud.

In reply, Barker spent some time on comrade Drinkall, pointing out (partly) sensibly that in Britain our experience of soviet-type formations and councils of action is limited, and we may have to do without the demand (though, I must emphasise, there is much merit in building up the idea in the consciousness of the movement if we are prepared also to make broader propaganda for working class power – neither is likely to figure into the SWP’s material soon, alas).

Unfortunately, he insisted also on rehashing that old chestnut about Lenin becoming a Trotskyist in 1917 and the Bolshevik Party growing from nothing to a majority force in a few months, a myth very soundly debunked by more recent scholarship. But after all, it is the SWP.