John Pringle takes a light-hearted look at the failings of revolutionary groups

Communism is a system only achievable by the most profound means, the overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with another, as unrecognisably different as it is improved. Such an undertaking is vast and awe-inspiring. It is the act of a self-enslaved humanity attempting to forge a society fit for itself for the very first time in its history, replacing the psychopathic destructiveness of capitalism with abundance and freedom. No less than humanity’s survival itself rests on the achievement of this immense and difficult goal.

So who is to bring about this great feat? Surely the majority of people in society, equipped with an advanced body of theory, organised in a diverse and deep-reaching revolutionary party of millions, open in their differences and united in action? What, the far left today? That rag-tag bunch of bickering misfits whom you typically see manning a sodden newspaper stall outside Boots on a rainy Saturday? You’re kidding, right?

Our vision can be achieved, and indeed this is necessary; but in order to do so the current crop of British socialists has a lot to do in terms of getting its act together. To help along this Herculean task, we thought this would be useful: a list of the worst aspects of the far left’s culture today.

1. Stalinism

One of humanity’s most virulent blights and a perversion of socialism. Most people know something of the crimes of the Soviet Union and its imitators (China, Cuba et al) – gulags, bureaucratic elites, impoverishment, oppression and other such horrors. There were and still are those who would defend the political programme of Joseph Stalin. Look no further than the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and their youth group, the Young Communist League. The CPB’s newspaper, the Morning Star, fawns in the most cringe-inducing manner over the ‘People’s’ Republic of China and apologises for its oppression of Tibet.

There are still a fair few of these about, but generally their numbers are dwindling – except in one key respect. Many of the characteristic features of Stalinist organisations – the suppression of dissent through bureaucratic manipulation and intimidation, the forbidding of minority opinions, class collaborationism – have, in one of history’s ugly ironies, become de rigueur on parts of the left which have always professed to be anti-Stalinist. Which leads me nicely on to …

2. The Socialist Workers Party

This organisation is more than deserving of its own heading. Indeed, as a former member, I could have happily written a ‘10 things I hate about the SWP’ and have more than enough material to work with. For some reason the SWP is the biggest organisation on the far left (at least on paper, because it counts lots of people who sign up as members and then aren’t seen again).

The SWP forbids factions within its organisation, fosters a culture of mindless obedience opposed to independent thought, and behaves shamefully in its participation in campaigns and ‘united front’ activity, ensuring anything it ever touches is choked to death through bureaucratic heavy-handedness. They are also not averse to attempting to use violence and intimidation where it suits them, something Communist Students members have first-hand experience of. And I haven’t even started on its atrocious apologia for oppressive ‘anti-imperialist’ regimes like Iran – reminiscent of the Stalinists’ airbrushing of the Soviet Union’s crimes. With the SWP around, it’s no wonder the left isn’t taken very seriously.

3. Sectarianism

Means the placing of the interests of a narrow sect before those of the working class itself. This can lead to an extreme fixation with the particular ideological totems of the organisation in question (take your pick really – most, with the exception of an honourable few, are guilty of this), and a farcical tendency to pretend other left organisations don’t exist and that the sect in hand holds the unique answer to the emancipation of humanity (see the section below for a related problem).

Sectarianism is unfortunately the predominant mindset of the British left, feeding and being fed by its failure to grasp notions like democracy and the mechanisms by which an organisation can contain different views and yet still be united, and constantly manifested in a tunnel-vision approach to politics where political questions are construed only through the prism of the sect’s narrow structure and organisation.

Another characteristic of sect politics is its public preaching of a type of politics they know to be totally inadequate in order to corral as many people together as they can, then telling the truth only to a chosen band of initiates. Marxism (or the particular group’s take on it) thus becomes the preserve of annual schools, branch meetings and pub conversations. What it amounts to is professed Marxists attempting to reheat the politics of social democracy in a nostalgia for a ‘golden age’ which is not there – the SWP in Respect/Left Alternative/Left List/whatever; the Socialist Party in England and Wales’ consistent illusions in reformism, and in the Education Not for Sale myth that the campus can be ‘reclaimed’, when it was never ours in the first place.

Such an approach is often justified in the name of ‘broadness’ (the working class is ‘not ready’ for Marxism at this time, the political climate is too unfavourable for openly revolutionary politics, etc), but without fail it results in the opposite, further depleting the dwindling left and adding to the disillusionment of its members. It is actually a form of lying to the working class.

Some sects can contain no more members than the fingers on one hand, but not necessarily. Try reading the SWP’s Socialist Worker and discovering any mention of other revolutionary organisations – they like to pretend they’re the only ones around. Another particularly bad offender is the Socialist Party in England and Wales, or SPEW (I don’t know why they missed that either), who seem to think they can create another Labour Party (and the last one worked out so well!), despite struggling to get a couple of thousand signatures on their petition.

4. Disunity and splits (and splits … and splits … and splits …)

One of the main contributing factors to the Judean People’s Front phenomenon – widely observable on the British far left – of countless leftwing sects with similar names all bickering and feuding with one another over seemingly idiosyncratic differences. The primary cause of unnecessary splits is, ironically, the undemocratic failure of organisations to allow for the full expression of differences within themselves. Things like the prohibition of factions within organisations, supposedly designed to create political unity, actually spawn the opposite – people with views opposed to the majority often find the only way they can express themselves is through a split. Monty Pythonesque scenes often ensue.

Political differences are both unavoidable and normal. Many of today’s Marxists fail to grasp this fact, instead letting their organisations either be bureaucratically controlled by the leadership, or conducting their debates in secret. Neither are healthy or democratic, and both preclude the wider unity of Marxists on the basis of full and open debate and unity in action. It also means that when ‘unity projects’ do arise, they are formed on the basis of …

5. False unity

There have been a number of failed so-called ‘unity projects’ in recent years. The Socialist Alliance was one such enterprise, and latterly the SWP’s Respect billed itself as “the unity coalition”. But in the same way that any cider with ‘premium’ in its description will probably be an acrid poison, any leftwing project with ‘unity’ in its moniker will be precisely the opposite – most likely a bureaucratically controlled front to further the short-term interests of some or other sect, with quite rigorous safeguards against unity in any meaningful sense. See the examples of the Socialist Alliance, Respect, the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party et al – all billed as ‘unity’ projects, but in reality treated as a vehicle for the furtherance of the sectarian agendas of the sects behind them. And all either defunct or doomed.

Another popular method is fudging, whereby organisations say they will ‘agree to disagree’ on the really sticky points and uniting on the basics – you know: capitalism is bad, war is evil, that sort of thing. Such a method is a recipe for unproductive fall-outs later on down the line.

The reality is that true unity can only happen when all the parties involved acknowledge the reality of their political differences and resolve to have the most free and open debate, whilst uniting in action on the basis of majority decisions. Unity is blindingly necessary and can only be arrived at by the left organising openly around the politics of Marxism, as we in Communist Students emphasise. It might seem odd to have to hammer this point home, but the Marxists need to unite as, er, Marxists! But the sects are currently unwilling to be part of such a democratic arrangement, because like all democratic arrangements it entails a possibility of finding yourself in a minority – an alien concept to most sectarians.

6. ‘Defend the NHS!’

Despite the limitations of such a demand, could we possibly have something more original or inspiring? And while we’re on the topic of boring slogans …

7. Economism

This is most commonly understood to mean the concentration of revolutionary activity on narrow economic and trade union-type struggles, which are given a political coloration. Even by this widely known and incomplete definition, the British left is rife with economism. SPEW’s paper The Socialist is filled with reports of often extremely limited trade union activity hailed as spectacular successes (often to disguise the decrepitude of their own members in leadership positions in organisations like the PCS union), and the Stalinist Morning Star isn’t known as the Yawning Star simply because of its perfunctory and incredibly dull sports coverage. It is common sense on the British left that supposedly ‘militant’ agitation within the trade unions is the be-all and end-all of the tasks facing socialists today, a view often reinforced by the economistic shortcomings of Trotsky’s Transitional programme, something of a holy text for many parts of the left. A more rounded definition can be found in CS issue 6.

In its worst form, it can lead to organisations abandoning key planks of socialism and crossing class lines – such as in the case of …

8i. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty

Which refuses to call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq – and actively agitates against such calls or action which would lead to it. This is reflective of a type of economism so entrenched that it neglects key democratic principles – in this case the right of nations to self-determination (put another way, the freedom people should have from being starved by sanctions, savagely invaded and brutally occupied, then having to live with the consequences – civil war and unspeakable sectarian violence). In other words, what Lenin termed ‘imperialist economism’. The AWL talk earnestly about solidarity with Iraqi workers, but the substance of their politics precludes the most basic act of solidarity the British working class could perform – attempting to force the withdrawal of the British army, jointly responsible for reducing Iraq to barbarism. And when American dockworkers went on a huge strike calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops, the AWL went quiet for a while, then published a short note congratulating the dockers for their action but making clear their opposition to this basic aim.

In fairness, the AWL do have a substantial minority who argue for some variant of ‘troops out’, but it is not clear whether this is ‘troops out now’ or ‘troops out in their own good time’. And they have become so quiet that neither Iraq nor the possibility or war against Iran was on the agenda at their annual summer school, the ironically named ‘Ideas for Freedom’. Clearly, things are not easy for them organising a struggle against that arch-sectarian whose methods embody everything that is contemptible about the left’s current culture, otherwise known as …

8ii. Sean Matgamna

The AWL’s principle theorist, a self-professed Zionist, has recently argued that an Israeli attack on Iran is inevitable, that Israel has good reasons for launching such an attack, and that we could not condemn Israel if it did. Sickening coming from a supposed socialist and advocate of working class internationalism.

8iii. Sean Matgamna’s poetry

Sean Matgamna should not be considered part of the left for two reasons. The first is described above. The second is his poetry. Here is the opening first stanza from his epic, ‘Phoenix!’:

I will not die!

I am the Phoenix:

I have been drowned in fire and blood

By open foes, devoured

By predatory allies and masters, reduced:

I rise again

I am eternally self-renewing

I saw Hitler loom above Rosa Luxemburg’s grave

And then fled east

To hail his other self

I am the true Phoenix.

It’s hard to say which reason is worse. Don’t say it to his face, though, as he might try to make you sign a …

8iv. Pledge of sect-loyalty

… like unlucky former AWL internationalist, David Broder. His ‘disloyalty’ consisted of arguing cogently for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and that Sean’s article was a disgrace. In his opinion, Hands Off the People of Iran has a much better understanding of the Iranian question, but this was too much for our friends around Matgamna. He wanted David to write an article condemning such an analysis. Moreover, he was not too happy when David was seen going for a few beers with CS members – referred to as “bandits” by Scab Matgamna in the now infamous ‘Trial of David Broder’ – out soon on DVD.

9. Sheer, numbing, soul-crushing humourlessness

The average SWPer has all the spark and joie de vivre of a smelly corpse. Remember, guys, it takes less muscles to smile than it does to sell a copy of Socialist Worker (and the masses prefer the smile). Socialism is a fight for hearts and minds – take a page out of Bertell Ollman’s book.

10. Living in the past

The 20th century was dominated by two kinds of ‘leftwing’ politics. One, Stalinism, represented by the Soviet Union and its ideological copiers – such as Maoism, the guiding ideology behind the oppressive regimes of China, south-east Asia and other parts of the third world. Two, social democracy – the idea of managing capitalism in the interests of the working class, represented by parties like Labour in Britain, the SPD in Germany, France’s PS, etc.

Both have had an enormous impact on world politics in the last hundred years, both are variants of what American Marxist Hal Draper described as ‘socialism from above’, and both represent in their different ways an accommodation with capitalism. The genuine revolutionary trends in the workers’ movement were marginalised: by Stalinism, often through oppression and violence, symbolised by the brutal murder of Leon Trotsky; and by social democracy, through the enormous ideological and electoral hold it had on the working class.

The last couple of decades have seen both kinds of politics collapse. Stalinism died with the fall of the Soviet Union. Capitalism triumphed there and elsewhere. Social democracy has suffered a similar fate: the catastrophic wipe-out of the left-of-centre parties in the recent European elections being only the latest example. Clearly the conditions that sustained these kinds of politics are gone.

However, there is a real opportunity presented by the death of Stalinism and social democracy: we have the necessary objective conditions for the re-articulation and reclamation of genuine revolutionary politics, based on working class internationalism, democracy and principled opposition to the bourgeois state.

If the left starts to retrace its steps and break with Stalinist/social democratic politics, then this can be done. We in Communist Students believe we have taken a small but necessary step forward in this and will fight for the politics of Marxism in all avenues of struggles. We would like you to join us, and look forward to the day when lists like this aren’t necessary.

Further reading

Macnair, Mike Revolutionary strategy: Marxism and the challenge of left unity, available from www.cpgb.org.uk or on Communist Students stalls for a fiver

Sullivan, John When this pub closes – a witty insight into the odd world of the left sects: http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/pages/Sectariana/Pub.html