SWP: Can it democratise itself?

The Central Committee has been purged of dissidents and blame allocated for the failure of the Respect project. Will the Socialist Workers Party’s new commission on internal democracy help,asks Mark Hoskisson? In a rare turn of events the internal recriminations over the Respect split in Britain’s largest left organisation, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), received widespread public airplay last autumn. Leading members of the SWP Central Committee squared off against one another in the group’s internal bulletins. Bets were being laid on when a split would happen – not if.

As it turned out it was like a typical British bonfire night – damp, dull and the fireworks you thought would light up the sky turned out to be spluttering sparks that barely illuminated your back garden. One of the main protagonists, John Rees, ended up accepting his banishment from the SWP’s Central Committee. He was joined by allies Lindsey German and Chris Nineham who resigned in solidarity with Rees. Barring a few cryptic comments in Socialist Worker about Rees’ departure and the establishment of a democracy commission, the party’s January conference brought an end to the whole episode.

Rees knew he had lost before the conference took place. And he decided that exile from the Central Committee was preferable – in the short term at least – to exile from the SWP itself. Whether he is planning his comeback is anybody’s guess. That is hardly the main issue. The main issue is what the events in the SWP revealed about its internal democracy and about the significance of this issue for the entire left.

John Rees was the architect of the party’s electoral turn – first via the Socialist Alliance and then Respect. This turn has been a defining aspect of the SWP in the 21st century. After more than two decades of telling the rest of the left that direct intervention into elections inevitably dragged you to the right, the SWP became enthusiastic vote gatherers in a series of local and national elections. This went hand in hand with the creation of other “united fronts of a special type” – special in the sense that the SWP conceived them as long term blocs with partners to their right and vowed to withhold criticism from those partners in the interest of maintaining the blocs.

The Socialist Alliance in 2001 was the SWP’s first entry point into elections for decades. It never delivered the hoped-for reformist big guns the SWP hankered after and was wound up before it had a chance of progressing. It had too many components that were openly critical of the SWP and, despite the SA’s own left reformist self-limitation, it had a tradition of open and democratic political debate that proved unpalatable to the John Rees leadership.

As soon as another opportunity presented itself – around the expelled Labour MP George Galloway and his base in the Stop the War Coalition – John Rees orchestrated a bureaucratic shutdown of the Socialist Alliance which was politically justified on the grounds – expressed by Rees’ collaborator Lindsey German – that it had been too socialist and as a result hadn’t won many votes.

Respect was launched as Rees’ appetite for electoral success grew to gargantuan proportions. Respect was explicitly not socialist; it merely contained a socialist element. It was populist and oriented openly to businessmen as long as they were from the “oppressed” Muslim community. Indeed part of the SWP leadership’s justification for exiling Rees from the Central Committee was the fact that he used money donated from a businessman to organise a meeting of Respect’s trade union front, Organising for Fighting Unions.

Respect did enjoy momentary electoral success, locally in areas of large Muslim communities that had been politicised through opposition to the war on Iraq, most notably in the election of George Galloway as an MP in East London. But it was not long before the coalition imploded. The old-style parliamentary big-hitter Galloway took exception to Rees running Respect like the SWP – in existence to do his bidding in the name of his goals. Galloway fought back and mobilised everyone other than the SWP – plus a defecting group of SWP members – and Respect split (see Permanent Revolution Nos. 6, 7 and 9 for our analysis of these events).

Rees the man of the leadership

The awkward fact was that under John Rees’ leadership, and through the electoral turn, the SWP shrank and became ever more isolated within the wider left and labour movement. Last year’s electoral debacle in London, when the SWP’s Left List received derisory votes, finally spurred other leaders in the SWP to call time on the “Rees chapter”.

“John Rees . . . was a major protagonist in the Respect crisis. He has consistently advocated a strategy for the party in response to the economic slump – though thoroughly misconceived, this strategy deserves a hearing. Finally, the outgoing Central Committee (CC) has not included him on the slate for the new CC we are recommending to January’s national conference . . . In order to defend his personal position John has sought to turn the real, but in many ways quite localised disagreements on the CC into a set of systematic differences. In the process he has had to engage in quite a lot of inflation, distortion, and innuendo. He has also attacked aspects of the party’s work on which he raised no significant disagreements in the past.” (What’s going on? – a reply to John Rees”, www.socialistunity.com)

Never mind that Callinicos provided the theoretical underpinnings of Rees’ “united front” strategy, never mind that he was in accord with the tactics used by Rees in both the Socialist Alliance and Respect and never mind that the two leaders were part of a Central Committee that has manoeuvred against every critic of the SWP’s policies, both within and outside the party – Rees had been chosen to be the patsy. And as everyone who has ever watched a film noir movie will know the patsy has to take the fall.

This is the point at which the shenanigans in a sect become more significant for the movement as a whole. For what was posed when Callinicos became Brutus to Rees’ Caesar was the issue of how a supposedly revolutionary socialist organisation should be run. Of course, the political issues are important – electoralism, the united front and so on – but the organisational question should not be relegated to a secondary zone of importance. The reason for this is that standing in the way of the entire revolutionary left making any headway in today’s world is the enormous distrust that many thousands of activists have for the way “Leninists” organise.

The total failure of the left to replenish its ranks from either the labour movement or the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements in the last ten years is not primarily down to its analyses, its theses and its programmes. After all, there have been no shortage of these and many of them have been reasonable in what they have suggested for the said movements. Moreover, the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements brought many thousands of new people onto the streets and provided ideal conditions for the left to grow. But the obstacle was a deep-seated “anti-partyism”.

For some, being independent and anti-party is a badge of honour. But for many of those brought into political activity over the last ten years the fear was not of being in an organisation as such. It was fear of being trapped in an authoritarian organisation, devoid of genuine democratic internal life, governed by a self-perpetuating clique (the Central Committee) and deprived of the right to have a real say about what the organisation should argue for and do.

The SWP as hierarchical as you can get

The SWP, with its rigid hierarchy of fulltimers, its cadres trained in a style of hectoring and bullying and its Central Committee, drunk on the fact that it was now “the party” because most of its rivals had fallen by the wayside, issuing orders with breathtaking arrogance, was as good an argument against “Leninism” as any. And the activists of the movements stayed away from it – and from the smaller groups too, because they shared many of the bad habits that the SWP practiced.

Democracy and the organisation question are not minor considerations. A regime does not fall from either the sky or the programme. It is rooted in a tradition of organising that, frankly, justifies the distrust of the non-aligned. It is a tradition shaped by Stalinism, remoulded by post-war Trotskyism’s self-appointed wise guys, like Tony Cliff and Gerry Healy, and copied by the two-bob gurus who run the constellation of minor outfits that offer themselves up as the leadership in waiting of the world working class.

Until we overcome this distrust – by overhauling our organisational methods and demonstrating an unshakeable commitment to democracy in action – we will get nowhere. And rightly so. Why should anyone outside the organised left trust us when none of us trust each other?

The value of the recent debate in the SWP was that it raised this question among a wide layer of cadres. In the SWP itself, for example, Neil Davidson spoke out against the barriers to democracy that had been erected over many years: “We constantly invoke the democratic freedoms of the Bolshevik Party, but actually have fewer democratic rights than its members did under conditions of autocracy, quasi-feudal barbarism and repression.” (“Leadership, membership and democracy in the revolutionary party” – www.socialistunity.com)

Davidson is largely concerned about this question from the point of view of a loyal party member who regards the SWP as decisive to the British class struggle. He argues: “As I noted in the introduction, the SWP is not simply hegemonic on the British radical left – in the sense that no serious initiative can be attempted without our leadership or at least our participation – it is for all practical purposes the only serious revolutionary organisation left.” (ibid)

This is delusional. There are many serious initiatives that have a life and vibrancy that owe little or nothing to the SWP. That is not necessarily a criticism of the SWP: it is simply a fact of life, given that its strength and influence relative to what goes on in the broader class struggle is small. Being the biggest of a small bunch does not mean that you are integral to everything serious that goes on – and there are many thousands of activists, campaigners, trade unionists and anti-racists who take serious initiatives in the class struggle in which the SWP plays little or no role. Its foolhardy response to the recent strike at Lindsey was a stark example of this.

For the purposes of looking at the question of party democracy, however, Davidson’s document makes a series of telling points about the problems of the SWP operating as a Central Committee-dominated machine with a membership not simply unwilling to participate in debate and policy making but largely unable to. Davidson says that the Central Committee fears democracy because of the possibility that it will lead to a split. But he notes:

“Unfortunately, the attitude the CC has taken to avoid the problem is to suppress any debate beyond what it deems a reasonable level, which is usually about the practical or technical application of policies which members of the CC have decided among themselves. But this does not lead to the elimination of differences, just to their internalisation, which in turn leads to cynicism, inactivity and ultimately to comrades leaving the organisation. In effect, it produces the very situation it seeks to avoid, except that the lifeblood of the party is not transfused into another organisation, it simply drains away. The long term corrosive effect of this is actually far more debilitating than any open split would be.” (ibid)

Davidson identifies a real problem. His dismissive attitude to the rest of the “sectarian left” notwithstanding, his points about the corrosive impact of the absence of democracy on the SWP are well made. His solution is for the reform of the SWP’s Central Committee so that it is more representative of the party and more attuned to the problems confronted by activists in the movements and the localities.

This response may have a point in relation to the balance of power within the SWP, but it is inadequate to deal with the much bigger problem of the widespread and growing distrust that exists towards organisation, democratic centralism and Leninism amongst activists, and it reinforces the point made earlier about aspects of the delusional world in which members of left groups exist. They believe that the world is defined by the borders of their own organisations. They aren’t. They stretch much further than that. And a new Central Committee with some non-fulltimers on it won’t change that.

Together with John Molyneux’s critique of the party’s understanding of the period and the resolution calling for an extended democratic discussion, Davidson’s challenge was a more serious threat to the party authorities than John Rees and his allies. Chris Harman’s reply was the leadership’s attempt to head off criticism and ensure the stability of the central party machine. Harman is one of the longest serving members of that machine and was involved directly with the imposition of its domination over the organisation back in the early 1970s.

Harman accomodates the opposition

Harman tries to accommodate Davidson’s critique stating: “It is clear that we need to find ways of modifying our structures so that accountability applies to the CC as much as to anyone else in the party. Neil is quite right to say we need to find a way to open up discussions over strategic turns to wider sections of the party.” (“Some comments on Neil Davidson’s Document” – www.socialistunity.com)

Like Callinicos, Harman was an integral part of the undemocratic and unaccountable leadership that implemented the policies that led to the debacle in Respect. So how seriously can his sudden transformation into an advocate of democracy and accountability be taken? Not so seriously it appears, as his proposal to address them makes clear: “That is why the CC is proposing that that the conference elects a commission to make recommendations on strengthening party democracy and accountability.” (ibid)

The commission for democratising the party will be set up under the auspices of the very leaders who have spent decades subverting democracy in the party. But the fundamental point is that Harman does not believe there is a real democratic deficit inside the party. He takes issue with Davidson’s critique and argues, “there has never been any restriction on what people write for the pre-conference bulletins.” (ibid) He ignores the fact that the very limitation of discussion to pre-conference bulletins (three months a year) is fundamentally undemocratic. For nine months no one can utter a word of internal criticism of the party line. And the reason why this state of affairs is justified is that, according to Harman, the Central Committee is always right:

“Nevertheless, there has been and remains a real problem. It is not that comrades lack democratic rights in the abstract . . . The problem is that our structures have not in practice encouraged people to participate actively in decision making. There has been a tendency for comrades to rely on the CC to make decisions, even if this is in part because on very important decisions . . . they could see that the CC was correct.”

This is the Alice in Wonderland method – everything is the opposite of what it seems. The Central Committee has been correct on key decisions. This has enabled it to exist as a kind of permanent faction at the head of the SWP. Faced with this “correctness” the members have relied on the Central Committee. And the structures haven’t encouraged anyone to challenge this.

Harman absolves the committee he has been a member of more or less since it was set up in 1974-5 for the regime it has created. And as for Davidson’s proposal to make it more representative, Harman argues, “I should add that I think it would be disastrous not to choose a new CC at conference.” (ibid). Which means that for all the talk of democracy the only outcome of the conference was the deposing of John Rees and the resignation from the Central Committee of his allies.

For Harman it is the “leadership”, and by this he means the Central Committee and its selected full-time staff, who must be able to “make sharp strategic and tactical turns and fight to get the party as a whole to undertake them without at the same time cutting itself off from the experience, advice and, ultimately, control of the party at large.”

This is not democratic centralism. It is bureaucratic centralism. Why should there be an assumption it is only the “leadership” which can provide all the correct answers? With genuine democratic centralism there is a dialogue between members and leaders, genuine mechanisms for controlling those leaders and changing them. Yet for Harman the Central Committee has ensured that the SWP has, notwithstanding the odd and isolated mistake, hardly done anything wrong, ever.

Things won't get better

The party’s recent problems then, are not down to the problems of democracy and perspectives outlined by Davidson and Molyneux. They are down to the malign influence of John Rees. With him out of the way things, according to the leadership, can only get better.

Except they won’t. Inside the SWP heaping the blame on Rees may temporarily salvage the careers of the other Central Committee members. Their role in backing his every tactical shift in both the Socialist Alliance and Respect will be covered over with the undercoat applied by their hand-picked democracy commission. But more problems will come – and a blame culture can only ever survive in any organisation for a short period of time. You eventually run out of people to blame.

In the wider movement the events in the SWP will reinforce the distrust that they are increasingly met with. They may not realise it but amongst community activists, trade unionists, anti-racists, climate change campaigners and a host of others, the sight of a Socialist Worker being pulled from a carrier bag is now met with a raised eyebrow not a raised hope.

And this distrust casts a reflected shadow on the entire left, especially on those of us who seek to build a revolutionary socialist and democratic centralist party. Which is why the lesson of the recent debates inside the SWP is that we must go much further in tracing the point at which our movement was infected with bureaucratism, much further in elaborating a genuine democratic centralism that can earn trust and much further in breaking from long cherished practices that have become second nature to us but which are viewed with contempt by those we seek to lead.

Reassess organisational practices

The starting point for revolutionaries in carrying out this task has a two-fold character: how we re-examine our own past and its impact on current organisational practices; and how far we are prepared to embrace new ways of operating that demonstrate in practice our preparedness to break with those practices. It is beyond the scope of this article to develop these two points. However, Permanent Revolution will address them in detail in future issues and we will invite a wide-ranging, open and thoroughly democratic debate on them which we genuinely hope will benefit the entire left, including the SWP.

Equally, it would be a disservice to Neil Davidson in the SWP and to our many readers in other organisations or in none, if we did not signal what we mean in relation to both Bolshevism and the left’s custom and practice. To deal with the first point, we say this in relation to Bolshevism. No other type of party has existed in history that has proved capable of winning the support of the working class for the strategy of socialist revolution and of mobilising the majority of the working class to implement that strategy. The Bolshevik party of 1917 got it right and was a model, both politically and organisationally.

The proof of that was not only the accomplished fact of a workers’ revolution made by, and supported by, the vast majority of the working class. Regarding the functioning of the party, the debate that took place inside it in 1918 – when the German army was within a cannon shot of Petrograd – proves this beyond doubt. At the Second Congress of Soviets, the “left communists” who opposed the Brest Litovsk peace treaty, were given leave to abstain on the vote and were able to read a statement – effectively denouncing Lenin and the Bolshevik majority – to the assembled soviet delegates. In a time of extreme crisis, when the fate of the revolutionary regime was literally on the line, Bolshevik democracy prevailed. That is the type of Bolshevism we subscribe to.

Banning of factions

By contrast, in 1921 at the tenth party congress, after the civil war had been won and the tasks of reconstruction were on the agenda, a move was made to ban factions. Lenin, after inviting representatives of the Workers’ Opposition to stand for election to the Central Committee, moved a resolution on “party unity” banning factions and giving the incoming Central Committee the right to expel those who continued to support the platform of either the Workers’ Opposition or the Democratic Centralist factions inside the Bolshevik Party.

It was that decision – not Leninism in general – that paved the way for the consolidation of a monolithic party bureaucracy. It was that decision that elevated the concept of “unity” above the concept of “democracy”. It was that decision that opened the door to Stalin’s eventual usurpation of power with the support of the bureaucrats who regarded the tenth party congress as an invite to stamp their control first over the party and its members and then over society as a whole. That is the Bolshevism we reject. And critically re-evaluating the legacy that Leninism and Trotskyism have inherited from post-1921 Bolshevism, a legacy that includes the justification of bureaucratic centralism even prior to the rise of Stalin, is crucial in revitalising Bolshevism for the 21st century.

The Bolshevism we reject

To deal with the second point – clearly related to the legacy of post-1921 Bolshevism, we cite the example of the US Communists. In 1922 and 1923 serious moves were made towards the formation of a genuine “Labor Party”. Communists worked closely with left reformist and syndicalist-influenced trade unionists to take the move towards such a party forward. Against the advice of seasoned communists like James P Cannon, the Comintern “representative” in the US, John Pepper/Joseph Pogany, decided that the formation of such a party at a joint conference with the Chicago Federation of Labor, was the task of the day. This was not just a difference of opinion. Pepper utilised his “Comintern” authority to push through a plan to dominate the conference by packing it. Delegates from bodies as exotic as the Ukrainian Folk Dancers Association were elected to give the Communist Party control of the conference on 3 July 1923.

The Communists won the vote but lost the possibility of mobilising significant numbers of left reformist workers in their campaign to build such a party by packing the meeting, using unscrupulous and bureaucratic methods to assure themselves of a majority and, to cap it all, denouncing all those who opposed them as irreconcilable enemies of the working class.

To be sure Pepper was a particularly bad example of a Comintern bureaucrat. His chicanery was particularly pronounced. But, the essential elements of his approach – win by organisational means rather than by politically conquering the majority – were becoming increasingly common in the practices of the communist parties post-1921. These practices continue to this day. In its “special united fronts”, from the Socialist Alliance on, the SWP did exactly the same thing in order to defeat opponents of their line, and in the process alienated virtually every independent and healthy strain of thought.

And in each case the practice loses more influence for communism than it wins. For every SWP “victory” as a result of a packed meeting, the cause of winning workers to support and trust communism suffers a defeat. By addressing these questions – far more important than the personnel or structure of a Central Committee in a large or small sect – we can start to rebuild the influence of genuine communism, the communism of the Bolshevik Party before the ban on factions and open democracy at the tenth congress in 1921.

Thu 18, June 2009 @ 17:58