Socialists are faced with an appaling choice of who to vote for for London Mayor. Were it just a question of a vote between Livingstone and German I might possibly vote for German, more likely I'd not waste my time on either. One is a right-wing demagogue, the other a leading member of a tiny sect with reactionary politics. But the vote is not a personal popularity contest - or unpopularity contest its a vote between two organisations that claim to represent workers - one that actually does, and the other that merely has illusions that it might some day. Given the choice of voting for a mass Workers Party that remains based on the working class and its Trade Unions, that still organises around 200,000 workers as members, that remains tied through its Branch network to working class comunities at a grass roots level, or voting for the representative of a tiny sect that refuses to support workers in struggle against clerical-fascists, and which has been in alliance with those fascist forces throughout the Middle East, the issue for any self-respecting socialist should be obvious.
I'd be voting for the Labour Party irrespective of who the candidate is. A look at the SWP shows why no self-respecting socialist should support them. Having collapsed the Socialist Alliance, of which it was the largest organisation, several years ago the SWP typical of its centrist nature engaged in a huge Zig to the Right. It established Respect as a two-class Party drawing in not just Stalinist demagogues like George Galloway as front men, but alongside its support for clerical-fascist regimes and organisations in the Middle East, accommodating to the most reactionary communalist politics in Britain that led it to subordinate any remnants of socialism it had in its political armoury to its overriding goal of “building the Party.”
At meetings supported and sponsored by the SWP they even went along with the idea that women could not be in the same room as men, and so on. They subordinated their position on abortion and gay rights to the reactionary politics of the Islamists and Galloway who they had jumped into bed with. AS with other front organisations such as the UAF they were happy for this Public Face to be presented provided that in the background they were pulling the strings, and provided that out of the forces, hopefully, drawn into the organisation, the SWP would have its own private pool within which to swim, and build its own organisation. Again as with the UAF this accommodation to Islamism also fed into the nasty streak of anti-semitism, masquerading as Anti-Zionism, that runs like a yellow streak through the SWP’s politics.
One of the greatest critics of these politics in the SWP, and of the SWP as an organisation, which is throughly undemocratic, was the AWL, which spent an almost unlikited amount of column inches on – correctly – denouncing it, if perhaps in doing so giving them for too much of the oxygen of publicity than they deserved. Yet now the AWL are arguing for a first preference vote for the SWP. Its actually, not presented that way its presented as a vote for German as against Livingstone on the basis of the need to oppose the terrible record of Livingstone over the last 8 years. Given the collapse of the AWL into petit-bourgeois socialism and Third Campism, which precedes not on the basis of Marxist class politics, but on the basis of subjectivism and moralism such a way of presenting the issue is not surprising. It’s also not surprsing that on this basis they end up coming to the wrong position, and worse.
Subjectivist politics are necessarily opportunist. Faced with the fact of the SWP’s political record, and what they have said about it what is the AWL’s response. They effectively ignore that record in order for it to fit with their position de jour? There are two basic reasons for the AWL’s position. Firstly, like every other sect in Britain the AWL is tiny. If there is any possibility of becoming bigger every sect will jump at the chance. Of course, ultimately every such attempt fails because being sects the leaders of every sect only wants unity on their own terms. The AWL argue that although the SWP had terrible, reactionary politics yesterday their separation from Galloway means their politics have been miraculously transformed so that they are not so bad today. In fact, this St Paul like conversion not only means its possible to vote for the SWP, but that socialists SHOULD vote for them in good faith at the possibility of creating Left Unity! If I thought the AWL were serious about that I would be appalled. Look at any number of the AWL’s publications where they set out what is wrong with that – why for Marxists Unity at any price cannot be accepted. But I doubt they are. What they mean is the SWP’s turn opens up the possibility under the cover of such an approach to snatch some of the SWP’s members away from it. Secondly, going back to the early 1980’s there is a history of hostility between the AWL and its predecessor Socialist Organiser and Livingstone. At that time I was a fairly prominent member of SO so I know the history pretty well. Let me be clear in terms of the politics of that dispute I was then, and I am now wholly on the side of SO and the AWL.
Livingstone’s politics then and now were bad. But, I suspect that given the subjectivist and moralistic politics of the AWL they have allowed that relationship to colour their decision. How else can you rationalise the support for a Party with the reactionary position of the SWP as against support for the LP, which despite its present right-wing leadership remains the mass Party of the working-class, a Party which the AWL still has members in, and a Party it has supported in elections with far more right-wing candidates than Livingstone?
A look at their coverage of Livingstone demonstrates the relationship. Moreoever, when I was writing blogs fort he AWL I had access to their Internal Discussions. I rad their discussion on the 1980 Mayoral eelction. Yhey were going to oppose Livingstone’s candidacy, but given the fact that not only was it certain that Livingstone was going to win, that he would have been the Labour candidate had it not been for the shenanigans in the LP to prevent it, and that he was likely to simply be a Labour mayor formally outside the LP for a time, almost the entire Left was supporting him, some of their comrades convinced them that to do so might look just an incy bit sectarian?
But as I said this is not a beauty contest between Livingstone and German - God forbid - but a contest between two organisations that claim to represent workers, one that actually does, and the other a sect with reactionary politics - in fact some time ago in a discussion on the AWL’s board an SWP member stated that long standing AWL militant, Jim Denham, had said that the SWP itself were clerical-fascists. I think that statement is wrong the fact that the SWP allied themselves with such forces, that they have accommodated their politics to them does not make them fascists themselves per se, merely gutless opportunists with reactionary politics. But the fact remains that although they might have broken with those forces – or more precisely those forces under Galloway’s tutelage, having milked the SWP have broken with them - they are still in bed with them in relation to their political position on Iraq, on Gaza, Lebanon etc. Its that this politics determined their attitude to fighting Islamism in Bradford, that it leads them to accommodate to it in respect of the way women are treated even at their own meetings, or meetings they support etc.
Under such conditions, of course socialists vote for the real workers Party and not the nasty little sect. Petit-bourgeois if it salves their conscience salves their conscience might vote for German as some kind of tokenistic politics of protest, but its not the politics of a serious workers organisation, and the logic of it leaves you in the position of calling for support for the LibDems in a number of such contests where on paper they have more radical politics. But that's where Subjectivist, Opportunist politics made up on the hoof leads you. By making the basis of who to vote for the respective merits of individuals - German and Livingstone – rather than the class basis of the parties they represent it is quite clear that in some election there may be some Liberal candidate, who purely as an individual has a more Left, programme and record than the other candidates. Using the AWL’s subjectivist methodology they are put in the poistion of supporting the representative of an openly bouregois party, just as they support the petit-bourgeois Greens in some elections.
In response Sacha Ishmail replied to me,
"Of course they were responsible (for their involvement in Respect and its politics AB). But what sense does it make to call on a workers' party/a group like the SWP to break with the bourgeois elements of a popular front if the fact that they were involved makes them forever untouchable, regardless of changes in position?"
There are a number of points. Firstly, I don’t think Respect was a PF. I think the definition is wrong. A PF is a Governmental/Administrative body in which parties representing both the bouregoisie and proletariat take part, and in which the workers parties are constrained thereby to support the policies of the bourgeois parties. A Party – other than one in which the Party forms a Bonapartist regime, and through which the workers party is forced to act as a Left cover for the bourgeoisie e.g. the Kuomintang – or a campaign group e.g. an anti-fascist group does not come under that rubric, precisely because the workers parties are free to continue their own activity and propaganda. If the SWP chose not to do so that was THEIR decision not something they were constrained to do as a result of participating in Respect. Secondly, are the AWL seriously trying to tell us then that the split in Respect was the result of the SWP seeing the error of their ways and pulling out rather than a result of Galloway deciding he’d used the SWP to the best he could, and now was the time to drop them????
But, there is a further point. Are the AWL seriously trying to tell us that they believe the SWP leopard has changed its spots, or as I suggest above is it really that this change of heart on behalf of the AWL is just an opportunist tactic to try to take advantage of the SWP’s current position, to poach some of its members. Either way the AWL’s political and tactical Zig here is as illustrative as the similar Zigs and zags of the SWP itself. Either this Zig is thoroughly Opportunist or else it is yet another symptom of the effects of isolation and defeatism. In the late 20's the CPSU was divided into three sections. The Left, Centre, and Right the main figureheads being Trotsky, Stalin and Bukharin respectively. The Trotskyists (and Zinovievists who joined them in the United Opposition) were isolated with an alliance between the Stalinists and the Bukharinists. Under pressure of economic events and also in part because the United Opposition, which saw the, mainly working-class, supporters of Zinoviev join, the more ideological, but mainly petit-bouregois and student, supporters of Trotsky, had begun to win workers to the United Opposition, Stalin made a tactical Zig to the Left adopting many of the policies of the Opposition. Faced with the possibility of exclusion from the Party the Zinovievists saw this move as their excuse to capitulate to Stalin. But many within the Left also argued that this change of line was genuine, and a basis for building an alliance between Stalin's Centre faction and the Left. Trotsky argued against determinedly. The leopard had not changed its spots, and the Zig to the Left would be followed by a Zag to the Right. Allying themselves for short term tactical advantage with the Stalinist Centre would be a bad mistake. He was right, those that followed it were crushed. Like their predecessors the AWL declare on the basis of this Zig to the left, and despite the SWP’s continuing politics, the politics that aligns them with the clerical-fascist Resistance in Iraq, and their support for their co-thinkers in Iran, in Lebanon and in Gaza, that leaves the SWP still supporting those clerical-fascist forces against workers, women and homosexuals in those countries, THESE PEOPLE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE AS US!!!
If we analyse the matter in accordance with Marxist class politics the course is clear, and the starting point has to be the nature of the parties not the individuals concerned. Marxists argue for a vote for Labour because whatever its deficiencies, and as a bouregois workers party it has ALWAYS had many, it is the mass party of the working class. The starting point for all Marxists must be to build the maximum unity of the class, and as Marx put it in the Communist Manifesto, ”The Communists do not build their own Party separate from the Workers Parties” Just as Marxists have to accept that although the Trade Unions are imbued with all kinds of bourgeois and reactionary prejudices, yet Marxists accept them and try to change them rather than setting up their own sectarian unions, so too that applies to the Workers parties, especially where as in Britain those parties are built up from those same Trade Unions. If we want to win workers away from those politics we can only do so by taking them from where they are, working with them in their mass organisations such as the LP, going through the process with them, and educating them in that process. Standing outside that process in sectarian organisations that may or may not have the benefit of Marxist purity will only further deepen the separation between the working class and the Marxists that has arisen over the last 80 years as a result of such Leninist sectarianism during that period. Marxists are supposed to learn the lessons of the class struggle. 80 years of that mistake should have been sufficient for even the most dogmatic Leninist to have learned the lesson.
The AWL on the one hand still describe the LP as a Bouregois Workers Party. They still have members in the LP yet when their back is agaisnt the wall they want to deny the logic of their analysis.
Sacha ishmail commented.
”Ah, so the Labour Party actually represents workers, does it? It's a real workers' party? Wow.”
Yes, of course the Labour Party is a Workers Party – what is a REAL Workers Party? Marxists understand things in dialectical terms they do not analyse phenomena in absolute, static terms, but in their process of development. There is no absolute or REAL Workers Party but several varieties all of which represent moments in that process of development. The LP is a Workers Party in the sense that the German Democrats were when Marx and Engels joined them. The sense that it is a Party to which the mass of Workers give their support. But it is more than that the Democrats were an openly bourgeois Party in terms of Programme and membership. The LP is also Workers Party in the sense that Engels set out in his advice for the US socialists i.e. one in which socialists organise on a minimum programme, which the Marxists are able to work up. Is it a Marxist Party? No, of course not, but neither Marx nor Engels thought that the Workers Party had to be a Marxist Party. If they did their comments about the relationship of Marxists to the Workers party make absolutely no sense. Does the LP carry out bourgeois policies? Yes, absolutely it’s a bourgeois workers party i.e. one based on the working class, but still – like the working class itself – dominated by bourgeois ideas. You could have a Party for whom that was not true, but under the present conditions of class consciousness it would be the size of the AWL, and just as irrelevant to and separated from the class struggle.
And if the LP is not a Workers Party then what the fuck are they doing with some of their members supposedly still in their, what the fuck are they doing recommending workers vote for it in other elections.
In much of its politics, for example in relation to Iraq, the AWL is characterised by Opportunism, its current turn to the SWP is another manifestation of that. Yet its attitude to the LP and other workers organisations is marked by Ultra-Leftism. Its position in respect of Venezuela matches its attitude to the LP. Faced with the fact of 5 million workers joining the PSUV despite the AWL calling on them not to do so, but to join the PRS, the AWL came to the conclusion that just as the members of the LP must mostly be middle class, the workers who had joined the PSUV must all be careerists. It’s the politics that flows from a petit-bouregois socialism that cannot deal with a mass working class organisation that does not fit its ideal type. Instead of dealing with the REAL Venezuelan working class and its new Party, just as it cannot deal with the actual LP, the AWL called on workers to support the PRS party and C-CURA Union Federation of Cirino. The PRS is/was an insignificant neo-TRotskyist sect better known by other Trotskyists outside Venezuela than it is by workers in Venzuela - and pretty much the same could be said for the SWP. TRying to posit such forces as in anyway serious alternatives to the mass workers parties in either Venezuela or Britian is sectarian fantasy, and tilting at windmills. Cirino’s own members in both the C-CURA and in the PRS also decided his position was hopelessly sectarian too. Both rejected his position and joined the PSUV!!!!
The SWP is not a workers party, it’s a nasty little sect with reactionary politics. Labour might have some reactionary politics, like the working class it remains dominated by the dominant bourgeois ideology. Why would any materialist let alone Marxist be surprised by that? But its certainly not a sect by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is it, or has it allied itself with mediaeval reactionaries. In the LP branches there is huge debate and dissent about even forming an alliance at local Council level with the Liberals, yet the SWP members are so brainwashed as Leninists into following the Party line that en bloc they swallowed a change of line to form an alliance with clerical-fascists, to subordinate any socialist politics they might have had to the most crass reactionary bullshit without blinking an eye, and with very few defections. It would be interesting to know what democratic debate and discussion went on inside the AWL itself prior to this opportunist Zig towards the reactionaries of the SWP given what the AWL members themselves have had to say about the SWP until yesterday.
And in defending the vote for the SWP the AWL have exposed their entire methodology. It is full of contradictions as they tell different stories to fit different aspects of their argument. On the one hand they want to argue that “Support for the SWP” will act to apply left pressure on the LP, whilst on the other they want to argue that voting for the SWP is safe because their vote will be so derisory as not to threaten the possibility that the Tories might win!!! But you can’t have it both ways. If the vote is derisory then far from putting Left pressure on it will further strengthen the Right in the LP who will be able to point to the derisory vote of the Left. If it’s a sizeable enough vote to enable the Left to say look you need to tack Left then it will be sizeable enough to split the working class vote and let in the Tories.
Against this is put the argument that because its an STV vote its safe to vote for the SWP first because their second round votes will go to labour. But what does this tell us about the AWL’s method. The argument is "Vote for German to win knowing it won't happen." But isn't that what the AWL Majority argue against doing in relation to Troops Out Now in Iraq i.e. arguing for one thing whilst actually meaning another. The difference is this. When I and the AWL Minority talk about Troops Out Now we make it clear that we mean that the working class should mobilise to kick out the troops, and we do mean what we say when we call for that. But when the AWL call for a win for German its clear they do not mean that at all, they DO NOT want a win for German, or even a substantial vote, because if German got more votes than Livingstone or even a substantial number the vote would be split and the Tories would win.
The fact of STV does not change the basic argument. This is a contest between a Workers party and a nasty sect with reactionary politics. The fact that the SWP has made a tactical zig for this election only tells us that it will quickly make a zag in the other direction. There is no more reason for Marxists to be fooled and go along with that than there was for them to be fooled by the Left turn of the Stalinists in the late 20's. The SWP's politics remain as reactionary as they were.
The call is not for a vote for Labour First and the SWP second, but vice versa. A first vote for Labour, and a spoiling vote for the SWP second would make sense. If no one gets 50% of the vote and the SWP go out it will then go to the second choices of the other candidates. That means that it will be a matter of which voters are more politically savvy Labour or Tory, and what happens with the Liberals. If the Tory voters are savvy - and they usually are - they will cast their second round votes for the SWP. That way if the Labour and Liberal voters cast even a significant number of votes for Boris then Boris will win. Voting for German is not risk free. Just ask the French voters who as a result of the votes of the sectarian Left ended up with a choice of voting for either Chirac or Le Pen. In asking people to vote for the SWP first you presumably hope they will win. At least you must hope for a substantial vote. If that splits the workers votes it is at least possible the top two could be the Tories and Liberals leaving them to fight it out from 2nd and 3rd preference votes. In fact a similar system of voting a few years ago for the elected mayor in Stoke left the BNP only a hair’s breadth from victory.
For Marxists the main concern cannot be these electoral consequences, but nor can Marxists ignore the effects of a victory for the bourgeoisie. That is one reason Marx and Engels perpetually stressed the importance of Workers Unity why they argued against Marxists setting up their own sectarian alternatives to the Workers Parties. Marxists attitude to unity of those organisations of the class is different to the attitude they take in relation to their own organisation. On the one hand they are in favour of establishing the Workers mass organisations – the Trade Unions, the Co-operatives, and the Workers Parties on as broad a scale as possible in order to bring about and maintain that fighting unity of the working class. But for the Marxists themselves, because their main function is to act as the educators of those mass organisations of the class, ideological clarity is paramount. Marx and Engels attitude to ordinary workers was completely different to that they took to other political ideologists in the workers movement. The AWL gets this completely backwards. On the one hand they demand almost Marxist purity from ordinary workers in the LP, and shun it for not meeting that requirement, whilst now being prepared to cosy up to the SWP and its reactionary politics for the sake of Left unity.
In left-Wing Communism Lenin says that the purpose for Marxists of elections is not to win, but to use the period of more intense political activity to better win workers away from Bourgeois democracy, to make Marxist propaganda. Comrades from the AWL might want to ponder to what extent they will be able to talk to SWP members in any meaningful way during this period given the thoroughly undemocratic nature of the SWP. They might also want to question to what extent that lack of democracy and the SWP's history of such activity will allow them to conduct broader propaganda within the working class compared to the much bigger platform provided by the labour campaign for talking to workers both inside and out of the Party.
Lenin was partly wrong. He was right that the most important thing for Marxists is to disavow workers of their faith in bourgeois democracy that its necessary to get them to organise themselves independently, he should have said to also take that to its logical conclusion and to claw back where possible the means of production through co-operatives as Marx and Engels proposed - Lenin himself was not averse to it as he wrote in a number of places, but his tactics for the conditions of Russia were necessarily different, which is why in “What is to be Done?” he makes clear that his argument is specific to Russia, and why at the Second Congress of the Comintern he said that it was a historical document specific to the fight against the Economists which others had miunderstood (and which today's Leninists continue to misunderstand) - to establish their own Workers Democracy from that new material base as an alternative, but he was wrong in what he saw as the limits of parliamentary action. He often, for example in “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” conflates the political power of Government with the State Power of the permanent state apparatus rather than recognising the potential contradiction between them.
It is necessary for Marxists to utilise that contradiction wherever possible, and thereby to educate workers in the necessity of establishing their own organisations, and democracy, to demonstrate the resistance that will be made to any meaningful change, and the need to prepare to defend themselves against that state. But, that is a road on the other side of a bridge that the working class has not yet even entered the path towards. The first task is to rebuild the workers mass organisations, to utilise those organisations to rebuild self-confidence and self-organisation within the working class within the workplaces and communities, and in the process to raise the workers level of culture and class conscioussness. Votes for irrelevant sects stand in relation to that as North stands to South.
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