Marxists and the Labour Party

The Alliance for Workers Liberty have now opened a debate on their attitude to the Labour Party before they officially change their position to recognise that, like was the case with Mark Twain, the announcement of the Labour Party’s death were premature. See: How Stalinists and Centrists Change Course .

In the debate they have opened up Keeping Our Options Open , Cathy Nugent puts her finger on the nub of Sean Matgamna’s position when she says,

“What I see most of all in Sean’s approach is, despite the stated commitment to objective analysis and concrete historical experience, is a lack of faith (as opposed to reasonable scepticism) in any substantial, broadly working-class, political project outside of Labour, even under new conditions.”

Precisely, but that lack of faith in the working class is what I have been saying for the last few years characterises the AWL’s politics in general!!!! It means in effect giving up on the working class being central to your politics – a feature which has affected all Third Campist organisations eventually – and instead looking for other vehicles to hitch your wagon to. That’s what led the Third Campist SWP to end up hitching their wagon to the clerical-fascists and communalists, whilst the same method but different subjective judgements led the AWL to hitch its wagon to “democratic-imperialism”, as it increasingly saw the world as divided into tow camps – on the one hand “democracy” (which was ‘good’), and on the other Totalitarianism/Bonapartism (which was ‘bad’). Of course, both the SWP and the AWL refuse to accept any responsibility for the ‘bad’ actions of those to whom they have tied their fate, which simply leaves them acting as cheerleaders for these greater forces, who can then play the role of Monday Morning Quartback decrying what went wrong in their chosen teams tactics!

Cathy Nugent is absolutely correct that is what this new zig or is it a zag by the AWL leadership is all about as it necessarily gets tossed from one position to another according to the whims of fate, and cut loose as its Third Campism has led it from any kind of objective Marxist analysis.

Martin Thomas does a valiant job in trying to back up Sean’s argument in the face of Cathy’s rebuttal – a rebuttal, which though it locates the real reason for the change of position still ends up itself arguing the wrong position. He argues that the reason for the change of position IS based on some objective analysis. The current economic crisis of Capitalism, he argues will lead to a Tory victory next year. The severity of the crisis will mean that inevitable clashes will occur between workers and the Tory Government, which will be a right-wing Tory Government needing to take harsh measures to deal with the severity of the crisis. Under those conditions the unions will not split from Labour, they will hunker down with it. Labour will be able to strike up an oppositional more radical pose, and within those conditions some opening will arise for action inside the LP.

Sounds plausible until you look at the experiecne of history, and look at the real situation. The end of the Long Wave Boom that began in the 1880’s came around 1914. Its during that boom period that we see some dramatic changes. The growth of mass workers parties, the rise of new unions organising the unskilled etc. After that the crisis leads on the back of the militancy built up to large scale workers resistance, indeed to the Russian, German and Hungarian Revolutions. But, after a brief boom, from around 1920 onwards, Europe sank into a protracted economic malaise that deepened sharply with the onset of the Great Depression and lasted until the outbreak of WWII. During this period class conscioussness did not advance, but went backwards. The rise of Stalinism, of National Socialism and in the LP a reflection of that with the Liverpool Conference that voted against the admission of Communists ata time when they were being arrested just for being Communists, and the subsequent expulsion of CLP’s in the National Left-Wing Movement etc.

The same was true in the later equivalent period of the 1970’s and 80’s. The Long Wave Boom that began in 1949 did not bring large numbers of people into the LP. It took some time before the renewed confidence that the boom created via higher demand for Labour, and rising workers living standards to even be translated into greater union militancy that really began to be noticeable in the early 60’s with the growth of the Shop Stewards Movement and unofficial action. The main beneficiaries of that were not the LP during this period, but the groups like the IS who offered a simple syndicalist message of more militancy. Its again only when the boom comes to an end that “more militancy” can be seen no olonger as a solution that the more advanced workers realise that a political solution is required, and, still attached to the illusions of bourgeois democracy, come to the obvious conclusion that such a political solution can only come through the Labour Party. In fact, I like many other TU militants I know from the time, followed exactly that course. Its that, which set up the battles within the LP of the 1970’s and early 80’s. But, just as the ultimate failures of revolutions after 1914 and into the 1920’s led to a retrenchment so the failures of those struggles in the early 1980’s, and the watershed of the defeat of the Miners Strike in 1984, also then saw the retrenchment in the LP, the growth of the Right, the abandonment of the struggle by large sections of the left.

The current boom that began around 1999 has not yet seen that kind of development. It has begun with the first signs of increasing militancy – the petrol drivers strike of last year, the wildcat strikes by refinery workers etc. – but as I suggested some time ago the commencement of that process will necessarily, in the case of a more decrepit British Capitalism, be initially more defensive than offensive in nature. It takes time for the objective conditions to find their reflection in the psyche of workers. It takes time for them to rebuild basic structures, and to select new rank and file leaders. If this really were a serious slump then its unlikely to produce the kinds of response that Martin describes.

But it isn’t. Last year long before the actual recession began in the Third Quarter the AWL were talking about recession as though it was already a fact. Its been typical of sections of the left to shout crisis at every opportunity like some kind of comfort blanket. It partly stems from the old Lassalleanism and the Iron Law of Wages, the need to every so often propagandistically suggest that Capitalism is unable to raise workers living standards, and partly from the continued influence of Stalinism within the workers movement that took on that Iron Law of Wages, and feels the need to describe some absolute impoverishment of workers, and dream up all kinds of explanations and caveats to overcome the very obvious fact that workers living standards HAVE risen! Its also a bit of Mr. Micawbersim – the left continually hoping that “something will turn up”, to get them out of their hopeless condition.

Now, even as its clear that the worst of the recession is over, and – subject to some unforeseen second shoe not dropping – recovery is about to get under way the AWL continue to frame their politics – at least to argue this particular case – around the notion of some continued long and deep slump. Yet, it is the fact, that no such long, deep slump is likely that is the real reason to be in the Labour Party. Its likely, in the next few years that the resumption of the boom will again see as it did in the early 60’s a rise in the ideology of syndicalism and Trade Union militancy. The larger groups like the SP can benefit from that, but its unlikely that the sectlets like the AWL will, except very marginally. But, that private benefit will be at the expense of the good of the labour Movement as a whole, precisely because that kind of syndicalism can offer no real long term political solution for the working class. That political solution can only be developed on the basis of a struggle within the Workers Party, and both Sean Matgamna and Martin Thomas are right to say that no credible alternative Workers Party to the LP is on the horizon, and Cathy Nugent accepts that too.

Yet, its clear that for the AWL leadership this orientation to the LP is based on just the same sectarianism that marked the left’s previous Entrism. Martin says,

“Sean wrote: “AWL will be running Jill Mountford as a... candidate against Labour... in the 2010 general election, and we... call for the maximum coordination and mobilisation of socialists to run as broad a spread of [socialist] candidates as possible”. Sean’s and my orientation does not hinder such “extra-Labour” AWL activity as is realistic.”

In other words we recognise the LP as still being the Workers Party – albeit a bourgeois workers party – but we will not join that Party of the workers in good faith, but only to leach off it. And as a worker in the LP who, however much I might dislike the leadership, acts on the basis of workers democracy and the acceptance of majority decisions, I would say to such people, “if that’s your attitude, piss off and build your own Party if that’s what you really want”!!!!

And, there really is an important point here about the nature of the statist, revolutionary left. For all of their many pages of opposition to Stalinism, for all their propaganda about fighting for democracy – the AWL, for instance has another article entitled The Battle For Democracy , a reference to Marx’s statement that for socialism to be possible it was necessary to win the Batlle of Democracy within the working class, to win it over in its vast majority to socialist ideas, - the reality is that they do not really believe in democracy, not even in workers democracy. The real workers, and the real workers party hold ideas that they disagree with. If that exists in a Trade Union there are two alternatives – either you accept the majority view and try to change it, or else if that view is so distateful, you go and set up another union. But, this revoluitonary, statist Left doesn’t do that. Its tried many times to set up its own Workers Parties and failed miserably to attract Workers to them. Not surprisingly, because those same workers in the LP hadn’t been won over to them either!!!!! Yet, Martin declares with what appears to be some astonishment,

“It is galling to admit that we have failed to split any large part of Labour’s base away to our politics over the 12 years of New Labour rule.”

Having failed to do so they don’t want to accept the majority view at the present time of workers, and try to change it, they want simply to us the LP when it suits them, ignore the majority votes of workers within it, and do their own thing by standing their own candidates etc.! Is it any wonder that workers have such a low regard for people who can play so fast and loose with democratic principles within the workers movement? Is it any wonder that looking at the experience of the Russian Revolution, and the manifestation of similar disregard for the majority votes of workers when they didn’t suit the views of the revoluitonary statists predecessors, and seeing how that ended up, that workers give them such a wide birth???

Marxists have to be in the LP because it is the Workers Party, warts and all. As workers militancy rises, as it necessarily will in coming years as the resumption of the Boom raises the demand for Labour and workers confidence, Marxists have to learn the lessons of the 1960’s when a lot of that raw militancy was squandered in syndicalist politics. They have instead to channel it into a political struggle within the Workers Party, and into building workers self-activity around such a political perspective.