John McDonnell Withdraws

John McDonell has withdrawn from the Labour Leadership contest. He had come under some criticism in the media over the last few days following his quip about assassinating Thatcher, but his decision to withdraw seems to be based on the fact that he was not going to get enough nominations anyway, and so thought he might at least get Diane Abbot on to the ballot.

The process for standing for Leader is thoroughly undemocratic. Not only is the bar for the number of MP's required unreasonably high, but by the same token, it gives this small number of Party members (who happen to be MP's) a huge multiple of the votes for any other member (a multiple that is also mirrored in the Electoral College). In the 1980's when we were fighting to bring some demcoracy into the LP the Right-Wing objected to the idea of votes being based on Party units such as the CLP, and isntead argued that elections should be based on the principle of One Member One Vote. Like most people at the time on the Left I disagreed with that idea, because although it appears to be more democratic, it gives votes to ianctive members who are thereby more prone to have their vote determined by the bouregois press, the party machine etc. I now think that this objection is wrong. It is upt to us to create a Party where all members are active, and involved, not to disenfranchise those that are not, whilst continuing to take their money. If it means that members have to be lapsed or expelled if they are not active over a given period without good reason so be it.

But, by the same token if we really are to have One Member One Vote that should apply to every member of the Party whether you are an MP or not. That should go for members who are members via the payment of the Trade Union Political Levy, but likewise it should mean that in every union their are regular meetings of Political levy paying members, perhaps based on the idea of workplace Branches re-introduced by the Party in the 1980's. It would also set the basis for restoring the Trade Union link, and for bringing back that link in the form it ocne had at a local level of the Trades and Labour Council.

Having said all that I'm afraid I can't feel devastated by McDonnell's withdrawal from the contest. Yes, having a Left candidate standing in such an ele3ction provides a focus for a real debate around political programme and principles. That is the argument Leninists have always used about standing in Parliamentary Elections. But, surely in a Political Party of all things, it is not necessary to have an election to conduct such a discussion, it should be taking place everyday in any case. Moreover, had McDonnell stood and won what would it have really meant. I have written in the past about the fact that I have been elected to almsot every position in the Labour Movement its possible to stand for at a local level. But, I have never been under any illusion that such election meant that those who voted for me shared my politics! And the Labour Movement - The Trade Unions in particular - are replete with examples of revolutioanries and others on the Left being elected to positions on NEC's etc. on the basis of small electorates, and the organising ability of small determined elites. But, having got elected it usually is worth not a hill of beans. Engels views on such matters in relation to the Peasant War in Germany are instructive.

"The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. We have seen examples of this in recent times. We need only be reminded of the position taken in the last French provisional government by the representatives of the proletariat, though they represented only a very low level of proletarian development. Whoever can still look forward to official positions after having become familiar with the experiences of the February government — not to speak of our own noble German provisional governments and imperial regencies — is either foolish beyond measure, or at best pays only lip service to the extreme revolutionary party."

How many times have we seen revolutionaries elected to positions on union NEC's only to find themselves so trapped, and ultimately to act in very little difference from reformist leaders. And, of course, as Engels alludes to here were they to try to act differently - as in a Way Scargill did in the 84 strike - what is the consequence? They find themselves almost equally trapped, because although leadership can have the function of raising conscioussness, and driving a class forward, it is not an infinitely elastic tie. At some point it snaps, and the leadership is left isolated. The lower the level of class consciousness, the more "bourgeois" the proletariat, i.e. the more bourgeois ideas dominate, the less mobilised is the class, the less elastic that tie is.

As I have argued elsewhere the Left, including the revolutionary Left has been marked by its own form of Parliamentary cretinism in its actions as opposed to its rhetoric. It talks about basing istelf on the self-activity of the class, but in reality is dominated by the same Lassallean/Fabian statism as the reformists. Its day to day activity is not revolutionary, is not subversive of bouregois ideas, but is thoroughly Economistic, and therefore, reinforcing of those bouregois ideas. It rails against Parliamentarism, and yet in the Trade Unions and Labour Movement its actions are thoroughly Parliamentarist. Its main concerns are to get its members elected to positions, for instance, to get this or that resolution adopted, seeing this as far more important than whether such cnadidates really have obtained support for what they stand for, or whether there is genuine active support and a willingness to fight for the resolutions they have got adopted. As I have written before that is typical, for example, of the various "Rank and File" movements that have been established, which concentrate on such activity rather than building real mass rank and file organisations within the workplace capable of engaging in self-activity to deal with immediate problems.

Marx and Engels gave us precisely that task, to win the battle of democracy within the class, to be able not just to get people elected, but to raise the level of the class as a whole to an adequate level for it to become the ruling class. That requires far more than just being able to get a few members of an elite elected. It requires long, persistent hard work at the very roots of the class itself. We should have learned from the TV Leadership debates the dangers of personality cults in media driven societies. The real concern for Marxists has to be to really focus on building strcutures through which ordinary workers can themselves engage in direct self-activity, that provides solutions for their problems of today, whilst taking care of their needs for tomorrow, solutions that subvert bouregois society by creating forms and structures that prefigure the future society, and through which workers can begin to develop the skills they need to indeed be fit to become the new ruling class.