The Programme of the Early Comintern, and the Transitional Programme (3/18)
Now, as far as the Left/Marxists in the LP is concerned, we are already part of such a Popular Front, simply on the basis of party membership, because the LP, unlike even, say, the Mensheviks, is a bourgeois party. It is not committed to socialism, let alone Marxism, but merely to social-democracy, to reconciling the contradictions between capital and labour within the context of capitalism. We have no choice, because our forces are so tiny. In effect, we are back to the stage that the small sects like the Communist League, League of the Just, and so on were at in the first half of the 19th century. And, in these conditions, the Left should be a wing of that party, for the reasons that Engels states in relation to 1848.
“When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it... Had we from 1864, to 1873 insisted on working together only with those who openly adopted our platform where should we be to-day? I think that all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organisation, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake.”
The Labour Party is not a Workers' Party in the sense that the German SPD, or the French and Italian Socialist Parties or the RSDLP were, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those parties, at least nominally, considered themselves to be Marxist parties, revolutionary parties, that sought the overthrow of capitalism. The LP has never been that. It is a workers' party in the material sense that it is composed of workers, it was created by workers organisations, and continues to be linked to them, i.e. the trades unions, and it is the party that workers look to to represent their interests. But, ideologically, the LP is no different to the Liberal Party of the late 19th century, and to which the working-class previously had such a relation. The LP is a bourgeois party, and, not surprisingly, given that it was created by the trades unions, which are themselves workers' organisations dominated by bourgeois ideas, i.e. the acceptance of the continuation of capitalism, and the goal, merely, of obtaining a higher price for the workers' commodity – labour-power – in the capitalist market place. And, the other workers' parties across Europe have regressed to the same ideological level. Ideologically, they are distinguishable from other social-democratic parties, such as the US Democrats, only quantitatively, not qualitatively, i.e. the degree to which they are dominated by conservative social-democracy rather than progressive social-democracy. At best they are representative of that sizeable, professional middle-class interest of the bureaucratic layer of managers and administrators (functioning capitalists) that directs the socialised capital (progressive social-democracy), at worst they are representative of the owners of fictitious-capital, whose revenues and capital gains are themselves ultimately dependent upon the fortunes of all of that mass of socialised capital (conservative social democracy).
Paul says,
“If you want a government that “smashes the state”, that pulls Britain out of NATO and the IMF, defunds the police force or adopts a policy of Open Borders — you are welcome to argue for all these things. But there will be no majority for them inside the Labour Party and — because of the dynamics outlined below — no possibility of Labour coming to power in 2024 if they were adopted.”
Paul is right to say that we have a right to continue to argue for those positions, even if we know that, as presently constituted, the party itself is unlikely to adopt them. The point is not whether we have a right to continue to argue for adequate class struggle politics or not – and I would not list the positions above, currently, as being the most important in that respect – but why on Earth, when we can do so, would we follow Paul's advice and abandon such positions? Failing to argue for serious class struggle politics, by self-censorship, is not only unprincipled and the fastest route to irrelevance, it is also the fastest route to losing the right to even argue for such politics! Certainly “open borders” is not some raving communist position, but a purely rational, liberal position, flowing from the basic bourgeois rights and freedoms under whose banner the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century were conducted. It is the basis of the EU, which cannot be described as some raving communist venture either. That Paul is led to abandon even these simple, liberal democratic demands in search of his chimerical broad alliance demonstrates the point made by Marx in his analysis of such an approach in relation to the events of 1848 in France.
“Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an “attempt on society” and stigmatised as “socialism.”
(Marx – The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Chapter 1)
Continuing to “march separately” by maintaining our political and organisational independence, does not at all prevent us from “striking together”, with others in the labour movement in order to defeat the forces of the Right, on issues of immediate agreement. It is the whole point of remaining inside the LP as a wing of that bourgeois party, in order to “get the ear” of the workers whose support is required to build an actual revolutionary workers' party! But, why would you limit yourself to getting the ear of workers for a program that you know is inadequate, and will fail, and only bring further demoralisation!! The whole point is to show to workers the inadequacy of social-democracy in action.
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