The basis of the SCLV in 1979, was the idea that whilst socialists had to campaign for a Labour victory, they could not do so uncritically, given the nature of the previous Labour government, and given the bourgeois nature of the ideas that are fundamental to the Labour Party itself. They could not do what, for example, the SWP did, which was to stand aside from the Labour Party for five years, and then, for two weeks, at election time, turn themselves into uncritical supporters of Labour. Socialists could not ask workers to vote Labour on the basis of its record, or its Manifesto, but only on the basis of the need to put Labour back into office so as to continue to hold its feet to the fire, to continue to expose those inadequacies, and, thereby, to increasingly mobilise the working-class around a socialist alternative to it. The basic idea was that winning the election was not the primary goal, building a socialist alternative was, and the only realistic way of doing that was to build such an alternative within the Labour Party itself.
The greatest step forward, in the US, in recent years, has been the mobilisation of tens of thousands around the Occupy Movement, many of whom carried over into the movement behind Bernie Sanders. Let's be clear the Occupy Movement was a largely middle class movement, with vague ideas, which is why it eventually evaporated. To the extent it recognised the need for a more structured political response, and so fed into the Sanders movement it is progress. But, Sanders himself, like Corbyn in Britain, is not a socialist, only a progressive social-democrat, and, unfortunately, both also suffer from being infected with economic nationalism. Corbyn is a Brexiter, whilst Sanders is an opponent of free trade, who, similarly, looks to protect US jobs, at the expense of foreign workers.
The most important thing, in both cases, has not been the success or failure of either Corbyn or Sanders, but has been the fact that hundreds of thousands of activists have been drawn into political activity. The task of socialists is to provide those activists with a principled programme around which they can now organise. That programme does not have to be a revolutionary programme. It can be a Minimum Programme, like that Marx formulated for the French Socialists, but that Minimum Programme, must also link to a Maximum Programme, a programme that moves beyond the limits of social-democracy, and towards the winning of state power by a revolutionary proletariat.
Lenin, in “Left-Wing Communism”, notes,
“... the fact that most British workers still follow the lead of the British Kerenskys or Scheidemanns and have not yet had experience of a government composed of these people—an experience which was necessary in Russia and Germany so as to secure the mass transition of the workers to communism—undoubtedly indicates that the British Communists should participate in parliamentary action, that they should, from within parliament, help the masses of the workers see the results of a Henderson and Snowden government in practice, and that they should help the Hendersons and Snowdens defeat the united forces of Lloyd George and Churchill. To act otherwise would mean hampering the cause of the revolution, since revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, a change brought about by the political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone.”
And, as Lenin also says, an election campaign is a period when politics is conducted at a much more intense level. The main purpose for socialists, at such points, is to be able, that much more easily, to gain the ear of the workers for their ideas, and to hold up the views of the bourgeois workers' representatives to scrutiny.
"In Western Europe and in America, the Communist must learn to create a new, uncustomary, non-opportunist, and non-careerist parliamentarianism; the Communist parties must issue their slogans; true proletarians, with the help of the unorganised and downtrodden poor, should distribute leaflets, canvass workers’ houses and cottages of the rural proletarians and peasants in the remote villages (fortunately there are many times fewer remote villages in Europe than in Russia, and in Britain the number is very small); they should go into the public houses, penetrate into unions, societies and chance gatherings of the common people, and speak to the people, not in learned (or very parliamentary) language, they should not at all strive to “get seats” in parliament, but should everywhere try to get people to think, and draw the masses into the struggle, to take the bourgeoisie at its word and utilise the machinery it has set up, the elections it has appointed, and the appeals it has made to the people; they should try to explain to the people what Bolshevism is, in a way that was never possible (under bourgeois rule) outside of election times (exclusive, of course, of times of big strikes, when in Russia a similar apparatus for widespread popular agitation worked even more intensively). It is very difficult to do this in Western Europe and extremely difficult in America, but it can and must be done, for the objectives of communism cannot be achieved without effort. We must work to accomplish practical tasks, ever more varied and ever more closely connected with all branches of social life, winning branch after branch, and sphere after sphere from the bourgeoisie."
In 1979, it was an opportunity not only to defeat the Tories, but also to again expose to the workers the bourgeois nature of a Labour government, and, thereby, to win them over to the ideas of socialism. The same is true, today, in the US. The election is not only an opportunity to prevent the victory of Trump, and of the Republicans, who, have been captured by the representatives of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, as has happened with the Tories in Britain, but also again to expose the bourgeois nature of the Democrats, and the need to build a real US Workers' Party, but which, realistically, can only arise out of the existing rank and file base of the Democrats itself.
The need to build the self-activity of workers, in communities across the US, to counter the very obvious threat from fascists and racist cops has been described in Part 2. Trump, even in the first Presidential debate – though there was nothing remotely presidential about it – even called openly for the right-wing armed militia to “stand by”, a call to arms, which all of the right-wing militia were quick to respond to via social media.
The need to combat that in relation to the election period is obvious, but, the fact is that black communities have been facing these threats for years, and will continue to do so after the election, whoever wins. But, the need to build the self activity of the working-class, in that respect, is only one aspect of the need for independent working class organisation and self-activity. As members of the Panthers have set out, the Black Lives Matter Movement, has raised the profile of the issue, but its response provides no solution to it. As in the time of Malcolm X, it is required to draw in all of those mobilised by BLM into the kind of organised resistance required to put down the rabid dogs of reaction. It is also necessary to move that resistance forward by giving it political form, and, thereby, providing real solutions, in the hands of the workers and oppressed communities.
The election will raise many issues, and the temptation will be to simply respond to the reactionary politics of Trump and the Republicans, who want to tear down anything positive that has been built. For example, Trump is making scrapping Obamacare a centrepiece of his propaganda. Of course, Trump has no idea how he would do it, or what he would put in its place. Indeed, raising that demand seems somewhat counterproductive, because a majority in the US now support Obamacare. But, Trump, as always, is playing to his reactionary core base, and simply throws out bait. Biden, of course, does not even respond to Trump's position with the progressive social-democratic demand of Sanders, of Medicare For All, which is effectively to create a US version of the NHS. Instead, Biden responds with the totally inadequate call for an extension of Obamacare. But, in the conditions of COVID19, of 200,000 deaths in the US, the provision of universal healthcare, free at the point of need, is the minimum that is required. Biden/Harris cannot even bring themselves to call for that.
Yet, Sanders call for Medicare For All is also inadequate. It deals with some of the inadequacies of Obamacare, but that is not all that socialists should be demanding. It fails to ask the questions of who this healthcare is actually being provided for, and who, therefore, has control over the nature of that provision. Healthcare provided by the capitalist state, like any goods or services provided by that state, is not provided for the benefits of workers but of capital. It meets the needs of capital for a regulated supply of labour-power. Consequently, control over that supply is exercised by the representatives of capital; the type of healthcare provided is determined by those needs; the amount of resources devoted to that supply is determined by those needs, and so on. Control over this supply can never be allowed to pass into the hands of workers, for that very reason, a point that Marxists always have to elaborate when progressive social-democrats raise demands for greater democratic control in any of these state capitalist endeavours.
And, because workers never have control over that provision there often arises a sizeable state bureaucracy, which, like all bureaucracies, can end up pursuing its own interests, and meeting the needs of neither labour nor capital, at least until the latter calls it into line. So, for example, if we look at the experience of COVID19, in Britain, the workers in the health service made valiant efforts, but the performance of the NHS itself, as an institution, was abysmal.
Despite the lessons of COVID elsewhere, in China and Italy, where the spread took place primarily within healthcare systems, there was no adequate provision to stop that within the NHS. No isolation hospitals or hospital wings were established; large numbers of staff were not provided with adequate, or even any, PPE, to prevent them catching or spreading the virus; many people contracted the virus after they had gone into hospital for other conditions; the NHS actually called back retired staff, i.e. people in the very age group actually at risk from the virus; elderly patients who were dying with the virus were sent back to care homes, where a similar lack of isolation and PPE provision meant they spread the virus amongst their own vulnerable residents; because no isolation provisions were established, large numbers of people have died or their conditions have worsened, because the NHS cancelled their appointments, even though, in many hospitals, occupancy rates fell as low as 40%; huge amounts of resources were put into the development of the Nightingale hospitals, which remained empty showpieces and so on. None of this would be likely in a healthcare system owned and controlled by workers themselves. As the debate over healthcare takes place in the US, this is the argument that socialists should raise.
The US which does not have an NHS has the opportunity to learn the lessons of the failings of the NHS. It has the ability to create a national, worker owned and controlled, cooperative health service, based on a single payer system, providing universal healthcare, free at the point of need. The model should be the kind of Workers' Friendly Societies that workers created in the 19th century. Marx and Engels argued that the workers should defend those societies, and demand the state keep its hands off them ("Prohibition of all interference by employers in the administration of workers' friendly societies, provident societies, etc., which are returned to the exclusive control of the workers"), and they opposed the introduction of welfare states, for the very reasons describe above.
"These points demand that the following should be taken over by the state: (1) the bar, (2) medical services, (3) pharmaceutics, dentistry, midwifery, nursing, etc., etc., and later the demand is advanced that workers’ insurance become a state concern. Can all this be entrusted to Mr. von Caprivi? And is it compatible with the rejection of all state socialism, as stated above?"
The same kinds of principles of workers self activity and self government required to mobilise against the fascists, via the creation of democratically controlled defence squads and militia, are the same principles involved in creating democratically controlled health and social care systems, schools and other services required by workers.
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