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Some years back I wrote a review of one of Cliff Slaughter's post-WRP books. I have since then modified my views on Lenin's What Is To Be Done? in the light of reading Lars Lih's writings on the topic, but otherwise I still go along with what I wrote then. Paul F ******************************** Cliff Slaughter, A New Party for Socialism: Why? How? When?, Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press), London, 1996, pp100, £2.00 THIS pamphlet is the swansong for the Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press), and a call for a new revolutionary party. The WRP (WP) was one of the more promising parts of the fall-out from the implosion of the old WRP in 1985. Its members were amongst those who finally did the decent thing with Gerry Healy, and threw him out. Some who sided with them split away to carry on in Healy’s political rather than personal tradition, whilst most of those who stayed loyal to Healy’s politics, personality and philosophy propped up the ailing psychopath until his death, and in three rival groups still hail his memory. Only the WRP (WP), the short-lived Internationalist Faction (which disappeared after making a brave stab at disentangling Healy’s deranged dialectics), and the Workers International League (which, remarkably, emerged from the pro-Healy madhouse) came out of the wreckage with any sign of acknowledging that something had gone seriously wrong, and, moreover, were willing to talk about it. It was a nice surprise to be able to discuss in a comradely manner with people who had until recently been quite unapproachable. The WRP (WP) took the old party’s best brains, including the author of this pamphlet, and brought back to life quite a few former party members who had been repelled by Healy’s latter-day gyrations. It set up an international body, the rather clumsily-titled Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International. It said that it would embark upon a thorough appraisal of its tradition. But its heavily-promoted campaigns didn’t seem to have the élan of those of yore, and apart from Peter Fryer’s ‘Personal Column’, Workers Press was a dull weekly. Many observers considered that this reflected a demoralised organisation. The gist of this pamphlet is that the magnitude of the capitalist crisis is such that reforms are no longer possible, and the capitalist crisis will lead inexorably to the eruption of big struggles. Social democracy can no longer exist in any meaningful way, and Blairism represents a qualitatively new development, whose attacks on the working class will provoke a strong response. The collapse of Stalinism has deprived capitalism of one of its main instruments of control over the working class, and with the reactionary nature of Blairism increasingly clear, the way is now open for the revival of revolutionary politics: ‘the situation is favourable for the working class and thus for the forces rebuilding the Fourth International’ (p55). The Healyite catastrophism of yore has not so much been rejected but reformulated into, of all things, an optimism reminiscent of Ernest Mandel — everything is going our way. The ghost of ‘Pabloism’ comes to haunt its sternest detractors. Cliff Slaughter is being very one-sided. A more important consequence of the collapse of Stalinism, particularly in the short run, is that it has intensified the growing feeling that social change is impossible. Whilst few people, at least in the imperialist states, had any illusions remaining in Stalinism, it nevertheless showed that an alternative to capitalism could exist, even if this one was not a positive example. This was the more so in the Third World, where the ability of the Soviet bureaucracy to develop in the face of imperialist opposition made it look more positive. Although capitalism is increasingly recognised across the world as an iniquitous and decrepit system, and despite the fact that the capitalist class has become pessimistic about its own system, more than ever before do people consider that there is no alternative to it. This sentiment has been reinforced by the inability of traditional trade unionism to defend the working class. Rather than being able to flourish within a rising tide of resistance, Marxists will be more rather than less isolated for some years to come, notwithstanding any upsurge in the class struggle that may occur. Slaughter says people are engaging in all manner of struggles, around civil liberties and environmental issues as well as over unemployment and poverty, and Marxists must get in there ‘to show the necessary socialist direction’ of these struggles. He adds that the new party will not be built by the old methods of intervening in struggles, or by politicising them: ‘The aim is to make these struggles more effective and, where possible, successful — to find ways of supporting them, so that they become part of a new reconstructed, self-movement of the working class as a class.’ (p6) How this is different to intervening in struggles, politicising them, or showing ‘the necessary socialist direction’ of them, is not clear. There is nothing in this pamphlet to explain why a new party has to be built, as opposed to continuing with the now-defunct one under whose name the pamphlet was published. Slaughter is adamant that a new party ‘cannot be a party “supplied” to the working class, but a party of the working class’ (p80), so was the problem with the WRP (WP) that it ‘supplied’ itself to the working class? One cannot tell, and the main reason given for the old WRP’s decay — that Healy capitulated to Stalinism through his adaptation to bourgeois nationalist leaders — is quite inadequate. Slaughter and his comrades wish to rebuild the Fourth International. But this organisation always presented itself as the leadership to which the working class would be attracted as Stalinism and social democracy were shown to be bankrupt. How does this correspond to Slaughter’s plans for a new party emerging from within the working class? If he wishes to go ahead with his plans, he must produce a full appraisal of the experience of the Fourth International; he may not then wish to rebuild it. Slaughter considers that the new party must be a vanguard organisation, not ‘a group putting itself to the class as its “vanguard party”’, but ‘the vanguard of the working class forming itself into a party’ (p80). Were the Bolsheviks, who considered themselves a vanguard party, one or the other? In 1902, in What Is To Be Done?, Lenin called for the construction of a vanguard organisation from the top down as workers by themselves were capable only of a trade union consciousness; in 1905 and especially in 1917, he wanted the party to be opened up to militant workers as they were often more radical and far-seeing than the party’s members. Seeing that we are not in a revolutionary situation à la 1905 (let alone 1917), this puts Lenin’s strategy in What Is To Be Done? into question. This is not a minor historical quibble, as practically everyone except Leninists have bitterly opposed the concept of a vanguard party, with many seeing a vanguard party as the ideal means, whether intentional or not, of creating a new ruling elite. Slaughter emphasises the need for theoretical work, yet if one looks at the WRP (WP)’s biggest campaign, over Bosnia-Hercegovina, the organisation took over lock, stock and barrel the ideas propagated by liberals and US right wingers. Like them, Slaughter points the finger solely at Serb chauvinism as if the communalist ideas spread by Slovene, Croat and Muslim nationalists and the interference of imperialist powers, particularly Germany, were of no account in the collapse of Yugoslavia. There is something strange about supporting the break-up of one large multinational state — indeed, one of the WRP (WP)’s mentors in this business, Attila Hoare, went so far as to call the fragmentation of Yugoslavia a ‘revolution’! — and then complaining when this dynamic of disintegration threatens to break up a small multinational part of it. The WRP (WP) dissolved itself late last year. A few members wanted to struggle on with the existing organisation, some wanted to join the Socialist Labour Party, and the majority considered that the best way forward was to reform as Marxists for a Socialist Party and enter the Reclaim the Future Alliance, a loose collection of road scheme protesters, animal rights campaigners, vegetarians, ecologists and so on. The replacement for Workers Press, Reclaim the Future, is not a particularly happy signpost for the new project. With a fiery red and black dragon on the mast-head, and — I kid you not — a paean to the creature by Chris Knight on the back, saying where you can meet it (round the back of the St Pancras Community Centre each Tuesday, if you’re interested), the paper is a collection of reports on and adverts for a wide range of campaigns. Apart from those campaigns which already receive wide support from socialists — against deportations and wrongful imprisonment, industrial disputes, etc — there is a heavy emphasis upon ecological issues. Ecological awareness by itself does not necessarily lead people to oppose capitalism; if it does, it can equally drive people to a backward-looking, anti-industrial outlook that is precisely the opposite of the Marxian project. Human advance can only be made through a society in which industry and agriculture are democratically planned and scientifically managed. A socialist society would use the world’s resources in a sensible manner, thus avoiding damaging short-term exploitation, and enabling much more to be produced to satisfy people’s needs. In fact, Slaughter says this. But you won’t find any of it in Reclaim the Future. What you will find are condemnations of the genetic engineering of vegetables, adverts for vegan societies, and rave reviews of Green Left conferences and anti-road campaigns, some of which is written in an execrable style that is, I imagine, what the authors feel is the language of today’s youth. Subsequent issues will no doubt feature recipes for mung bean stews, and grave warnings to those of us who have the temerity to continue to eat meat, or drive a motor car. It’s not clear if comrade Slaughter — who, so I’m told, isn’t too keen on all this New Age stuff — will have to change his name to something more animal-friendly. Although this pamphlet eschews the raucous posturing of the old WRP, and attempts to deal with the issues facing the left today, it fails to address the central problems that the decay of the traditional labour movement and the collapse of Stalinism have brought about. Slaughter implicitly rejects some aspects of the tradition from which his political current has emerged, but fails to make the necessary appraisal of it. And as for the current manifestation of this process, Reclaim the Future smacks more of desperation than confidence. Paul Flewers ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
