What is the situation today? The division is not between socialists who are for reform and socialists who are for revolution. The division is between "socialists" who have no other ambition than to run capitalism, and socialists who argue that there is an alternative to capitalism. That is where the battle lines are drawn. The so-called reformists dont reform, they carry out counter-reforms. Therefore even serious reformists can be convinced of the necessity of a radical socialist transformation of society. As a document of the Swedish section of the CWI put it in 1996: "A new workers party will not mean the reestablishment of Social Democracy. Even if reformist ideas, probably expressed in the form of real social democracy predominate in the first stages, this will be on an entirely different basis from the past. The only way to defend even the old reforms is through militant struggle and the socialist transformation of society". In an immediate sense, the choice is no longer between a reformist perspective and revolutionary transformation, but between a serious struggle for reforms with a perspective of revolutionary transformation or else no revolution and precious little reform. Marxists today must not only be advocates of a socialist transformation of society, they must also be the best fighters for radical reforms.
That does not mean that in the last analysis the debate between reform and revolution is irrelevant. In the last analysis it is as illusory today as yesterday to think that we can achieve socialism simply by winning a majority and using the existing state machine, without dismantling the structures carefully put in place to defend the capitalist order, without neutralising the inevitable sabotage and opposition of the capitalists, without creating a new type of state. But to try and build a mass party on those lines today is a bridge too far. Today after a period when the working class has been pushed back, we have to rally forces and regroup, defending the idea of socialism as an alternative to capitalism and starting to move towards that objective by supporting working class struggles and proposing measures which concretely improve the situation of the working class.
What is decisive is the centre of gravity of socialist parties. No-one would dispute that it is important for socialists to take part in the day-to-day struggles of working people, and also to represent them in Parliament and in local councils. The question is which predominates ? We have to have the conception that socialists in Parliament should act as the expression of the struggle outside, and not the traditional reformist attitude that the struggle outside is just a form of pressure on Parliament.
The key question is how to move from the present situation towards the formation of new socialist parties. We have to start with the material to hand. There remain many members or ex-members of the Socialist parties who are still loyal to their socialist convictions. The same is even truer for the Communist parties. What happens in the unions is also crucial. Generally speaking, the rightward evolution of the reformist parties has been more than accompanied by the trade union leaders. But the unions remain instruments, even though imperfect ones, of defence of the working class. Many trade union militants understand that there has to be a political dimension to their struggle. In the past they naturally supported or joined the Socialist or Communist parties. Today this is less and less the case. In France a whole generation of militants has been left orphan by the shift to the right not only of the Communist Party but of the CGT, the militant trade union confederation that was and still is to a large extent associated it. There are also new independent unions who have no party to represent them. In Britain for the first time ever there is serious questioning of the links with the Labour Party. The relationship between unions and political parties varies from country to country, but in every case militant trade unionists will be a key component of a new party.
In some cases people will come to socialist ideas from a nationalist background, from the realisation that the only real independence will be socialist independence, not only in Scotland but also in the Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia, Corsica and elsewhere. There is also the green factor, militant ecologists who come to the understanding that you have to be red to be green, often in reaction against the rightward evolution of the official Green parties, which in France and Germany form part of governing coalitions carrying out neoliberal policies.
Finally, last but not least there is the revolutionary Left, which represents sizeable formations in most European countries, Trotskyists of various shades and ex-Maoists. To the extent that these organisations, whatever their defects, continue to defend the need for socialist transformation and because they represent organised militant forces they have a potentially crucial role to play. But they can only play it to the extent that they are able to grasp the need to come together with other forces to create new parties and not just to see their own development as the be-all and end-all of everything. As Trotsky wrote in 1934, "it is necessary to see oneself not as a makeshift for the new party, but only as the instrument for its creation". Unfortunately, in such a key country as France, the possibility of using the LO-LCR election campaign as a springboard for a new party has for the moment been wasted, mainly because of the absolute incomprehension by LO of the need for such a party.
Having defined the type of parties that are necessary and the forces that can come together to form them we have to see how to bring them about. In this respect the question of political pluralism and democratic functioning is crucial. This has to be approached on two levels. In the first place, the experience of the workers movement in the 20th century has to be taken on board. Specifically we have to draw a balance sheet of Stalinism and re-establish the tradition of the workers movement up to the early years of the Communist International, of non-monolithic parties with the right of tendencies, currents, and platforms to exist. In this respect the influence of Stalinism made itself felt far beyond the pro-Moscow Communist parties. The Maoist organisations which came from those parties did not break from Stalinism. More surprisingly at first sight, but unquestionably, it influenced the Trotskyist organisations who should have been its antithesis. This can be explained in a general way by the pervasive influence of Stalinism in the workers movement which affected even its enemies. More specifically, the struggle to maintain small groups over several decades after 1945 faced with powerful Stalinist and Social Democratic parties played a role. This situation favoured authoritarian internal regimes where "democratic centralism" became not so much a means of reaching decisions through broad democratic discussion and achieving unity in action, as an instrument for sending orders down from the top, maintaining ideological discipline and discouraging independent thought. This was a perversion of the Marxist tradition. All the Trotskyist organisations have been faced with the need to break from this perversion. Some have broken more than others, and some not at all.
There is a more specific reason for pluralism. Generally speaking new parties have come into being not through splits in existing organisations. There is the example of the PRC, but even there the original split in the Communist Party was added to by not insignificant forces from other backgrounds, including Trotskyists. Elsewhere new formations have come about by assembling forces from different backgrounds. In Portugal the Left Bloc was formed in 1999 from an initiative by three groups, the Trotskyist PSR, the ex-Maoist UDP, and Politica XXI, a group of intellectuals from a mainly CP background. In Denmark the Red Green Alliance was formed in 1989, involving Trotskyists, a section of the Communist Party, a left Socialist group and a Green group. In Norway the Red Electoral Alliance was originally the electoral front of a Maoist party, which became a broader party in the 1990s, opening itself up to other socialist forces. In Turkey the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) was formed in 1996 involving Guevarist organisations, sections of the pro-Moscow parties, Trotskyists and others. And that is likely to be the pattern elsewhere. Bringing together organisations from different traditions, from different cultures as well as integrating many independents who have often had negative experiences in unions and parties is a delicate task. It calls for patience and tolerance. It necessitates a genuinely democratic way of functioning, with guaranteed rights for different currents. This will also be the only kind of functioning that will be attractive to the new generations that will form the bulk of new socialist parties.
But formal democratic rights are not enough. It is necessary to break from the mentality of groups who think that they are right and all others are wrong, that they are the revolutionary party. It is necessary to break from the attitude that other socialist currents are enemy organisations. That does not mean that we do not discuss out differences and argue against positions that we consider mistaken. It does mean that we do so in a spirit of fraternal collaboration, with the aim of achieving greater cohesion and unity in action.
In many ways the tasks that we face today are similar to the period when the first mass parties of the working class were established at the end of the last century, but with an important difference. We are not starting from nothing. In between times the 20th century happened. The working class has been through the experience of wars, revolutions, Stalinism and fascism. >From these experiences lessons have been drawn which have reinforced the original Marxist analysis of capitalist society. All of that is relevant if we want to work out a strategy for socialist transformation in the new century. That is why we think it is necessary to build a Marxist tendency or tendencies within new socialist parties, to enrich these parties with Marxist methods of analysis and the lessons of the history of the workers movement, to better understand the world in order to change it. That is what the International Socialist Movement aims to do.
To return to our starting point, one of the lessons of the history of the workers movement is that the struggle for socialism will ultimately fail if it is limited to one country, that the struggle has to be international because capitalism is international. That is why it is important for the SSP to develop the maximum number of contacts with socialists on all continents and to support international mobilisations against capitalist globalisation such as the demonstration against the IMF in Prague in September. But we have to particularly develop links with socialists in Europe in order to put forward a socialist alternative to the Europe of the bosses.
In the medium term we have to work towards the creation of an international alliance of socialist parties. Of course there already exist international organisations, such as the CWI to which the ISM belongs (2). No existing international organisation can expect to have all the answers to all the issues that confront the workers movement internationally. Nor is it viable to think that a mass international will develop solely from or around one of the existing international formations. Nevertheless we think that these organisations can play a key role in bringing about a broader alliance of socialist forces, and we argue for the CWI to play such a role. On the basis of contacts established over the past few months and of a first meeting in Lisbon in March this year (3), it will be possible in the next few months to take new steps towards more structured links between socialist forces in Europe.
Murray Smith
(1) Maoist organisations developed in the 1960s as splits from the pro-Moscow Communist parties under the impact of the apparently more radical Chinese Revolution and its leader Mao Zedong. Maoism was never a serious force in Britain, but it was in other European countries, and even more so in the Third World. Many of these organisations have now disappeared, but some have evolved and play a part in the process of building new parties.
(2) Apart from the CWI, the main organisations are the Fourth International (United Secretariat); the international tendency of which the British SWP is part; the International Workers League and International Workers Unity, both largely based in Latin America and best-known by their Spanish initials, LIT and UIT.
(3) The meeting in Lisbon, in which the SSP participated, was also attended by representatives of the Left Bloc (Portugal), the Red Electoral Alliance (Norway), the Red-Green Alliance (Denmark), the LCR (Revolutionary Communist League, France), the ÖDP (Turkey), Alternative Space (a left current within the United Left in Spain), the Galician National Bloc and the Catalan Republican Left.
Comrades may also be interested in reading these related articles:
The Development of the SSP by Frances Curran and Murray Smith
Towards a new Workers Party by Murray Smith