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Thin end of the wedge

We must oppose the expulsion of Gerry Downing, but fight to expose his political errors, argues Jim Grant

On February 20, I attended the special general meeting of the Labour Representation Committee.

It was far from my first LRC general meeting, and the form was getting familiar. I was struck when we were treated to our annual John McDonnell boilerplate speech from the top table by the fact that things, in the standard dialectical fashion, can be terribly familiar and also completely different at the same time. We had heard that speech before as the defiant cry of a lone voice in the enemy camp; but now, it was the voice of the shadow chancellor, a fixture of television and radio, albeit still surrounded by foes.

Something similar can now be said about Gerry Downing, also among those present on February 20 and at LRC gatherings passim ad infinitum. A perennial orthodox Trotskyist gadfly, Gerry’s political journey has taken him from the cultish Workers Revolutionary Party, through several of its posthumous fragments, into the Mandelite International Socialist Group (today’s Socialist Resistance) and out again, and around the houses a little more before washing up with his own micro-group, Socialist Fight, whose operative strategy has been obedience to the letter and spirit of Trotsky’s ‘French turn’ – enter the social democratic parties in order to take the best fighters into the revolutionary party when they inevitably split under inclement historical conditions.

Gerry’s brand of Trotskyism has now become national news. During the Labour leadership campaign he was expelled, as central office desperately tried to reduce Jeremy Corbyn’s vote by purging every last individual who, by an elastic interpretation of Labour’s onerous rules, could be excluded. He was readmitted to the party shortly afterwards, in what is becoming a recurring pattern. Last week, however, Gerry found himself the subject of a feverish exchange on the Commons floor, when David Cameron himself cited his opinions on September 11 and Islamic State in order to smear Corbyn. By the time Gerry reported for a grilling on Andrew Neil’s Politics show the next day, he was outside the fold again.

He found old Brillo Pad in unusually accommodating form. We sometimes wonder if Neil’s middle name is ‘If you’ll just let me finish …’, such is the vigour of his sub-Paxmanite shtick. Yet he treated comrade Downing firmly but fairly, putting a whole series of his outrageous views to him and allowing him good time, by televisual standards, to respond. The argument that the 9/11 bombers “can never be condemned”? We must understand, before we condemn – 9/11 was a response to American incursion on their lands. “Critical support and tactical military assistance” to (among others) Islamic State? The point, Andrew, is that US imperialism must be sent packing from the Middle East.

It was Neil and his researchers who managed to dig up the most damning evidence, however, which was and remains fellow SF member Ian Donovan’s writing on ‘the Jewish question’. Comrade Ian has unfortunately collapsed into anti-Semitism in the last couple of years; he has developed a theory that US support for Israel can be explained by the fact that the Jews form a transnational “semi-nation”, and that a preponderance of them among the wealthiest Americans has led them to become the “vanguard” of the imperialist bourgeoisie. (It was after this collapse that Ian found a welcoming home in SF.)

And so Gerry was left defending this rubbish on the BBC. Neil was able to drop comparisons to Hitler and the Protocols of the elders of Zion; and despite Gerry’s protestations of ‘materialism’, the charge sticks better than it really should to a leftwinger.

Gerry’s anti-imperialism is, needless to say, confused in the extreme. The confusion stems from exactly where Gerry says it does: Leon Trotsky’s policy of critical support to anti-imperialist nationalist forces – most notably Haile Selassie in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion – and his argument that, instead of joining the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang in the 1920s, the communists ought to have fought separately but alongside them against the Japanese. This policy ultimately stems from the anti-imperialist united front advocated by the early Comintern.

The trouble is that Trotsky’s judgments were straightforwardly incorrect, and Gerry’s later ones also wrong for much the same reasons. Selassie was a British client; Trotsky’s support effectively meant supporting British imperialism against Italian imperialism. (His vigorous pursuit of this policy inside the British labour movement was thus particularly misguided.) As for China, it is difficult to see how the communists could have suffered less except by fighting the KMT and the Japanese, as they ended up doing anyway.

Likewise with, say, Islamic State – after all, who are they, really? A bunch of disaffected ex-Ba’athists, funded lavishly by factions of the Gulf monarchies. They are ‘anti-imperialist’ only in the most limited sense that they are clients of regimes that are in turn clients of the US, albeit of elements within those regimes least susceptible to the direct discipline of the US. In general, we find in the chaos of the Middle East numerous examples of allegiances spinning on a sixpence; never before has arbitrary ‘critical support’ of ‘anti-imperialist’ forces been such a hostage to fortune.

Defeat the right

It is nevertheless not so much in spite of his worsening political errors as because of them that we oppose Gerry Downing’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Every wedge needs a thin end, and by remaining wedded to the moralistic anti-imperialism of his Trotskyist extraction, with the additional seasoning of Ian Donovan’s ‘theories’ about Jews, Gerry has made just such a thin end of himself.

We do not get to pick and choose the terrain of every battle, however. Gerry’s expulsion is part of a wider project on the part of the Labour right and their cronies in the yellow press to delegitimise the left, not least by equating our opposition to Zionism and the ongoing Israeli colonial-settler project with anti-Semitism. Let us get things in perspective: despite the ravings of Simon Schama, Dan Hodges and the like, the Labour Party’s biggest problem is not that it is riddled with anti-Semites. (Even within their specific corner of the far left, Gerry and Ian are oddities.) It is that it is bound tightly to British imperialism.

A great many sitting Labour MPs voted for Blair’s war in Iraq, a course of action that has led to uncounted deaths and the rise of IS. We know what is going on – these people, with real blood on their hands, would like to use comrade Gerry as a cheap way to buttress their moral credentials. We are not prepared to let them. His notions about the proper conduct of anti-imperialist struggle are risible, and must be exposed as such (and indeed stand exposed as such). But we do not consider the Labour Party’s shadowy compliance unit, or David Cameron, or Andrew Neil, fit to judge such political subtleties.

Mutatis mutandis, take Jill Mountford. The comrade is a member of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, an organisation whose equivocations on the question of imperialism are – from our point of view – quite inexcusable. There has been more than one political formation in which the AWL has been the least healthy element and which would have benefited, were the AWL to be shown the door. Plainly, the Labour Party is not such an organisation. The priority now is to fight for a space for avowedly working class socialist politics as it actually is inside the Labour Party. That includes the AWL, but by the same token it includes crankier outfits like Socialist Fight. We do not suspend, for a moment, our polemical fire against them; but we recognise that they are our opponents, and not our enemies.

If these expulsions stand, who is next? The organisation formerly known as Workers Power has spent much polemical energy on defending the pro-Russian areas of east Ukraine against the ‘fascist Kiev government’, for instance. It is another, similar error: yet more Trotskyists bigging up the anti-imperialist credentials of reactionaries, whose opinions on gays and – who knows? – Jews might not play very well in the British public gallery. Organisations of the left are not under fire because their anti-imperialism is crude and moralistic, but because they are anti-imperialist.

When the Labour Party is cleansed of warmongers, city shills and cabs-for-hire, there will be time enough to deal with people whose anti-imperialism leads them to idiotic political conclusions; and with those, like the AWL, whose horror of the latter leads them to worse errors in the opposite direction. Hopefully the comrades will learn along the way. Until then, we deny the right of the Labour right to police the left tout court – no exceptions.

A Labour military programme – LPM submission to Labour’s defence review

Emily Thornbury has been asked by Jeremy Corbyn to lead Labour’s defence review. Its remit is to “examine how the safety of the British people can best be secured in the global conditions of the 21st century”. The shadow defence secretary has asked Labour Party members, affiliates and the wider public to contribute to its work. This is the submission of Labour Party Marxists.

Despite a fraying US global hegemony, China’s rise, the decline of Russia and a stalling European Union, there is no immediate prospect of an all-out World War III. With the likelihood of mutually assured destruction (MAD), who would fight and why? Nevertheless, there is the increasing danger of a regional hot spot accidentally boiling over: Korea, Ukraine, Kashmir, Syria, Palestine and the South China Sea immediately spring to mind. Militarily, a direct clash between the US and Russia or China could quite conceivably rapidly escalate. Even a limited nuclear exchange would exact an almost unimaginable human toll.

However, what distinguishes Marxists from others on the left who oppose the war danger is that we see the need to retaliate not with the Labour Representation Committee’s touchingly pacifistic call to appoint a “UK minister for peace” and “progressively withdraw the UK from the international arms trade”.1 Nor Left Unity’s ambiguous demand for a “drastic reduction” in military expenditure.2 Nor with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s no less vague “Cut arms spending”.3 The same goes for the number-crunching plea of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain to “cut military spending to average European levels”.4 Ditto the Scottish Socialist Party’s recipe of reducing “defence spending” to no more than the per capita level of the Republic of Ireland.5 Banal, timid and self-defeating.

Our military policy should not legitimise a reduced version of the existing armed forces. Despite the verbal, statistical and factional variations, what that theme amounts to is the attempt to win the working class – as individuals and as an organised force – to the hopeless illusion of securing peace, while the capitalist system remains intact.

Inevitably there is a corresponding refusal to take up the elementary demand of arming the working class. That is certainly the case with the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the CPB.6 But, if untreated, what begins as a scratch ends with gangrene. Confronted by the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85 and the formation of hit squads, the Marxism Today Eurocommunists condemned “macho” violence. They offered instead the mystical, women-only pacifism of Greenham Common. Come the ‘war on terrorism’, not a few of these former peaceniks were to be found amongst the ranks of the Bush-Blair interventionists: eg, the newspaper columnist, David Aaronovitch.

Marxists are convinced that the bour­geois state machine must be broken apart, demolished, smashed up, if we are to realise socialism and put an end to war. So, concretely, in today’s conditions, that not only means scrapping Trident and all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction – they are indiscriminate and therefore inherently inhuman. We should be arguing for the scrapping of standing armies.

Peace will not be realised through the United Nations, Nato or by appealing to good business sense. Paradoxical though it may seem, peace has to be fought for. That is why the working class has to develop its own militia. Such a body actually grows out of day-to-day struggles: enforcing picket lines, defending Muslims from fasc­ist thugs, guarding our local offices, meeting places and demonstrations, etc. And, of course, with a strong, determined and well trained workers’ militia, it becomes a realistic possibility to split the state’s armed forces. Fear of officers, sergeants and court martials can thereby be replaced by the rank and file’s readiness to disobey orders. Certainly, army regiments, airforce squadrons and naval crews declaring for our side provides us with the military wherewithal needed to safeguard either an expected or a recently established socialist majority in the House of Commons.

Programmatically the labour movement should therefore demand:

● Rank-and-file personnel in the state’s armed bodies must be protected from bullying, humiliating treatment and being used against the working class.
● There must be full trade union and democratic rights, including the right to form bodies such as soldiers’ councils.
● The privileges of the officer caste must be abolished. Officers must be elected. Workers in uniform must become the allies of the masses in struggle.
● The people must have the right to bear arms and defend themselves.
● The dissolution of the standing army and the formation of a popular militia under democratic control.

Background

Strange though it may appear to the historically ill-informed, here contemporary Marxists draw direct inspiration from the second amendment to the US constitution. Ratified to popular acclaim in 1791, it states: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”7

Those who made the American revolution – above all the urban and rural masses – saw a standing army as an existential threat to democracy. Eg, in her Observations on the new constitution (1788) Mercy Otis Warren – the mother of the American revolution – branded the standing army as “the nursery of vice and the bane of liberty”.8 At great sacrifice the common people had overthrown the tyranny of George III, and were determined to do the same again, if faced with another unacceptable government.

Naturally Marx and Engels considered the second amendment part of their heritage. Clause four of the Marx-Engels Demands of the Communist Party in Germany (1848) is emphatic:

Universal arming of the people. In future, armies shall at the same time be workers’ armies, so that the armed forces will not only consume, as in the past, but produce even more than it costs to maintain them.9

The Marx-Engels team never wavered. Read Can Europe disarm? (1893). Here, in this pamphlet written by Frederick Engels, 10 years after the death of his friend and collaborator, we find a concrete application of Marxism to the dawning epoch of universal suffrage and universal conscription. Engels concluded that the key to revolution was mutiny in the armed forces. His pamphlet outlined a model bill for military reform in Germany. Engels was determined to show that the proposal to gradually transform standing armies into a “militia based on the universal principle of arming the people” could exploit the mounting fears of a pending European war and widespread resentment at the ruinous military budget.10 For propaganda effect, Engels proposed an international agreement to limit military service to a short period and a state system in which no country would fear aggression because no country would be capable of aggression. Surely World War I would have been impossible if the European great powers had nothing more than lightly armed civilian militias available to them.

Not that Engels was some lily-livered pacifist. He supported universal male (!) conscription and if necessary was, of course, quite prepared to advocate revolutionary war. Needless to say, his Can Europe disarm? was not intended to prove the military superiority of a militia over a standing army. No, Engels wanted a citizen army, within which discipline would be self-imposed. An army where rank-and-file troops would turn their guns against any officer tempted to issue orders that were against the vital interests of the people.

In that spirit the Marxist parties of the late 19th and early 20th century unproblematically championed the demand for disbanding the standing army and establishing a popular militia. Eg, the 1880 programme of the French Workers’ Party, the 1891 Erfurt programme, the 1889 Hainfeld programme of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, the 1903 programme of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, etc.

In the ‘political section’ of the programme of the French Workers’ Party (Parti Ouvrier), authored jointly by Karl Marx and Jules Guesde, we find the demand for the “abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people” (clause 4).11 A proposition faithfully translated by the Germans: “Education of all to bear arms. Militia in the place of the standing army” (clause 3).12 The Austrians too are adamant: “The cause of the constant danger of war is the standing army, whose growing burden alienates the people from its cultural tasks. It is therefore necessary to fight for the replacement of the standing army by arming the people” (clause 6).13 Then we have the Russians: “general arming of the people instead of maintaining a standing army” (clause c9).14

And after theory there must come practice.

Amongst the first decrees of the 1871 Paris Commune was the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the national guard – “the bulk of which consisted of working men” (Marx). By actually constituting a new state, based on a repressive force that did not sit outside the general population, the Commune opened a new chapter in global politics. And Russia, of course, took what happened in Paris to new heights. Formed in April-March 1917, the Red Guards proved crucial. Red Guards, and increasing numbers of army units, put themselves at the disposal of the Military Revolutionary Committee – a subdivision of the Bolshevik-led Petrograd soviet, formally established at Leon Trotsky’s initiative. On October 25 (November 7) 1917 the MRC issued its momentous declaration: the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky “no longer exists”. State power has passed into the hands of the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers.

There are many other splendid examples.

Beginning in the early 1920s the two main workers’ parties in Germany built their own militias. The SDP dominated the soft-left Reichsbanner, while the Communist Party formed the much more militant Rotfrontkämpferbund (at its height it boasted 130,000 members). Despite its 1923 founding statutes emphasising ceremonial paraphernalia, marches and band music, the Schutzbund in Austria served as a kind of “proletarian police force”.15 When it came to strikes, demonstrations and meetings, this workers’ militia maintained discipline and fended off Nazi gangs. Though hampered by a dithering social democratic leadership, the Schutzbund heroically resisted the February 12 1934 fascist coup. Workers formed defence corps during the 1926 General Strike in Britain. American workers did the same in 1934. There were massive stoppages in San Francisco, Toledo and Minneapolis. In Spain anarchists, official ‘communists’, Poum, etc likewise formed their own militias in response to Franco’s counterrevolutionary uprising.

Then, more recently, in 1966, there was the Black Panther Party. It organised “armed citizen’s patrols” to monitor and counter the brutal US police force.16 Even the “non-violent” civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, included within its ranks those committed to “armed self-defence” against Ku Klux Klan and other such terrorism.17

Corbyn

Speaking to a Hiroshima remembrance event in August 2012, Jeremy Corbyn spoke of his wish to emulate “the people of Costa Rica”, who “abolished the army”. Leave aside the concrete situation in Costa Rica and the synthetic outrage generated by The Sun18 and the Daily Mail.19 Demanding the disbanding of the standing army has assumed a burning importance since Corbyn was elected Labour leader.

Imagine for one moment that Corbyn wins a general election majority in 2020. Supposedly because it is constitutionally inappropriate for serving officers to “intervene directly in matters that are of political dispute”, are we really expected to believe that the armed forces will idly sit by and behave in a thoroughly trustworthy manner?20 That would be parliamentary cretinism – a disease that infects reformists of every stripe and variety with the debilitating conviction that the main thing in politics is parliamentary votes.

A Corbyn government would – hopefully – be committed to sweeping away the anti-trade union laws, reversing austerity, renationalising the rails, ending British involvement in Syria, decommissioning Trident and maybe announcing a withdrawal from Nato. However, say in the name of keeping the Labour right, the Mirror and the liberal intelligentsia onside, the Corbyn government decides to maintain MI5, the police and the standing army. Frankly, that would be an open invitation for a British version of general Augusto Pinochet to launch a bloody counterrevolution. In Chile thousands of leftwingers were butchered after the September 11 1973 army coup, which overthrew the Socialist Party-Communist Party Popular Unity reformist government under president Salvador Allende.

Already, Sir Nicholas Houghton, the outgoing chief of the defence staff, has publicly “worried” on BBC1’s Andrew Marr show about a Corbyn government.21 There are accompanying press rumours swirling around of unnamed members of the army high command “not standing for” a Corbyn government and being prepared to take “direct action”.22 Prior to that, the normally sober Financial Times ominously warned that Corbyn’s leadership damages Britain’s “public life”.23

In fact the army is an instrument of counterevolution. Institutionally it is run by an officer caste, which is trained to command from public school to Sandhurst as if it is their birthright. When it comes to the grunts it relies on inculcating “unthinking obedience”.24 And, of course, the British army no longer has unruly conscripts to worry about. Instead recruits voluntarily join, seeking “travel and adventure” – followed by “pay and benefit, with job security”.25 Because they often live on base, frequently move and stick closely together socially, members of the armed forces are largely cut off from the wider civilian population and from any growth of democratic, progressive and socialistic ideas. Indeed far-right views appear to be the norm – see Army Rumour Service comments about that “anti-British, not very educated, ageing communist agitating class war zealot”, Jeremy Corbyn.26

Still the best known exponent of deploying the army against internal “subversives” is brigadier Frank Kitson in his Low intensity operations (1971). The left, trade unionists and strikers – they are “the enemy”, even if their actions are intended to back up an elected government.27 Legally, the “perfect vehicle for such an intervention” would be an order in council.28 After consulting the unelected and undemocratic privy council, the monarch would call a state of emergency and instruct the army to swiftly and decisively restore order. Remember, army personnel swear an oath that they “will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors”, and that they will “defend Her Majesty … against all enemies”.

As made crystal-clear by Michael Clarke, director of the United Services Institute, this is no mere feudal relic. “The armed forces don’t belong to the government: they belong to the monarch,” insists Clarke. “And they take this very seriously. When [the Tory] Liam Fox was defence secretary a few years ago, for his first couple of weeks he referred to ‘my forces’ rather than Her Majesty’s forces – as a joke, I think. It really ruffled the military behind the scenes. I heard it from senior people in the army. They told me, ‘We don’t work for him. We work for the Queen.’”29

In the late 1960s and early 70s there were widespread media reports of senior officers and ex-officers conspiring against the rightwing Labour government of Harold Wilson. Many were unhappy about Rhodesia, many branded him a Soviet mole. However, their pathological hatred was directed squarely against leftwing Labour MPs such as Tony Benn, Irish republicans, communist trade union leaders, striking workers and protesting students – the background to Chris Mullin’s novel, A very British coup (1982).

If Corbyn even looks like making it into office, there is every reason to believe that threats of “direct action” coming from the high command will take actual form. That is why we say: have no trust in the thoroughly authoritarian standing army. No, instead, let us put our trust in a “well regulated militia” and the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”.
Notes
1. LRC Programme for a real Labour government, no date, no place of publication.
2. http://leftunity.org/manifesto-2015-international.
3. ‘AWL election campaign: why we are standing and our policies’: www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/ge10/man/parties/Workers_Liberty.pdf.
4. www.communist-party.org.uk/about-us.html.
5. www.scottishsocialistparty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SSP_Manifesto_2007.pdf.
6. See Weekly Worker May 21 2009.
7. www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am2.
8. http://constitution.org/cmt/mowarren/observations_new_constitution_1788.html.
9. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, p3.
10. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p371.
11. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm.
12. www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm.
13. I am grateful to Ben Lewis for his translation of the Hainfeld programme.
14. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1902/draft/02feb07.htm.
15. M Kitchen The coming of Austrian fascism London 1980, p116.
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party.
17. See CE Cobb This non-violent stuff’ll get you killed New York 2014.
18. www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6637495/Corbyn-Britain-should-abolish-its-Army.html.
19. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3233244/How-wonderful-d-scrapped-Army-ranted-Jeremy-Corbyn-s-call-dismissed-madness-Tory-MP.html.
20. Jeremy Corbyn quoted in The Mirror November 8 2015.
21. The Mirror November 8 2015.
22. The Sunday Times September 20 2015.
23. Financial Times August 14 2015.
24. NF Dixon On the psychology of military incompetence London 1976, p244.
25. Lord Ashcroft The armed forces and society May 2012.
26. The Guardian January 25 2016.
27. F Kitson Low intensity operations London 1991, p29.
28. P O’Conner The constitutional role of the privy council and the prerogative London 2009, p20.
29. Quoted in The Guardian January 25 2016.

CLPD AGM, Saturday March 19, Conway Hall

CLPD AGM, Saturday March 19 2016
11:30am, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.

Labour Party Marxists urges its members and supporters to attend the AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.

Membership of CLPD is open to Labour Party members. If you are not a member already, you can join at the door. Individuals £20; unwaged and low-waged (under £8,000) £5; young members under 27 £3. (And members can bring friends to the AGM as participating observers.)

Further info about CLPD:
www.clpd.org.uk and www.grassrootslabour.net and www.leftfutures.org.
____________________________________________________________

Amendment to Resolution 5, proposed by Stan Keable:

At end of Resolution 5, INSERT:

The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy commits itself to returning the Labour Party to its organisational principles of federalism and inclusiveness. We must again become the umbrella organisation for all trade unions, socialist groups and pro-working class partisans.

It is quite correct to maintain rules barring from membership those promoting parliamentary or local candidates standing against the Labour Party. However, this should not be applied to the distant past or indiscriminately. For example, sitting councilors and other activists standing against Labour candidates committed to supporting imperialist adventures or imposing government cuts, etc, ought to be treated sympathetically.

Moreover, there should be no place in the Labour Party fof rules prohibiting organisations – and members of organisations – which have their own “programme, principles and policy, or distinctive and separate propaganda, or possessing branches in the constituencies”.

Such rules must be done away with or radically reformulated.

The CDLP will campaign for these ends and promote suitable resolutions to Party conference.
____________________________________________________________

LPM Broadsheet No8

An issue of LPM Broadsheet is being produced in time for the CLPD AGM, and for distribution locally to friends and contacts and at your CLP and Momentum events. The broadsheet is a free handout, and depends on your donations. Collect copies on Saturday, or send your contact details (name, address, phone and email address) stating how many copies you would like – preferably with a donation towards production costs and postage.

Your financial support is needed – please pay into the LPM bank account:
Sort Code 30-96-26, Account 22097060,
or send cheques payable to ‘LPM’ to: LPM, BCM Box 8932, London WC1N 3XX.

secretary@labourpartymarxists.org.uk
07817 379568
www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk

Anti-Semitic smears employed by the right

The Labour left must get better organised, argues Gary Toms of Labour Party Marxists

The right held onto its Young Labour seat on the national executive committee by just a single vote. The Momentum-backed candidate, James Elliot, lost out to ‘moderate’ Jasmin Beckett, who had received the support of the hard-right Labour First and Progress groups. The circumstances of this victory at the February 27-28 Scarborough conference have been hotly contested.

The Unite union has called for an inquiry after it was revealed that Jasmin Beckett won her slender majority on the back of a foul Facebook and Twitter campaign against her rival. Beckett had suggested: “Get a few people tweeting saying, ‘Shocked my union GMB are supporting James Elliott, who is anti-Semitic’?” The national secretary of Labour Students, Josh Woolas, advised: “Needs to look like a genuine complaint about racism and not a smear campaign!” (Morning Star February 26). The full exchange between Beckett and her supporters has since been published anonymously on Twitter.

This was an attempt to link James Elliot to accusations levelled at the Oxford University Labour Club by its former co-chair, Alex Chalmers. His resignation came following the OULC’s announcement of support for Israeli Apartheid Week (and, of course, comrade Elliot is an ex-Oxford student). The Labour Party has since opened an inquiry (it is still unpublished, though its impartiality has been called into question, not least because it was conducted by Michael Rubin, a Progress partisan). The fact of the matter is that the OULC is simply committed to solidarity with the Palestinian people – not to demonising Jews. Nonetheless, the ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism levelled by Alex Chalmers have been presented by McCarthyite journalists, such as Dan Hodges, as if they were simply facts (see ‘Is the Labour Party’s problem with racism beyond repair?’ The Daily Telegraph February 29).

Doubtless there are a tiny number of individuals within the left milieu who hold anti-Semitic views and obviously such people have no place within our movement. However, anyone expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people automatically faces charges of anti-Semitism. An accusation which comes from people who are determined to support Israel despite its dispossession of millions of Palestinians, despite its occupation of the West Bank and despite its readying itself for another bout of ethnic cleansing.

‘Intimidation’

As well as the smear campaign conducted by Beckett and co, there are other complaints. Apparently she falsely presented herself to some voters as being linked to Momentum. Despite the tiny margin of her victory, calls for a recount were rejected by returning officer Stephen Donnelly (who, according to Jon Lansman, is a “recruiting sergeant for Progress”).1

Predictably there were accusations from the right of “intimidation” and “bullying” by the left and the unions. One delegate, Charlotte, a Unite shop steward, posted a picture of herself having a telephone conversation as ‘evidence’ of such behaviour. Unite official Zac Harvey had asked to see her ballot paper so as to check that she was abiding by her union mandate. Rightwing Labour MPs – eg, John Mann – and the bourgeois press, from The Guardian rightwards, have subsequently mounted a campaign for Young Labour to be made into a “safe space” (for Labour First and Progress).

It is worth mentioning that a week before the Young Labour conference, Momentum-backed candidates had won every seat on the youth wing’s national committee, a sure sign of the resurgence of the left – for the first time in 30 years. Given this, it is more than a pity that the Young Labour rep on the NEC remains a rightwinger. So Scarborough was a missed opportunity for Momentum (hopefully comrade Elliot will be lodging an appeal).

While the right urges the membership to ‘unite against the Tories’, it does everything to undermine the Jeremy Corbyn leadership and attack the left (seeking the expulsion of socialists with links to the far left, etc). The shrill condemnation of Momentum by rightwing MPs, their Labour First co-thinkers and the mainstream media is part of an ongoing civil war, even if the Parliamentary Labour Party right is not yet prepared to launch an open leadership bid at the moment – Corbyn is far too popular within the labour movement (even more so than when he was elected leader).

Against the machinations of the right our best response is organisation. Momentum needs cohesion and a clear orientation towards transforming the party through carrying out a democratic revolution. The right is not a legitimate trend in the labour movement. They are class enemies and ought to be driven out.

Notes

1 . www.leftfutures.org/2016/02/young-labour-in-left-landslide-but-chaos-manipulation-smears-mar-nec-election.

A working class military programme

James Marshall of Labour Party Marxists argues that a Jeremy Corbyn government would be best defended by abolishing the standing army and the formation of a popular militia.

Two years ago, official Britain solemnly marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. The “war to end war” – that is how HG Wells, the Fabian social-imperialist, justified the carnage at the time.1 Yet, as we all know, 20 years after the Armistice of Compiègne, what passed for peace once again gave way to generalised armed conflict. World War II outstripped World War I in terms of death, destruction and sheer depravity.

And, of course, at its close, the big three – the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union – promised a “world of peace”, secured through the United Nations.2 Despite that, since 1945 there have been “some 250 major wars in which over 50 million people have been killed, tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved.”3

The nature of warfare has changed. From World War I’s mud, blood and trenches and the fast-moving mechanised battlefields of World War II, we now have cyber attacks, drones and satellite-guided action.

As a matter of routine, the servile media portrays the wars conducted by the US, Britain and their allies as well-ordered, almost surgical operations. Yet during the 20th century the proportion of civilian casualties steadily climbed. In World War II, some 66% of those killed were civilians; by the beginning of the 1990s, civilian deaths approached 90%. This is not only the result of technological innovations. Present-day conflicts are often proxy wars fought out within, not between, states. The distinction separating combatant and non-combatant thereby easily evaporates.

Brushing aside mass street protests, one imperialist adventure has inexorably followed another: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Iraq, Mali, Libya and Syria. Equally, despite the 1980s peace movement, the United States pressed ahead with the deployment of first-strike Pershing IIs, cruise missiles and B2 stealth bombers. Ronald Reagan wanted to force a Soviet leadership that had already lost faith in itself to capitulate. Now a US determination to stay ahead in the arms race threatens to see the introduction of weapons once considered pure science fiction: electromagnetic rail guns, hypersonic anti-missile missiles, quantum stealth aircraft, unmanned warships, drone swarms and satellite killers.4 Such programmes both terrify and spur on the authorities in Moscow and Beijing.

Only a hopeless sectarian would stand aloof from the peace movement. Organisations such as the Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have mobilised huge numbers over Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and now the renewal of Trident. That must be welcomed. But – and it is a big but – despite the leadership of socialists such as John Rees, Lindsey German, Andrew Murray, Chris Nineham, Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin, what the peace movement champions is pacifism. Listen to their platform speeches. Their appearances on radio and TV. The horrors of war are indignantly condemned. But, in the name of keeping the peace movement broad, calls for class politics and socialist revolution are dismissed as sectarian and divisive. Hence, objectively, the STWC and CND serve to spread illusions in a peaceful capitalism.

It would therefore be outright treachery to follow the example of the Socialist Workers Party, Left Unity, Counterfire and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and become uncritical cheerleaders for the STWC and CND. This is not a matter of abstract dogma or a test of political virility, as some of our critics maintain. No, it is either socialism or we shall see the further descent into barbarism.

What is war?

Let me ask a fundamental question: what is war, and where does the drive for war come from?

The classic definition is provided by Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian soldier-philosopher and director of the Berlin military academy from 1818 to 1830. His principal work Vom Kriege (1832) theoretically distilled the military practice of Napoleon Bonaparte. Hence, along with Principia mathematica, The science of logic, Origin of the species and Das Kapital, it is rightly considered a seminal achievement.

Clausewitz tells us that war “is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will”. War, he says, is “a duel on an extensive scale”. Centrally, for Clausewitz, war is a “continuation of policy by other means”.5 A definition fully accepted by the founders of scientific socialism, who deepened Clausewitz’s ideas by linking wars to the existence and struggles of classes. Thus we find Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) not only declaring, “War is a continuation of policy by other means”, but adding:

All wars are inseparable from the political systems that engender them. The policy which a given state, a given class within a state, pursued for a long time before the war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of action alone being changed.6

Because Marxists understand the relationship between war and politics, because Marxists link war to the existence and struggle of classes, we are not amongst those who absolutely oppose all wars.

Original, or primitive, communist society did not experience anything remotely like war – at least as we would define it. Amazingly, this 200,000-year period of human natural history is breezily skipped over in Steven Pinker’s Whiggish account of declining human violence.7 Fights between individual male protagonists must have occurred, maybe even the group killing of a social transgressor, but no organised, prolonged, extensive conflicts. Under conditions of material abundance, female equality and counter-hierarchy, it almost certainly never happened. Yet with the gradual breakdown of communist social relations, beginning with the mesolithic, warfare did appear. That is what the archaeological record shows. Collective burial sites dating from the mesolithic, which provide unmistakable forensic evidence of deaths being due to stone implements – arrows, spears, etc – have been excavated.8 However, such examples are very rare. When class society, the patriarchal family and private property finally solidified with the neolithic counterrevolution, only then did war became commonplace.9

The ruling class not only suppressed their own populations using armed bodies of men (the state). By employing murderous violence, it sought to enslave and extend its domination over other peoples too. Great empires appeared in the Bronze Age, along with an almost perpetual state of warfare. For the ancient Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, Athenians, Spartans, Carthaginians and Romans; for the medieval Anglo-Saxons, Carolingians and Normans, the “profession of arms was esteemed the sole employment that deserved the name of ‘manly’ or ‘honourable’”.10 Killing, looting and raping were socially sanctioned male aspirations.

However, with the rise of capitalism, wars assumed an even bigger scale. Battles were fought on many seas and on many continents. World markets equalled world wars – eg, the 1652-74 and 1781-1810 Anglo-Dutch wars, the 1755-64, 1778-83 and 1793-1815 Anglo-French wars. In that sense, what we call World War I and World War II are only the latest in a string of world wars.

While Marxists aim for the abolition of war and a modern higher, version of communism, we recognise that this can only come about by first abolishing classes and class exploita­tion. Self-evidently, this requires the expropriation of a capitalist class which on past experience is quite prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to hold onto its riches, privileges and god-given right to rule. Indeed there are good reasons to believe that the great European powers turned to war in August 1914 in an attempt to roll back growing popular support for socialism.11 Hence, while it is vital to oppose capitalist warmongering, the working class must be won to the idea of making revolution – “peacefully if we can, violently if we must”. It is clear then that Marxists recognise the existence of just and unjust wars – a concept derived not from Hegel, nor from Fourier or Babeuf, but the saintly Augustine of Hippo.12

So, almost needless to say, our attitude to war is not determined by gross national product, territorial size or military capacity, whether it is a David-versus-Goliath affair, or even if a country is fighting an offensive or defensive war. In general, we feel obliged to support wars of national liberation – after all, “any people that oppresses another people forges its own chains”.13 Nevertheless, sometimes it is right to back the ‘aggression’ of a big country against a small one. Eg, if Soviet Russia had been in a position to save the 1918 Finnish revolution from the Mannerheim counterrevolution, that would undoubtedly have been a just war. What determines our attitude is which class rules and what policies that class pursues. This is the unfailing method we employ to determine whether a war is just or unjust.

Hence, looking back over the centuries, we find just wars. Obviously, when Spartacus fought for the freedom of Rome’s slave population in 73-71 BCE, that was a just war. When John Ball and Wat Tyler led the peasant’s revolt in 1381, that was a just war. When the French masses rose up against Louis XVI in 1789, that was a just war. The same goes for France in 1792-94. The massed columns of the conscript Armée Révolutionnaire Française soundly defeated the joint Austrian-Prussian attempt to impose a Bourbon restoration.

Marxists have also actively supported wars judged to somehow bring forward the struggle for socialism. The Marx-Engels team sided with the Union against the Confederacy in the American civil war of 1861-65 (the second American revolution). Both sides were capitalist. However, while the south was based on slavery and subordination to Britain’s commercial dictatorship, the north was based on free labour and sought independent economic development. Victory for the north, Marx and Engels calculated, would strike a powerful blow against the British empire, do away with slavery and unleash the class struggle in America. Their co-thinker and loyal friend, Joseph Weydemeyer, took the lead amongst the German-speaking population of New York (after Berlin and Vienna, the third largest German city in the world at the time). The Marx party worked tirelessly to secure the nomination and election of Abraham Lincoln. And, note, the most militant, most effective, most politically conscious units in the Union army were German. Many, including 10 generals, were refugees from the 1848-49 German revolution – the ‘48ers’ or ‘Red 48ers’.14

As a central component of their global strategy, Marx and Engels were also determined to bury what they called the “tsarist menace”. Since the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Europe languished under an “Anglo-Russian slavery”.15 Marx and Engels urged Europe’s peoples to bring the conservative order, so meticulously constructed by Alexander I, Metternich, Castlereagh, Talleyrand and Hardenberg – and so admired by Richard Nixon’s prince of darkness – crashing down.16 By definition that necessitated launching a war of liberation against Russian absolutism.

However, in the late 19th century things began to change. The most fearsome guarantor of counterrevolution showed all the signs of exhaustion … and being ripe for a popular revolution. Because of this, especially after Marx’s death in 1883, Engels shifted his position … and not only on Russia. Having eagerly looked forward to a European war, he began to issue urgent warnings. A general conflagration would “inflame chauvinism” in every country and thus temporarily derail the working class movement.17

In February 1917 the “tsarist menace” ignominiously collapsed and with October 1917 political power passed into the hands of the working class, as organised in the Bolshevik party. Workers throughout the world had a moral duty and every interest in siding with Soviet Russia. That included supporting its revolutionary wars. Such wars can be defensive: eg, against the white armies of Wrangel and Denikin and the 14 interventionist powers.

But what starts as a defensive war can easily be transformed into an offensive war. In 1920 the Red Army pursued the invading Polish forces across the Soviet border and deep into Poland itself. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders envisaged reaching Warsaw. That would not only mean defeating the peasant-aristocratic army, headed by the notorious social-nationalist, Józef Piłsudski. The expectation was that the city’s proletariat would mount an uprising and thus provide the Red Army with a vital staging post on its way to help reignite the German revolution. Of course, it never happened. Logistically the Red Army overextended itself and the Warsaw proletariat proved rather more nationalist than socialist.

Imperialism and war

Needless to say, most wars are neither just nor revolutionary. This is most certainly the case with capitalism in decline: what Lenin called monopoly, finance or imperialist capitalism. Without doubt, there were monopolies, financiers and overseas expansionism at an early stage. Tudor England had its Sir Thomas Grisham, a bourse, privileged manufacturers and a colonial empire. Following Ireland, the first outposts in India and the Americas were established during the reign of Elizabeth I. But what we take from Lenin’s Imperialism (1916) is its fundamental insight: since the late 19th century capitalism has been a negative anticipation of socialism and simultaneously in decay.

State pensions, health services based on need, unemployment benefit, compulsory education, universal suffrage – all go hand in hand with the promotion of national chauvinism, perverting human ingenuity and the warfare state. Clearly essential laws are in retreat: market competition, the reserve army of labour, value, etc, continue, but are increasingly influenced, altered and overridden by state organisation. Massive arms spending allows the leading capitalist powers to ameliorate, offload or even bring to an end one of the system’s periodic crises. Imperialist exploitation also provides the additional surplus needed to incorporate social democracy and the trade union bureaucracy into the state apparatus. The working class is thereby divided into rival national detachments.

Albeit at the cost of substantial concessions, the principle of nationalism trumped the principle of class. Demands for import controls, barriers to immigration, appeals to the national interest, etc, became the common currency of a labour movement that has thoroughly internalised its subordination. Not surprisingly then, the working class has failed to realise its historic mission. As a consequence – with capitalism’s economic anarchy, wars, failed states, pandemics and ecological crises going unresolved – there is the ever-present danger that humanity will “crash down together in a common doom” (Rosa Luxemburg).18

An exhausted Britain was able to ride the precipitous 1929 crash and the economic dislocation of the early 1930s without plunging into social turmoil. It still possessed an enormous empire and a web of semi-colonies and dependants. By contrast, German imperialism, having been reduced almost to the level of an oppressed country by the terms of Versailles, spiralled off into chaos. In desperation, the capitalist class embraced the Nazi gangsters as their saviours.

World War II was considerably more complex than World War I. Its opening phase saw the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, Japanese expansionism in China, the German retaking of Saarland, Anschluss with Austria, Franco’s uprising, etc. Wars of colonial oppression, revanchism and counterrevolution interwove with wars of resistance. However, the looming clash between the German-Italian axis and the Anglo-French alliance had every appearance of being a classic inter-imperialist conflict. The correct slogan under these circumstances would therefore be ‘defeat for both sides’. Britain and France were going to fight not for democracy, not for national freedom, not for the anti-fascist cause. No, they wanted to preserve their position at the top of the imperialist feeding chain.

However, instead of the hostilities grinding to a bloody stalemate, as in World War I, the Wehrmacht cut straight through Holland and Belgium and deep into France. Half of the country, including Paris, was occupied. Vichy, though formally independent, became little more than a satrap. Hence, the war for the working class in France turned into a struggle for national liberation. The same possibility existed for Britain. Hence, especially after June 1940 and the fall of France, the necessity of the working class formulating its own demands for national defence: eg, arming the population, election of officers, specialist military training under trade union control, removal of appeaser ministers, abolition of the Hitler sympathising monarchy and elections to a constituent assembly. Standing up against the threat of Nazi invasion had to be combined with the class war for socialism. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, reinforced the complex nature of World War II. The Soviet people fought against being enslaved as agricultural helots in a German India. Stalin, on the other hand, had his own great-power ambitions.

In 1945 Germany, Japan and their allies were forced into an unconditional surrender. Needless to say, the aftermath of World War II was very different from World War I. Des­pite being on the winning side, Britain and France failed to save their empires. This was in part due to the greatly enhanced power of the Soviet Union and colonial peoples winning national independence. However, as long as it did not see ‘official communists’ or pro-Moscow left nationalists coming to power, the US too wanted decolonisation. Something it pursued, of course, in its own economic, military and strategic interests. The US had no concern whatsoever for the colonial peoples themselves, except as objects of exploitation.

The US became a sort of super-imperialist power, its capital penetrating every corner of the capitalist world, all imperialist rivals bending to its will. The American century closed the 20-years crises of 1919-39. The rate of profit soared and the global economy expanded at an unprecedented rate for an unprecedented period. Inevitably, however, not least due to rising trade union power, the boom came to an end. From the mid-1970s onwards the US and Britain opted for finance capital, offshoring industrial production and reversing the social democratic settlement. And, with the additional plank of draconian legislation, trade union power was to all intents and purposes neutered.

Despite the growing economic weight of China, a faltering European Union and US parasitism and relative decline, there is no immediate prospect of an all-out World War III. With the likelihood of mutually assured destruction (MAD), who would fight and why? Nevertheless, there is the increasing danger of a regional hot spot accidentally boiling over: Syria, Palestine, Korea, Ukraine, Kashmir and the South China Sea immediately spring to mind. With good reason, Liz Sly, writing in the Washington Post, describes Syria as a “mini world war”.19 Militarily, a direct clash between the US and Russia or China could quite conceivably rapidly escalate. Even a limited nuclear exchange would exact an almost unimaginable human toll.

What distinguishes Marxists from others on the left who oppose the war danger is that we see the need to retaliate not with Left Unity’s ambiguous demand for a “drastic reduction” in military expenditure.20 Nor with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s no less vague “Cut arms spending”.21 The same goes for the number-crunching plea of Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain to “cut military spending to average European levels”.22 Ditto the Scottish Socialist Party’s recipe of reducing “defence spending” to no more than the per capita level of the Republic of Ireland.23 Banal, timid and self-defeating.

Our military policy does not legitimise a reduced version of the existing armed forces. Despite the verbal, statistical and factional variations, what that theme amounts to is the attempt to win the working class – as individuals and as an organised force – to the hopeless attempt of securing peace, while the capitalist system remains intact.

Inevitably there is a corresponding refusal to take up the elementary demand of arming the working class. That is certainly the case with the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the CPB.24 But, if untreated, what begins as a scratch ends with gangrene. Confronted by the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85 and the formation of hit squads, the Marxism Today Eurocommunists condemned “macho” violence. They offered instead the mystical, women-only pacifism of Greenham Common. But come the ‘war on terrorism’, not a few of these former peaceniks were to be found in the ranks of the Bush-Blair interventionists: eg, the newspaper columnist, David Aaronovitch.

Marxists are convinced that the bour­geois state machine must be broken apart, demolished, smashed up, if we are to realise socialism and put an end to war. So, concretely, in today’s conditions, that not only means demanding the scrapping of all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction – they are inherently inhuman. We should be arguing for scrapping the standing army.

None of this will be realised by patiently winning over members of the ruling class. It has to be fought for. The working class must develop its own militia. Such a body grows out of the class struggle itself: in the fight to protect picket lines, in defence of Muslims from fasc­ist attacks, in guarding our print shops, meeting places and demonstrations. With a workers’ militia it becomes realistic to split the state’s armed forces. Fear of officers, sergeants and court martials must be replaced by rank and file mutiny. Certainly, army regiments, airforce squadrons and naval crews declaring for our side provides us with the military wherewithal needed to safeguard either an expected or a recently established Marxist majority in parliament.

Programmatically we therefore demand:

  • Rank-and-file personnel in the state’s armed bodies must be protected from bullying, humiliating treatment and being used against the working class.
  • There must be full trade union and democratic rights, including the right to form bodies such as soldiers’ councils.
  • The privileges of the officer caste must be abolished. Officers must be elected. Workers in uniform must become the allies of the masses in struggle.
  • The people must have the right to bear arms and defend themselves.
  • The dissolution of the standing army and the formation of a popular militia under democratic control.

Background

Strange though it may appear to the historically ill-informed, here contemporary Marxists draw direct inspiration from the second amendment to the US constitution. Ratified to popular acclaim in 1791, it states: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”25 Those who made the American revolution – above all the urban and rural masses – saw a standing army as an existential threat to democracy. Eg, in her Observations on the new constitution (1788) Mercy Otis Warren – the mother of the American revolution – branded the standing army as “the nursery of vice and the bane of liberty”.26 At great sacrifice the common people had overthrown the tyranny of George III and were determined to do the same again, if faced with another unacceptable government.

Naturally Marx and Engels considered the second amendment part of their heritage. Clause four of the Marx-Engels Demands of the Communist Party in Germany (1848) is emphatic:

Universal arming of the people. In future armies shall at the same time be workers’ armies, so that the armed forces will not only consume, as in the past, but produce even more than it costs to maintain them.27

The Marx-Engels team never wavered on this. Read Can Europe disarm? Here, in this pamphlet written by Engels in 1893, 10 years after the death of his friend and collaborator, we find a concrete application of Marxism to the dawning epoch of universal suffrage and universal conscription. Engels concluded that the key to revolution was mutiny in the armed forces. His pamphlet outlined a model bill for military reform in Germany. Engels was determined to show that the proposal to gradually transform standing armies into a “militia based on the universal principle of arming the people” could exploit the mounting fears of a pending European war and widespread resentment at the ruinous military budget.28

For propaganda effect, Engels proposed an international agreement to limit military service to a short period and a state system in which no country would fear aggression because no country would be capable of aggression. Surely World War I would have been impossible if the European great powers had nothing more than lightly armed civilian militias available to them.

Not that Engels was a lily-livered pacifist. He supported universal male (!) conscription and if necessary was, of course, quite prepared to advocate revolutionary war. However, his Can Europe disarm? was not intended to prove the military superiority of a militia over a standing army. No, he wanted a citizen army within which discipline would be self-imposed. An army where rank-and-file troops would confidently turn their guns against officers who dared issue orders that were against the vital interests of the people. Through mutiny such an army could be made ours.

As might be expected, the Marxist parties of the late 19th and early 20th century unproblematically included the demand for disbanding the standing army and establishing a popular militia in their programmes. Eg, the 1880 programme of the French Workers’ Party, the 1891 Erfurt programme, the 1889 Hainfeld programme of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, the 1903 programme of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, etc.

In the ‘political section’ of the programme of the French Workers’ Party (Parti Ouvrier), authored jointly by Karl Marx and Jules Guesde, we therefore find the demand for the “abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people” (clause four).29 A proposition faithfully translated by the Germans: “Education of all to bear arms. Militia in the place of the standing army” (clause 3).30 The Austrians are adamant: “The cause of the constant danger of war is the standing army, whose growing burden alienates the people from its cultural tasks. It is therefore necessary to fight for the replacement of the standing army by arming the people” (clause 6).31 Then we have the Russians: “general arming of the people instead of maintaining a standing army” (clause c9).32

Theory and practice must be united

Amongst the first decrees of the 1871 Paris Commune was the abolition of the standing army and the constitution of the national guard as the sole armed force in France. Memorably, Auguste Blanqui proclaimed: “He who has iron has bread!” By actually constituting a new state, based not on a repressive force that sat outside the general population, the Commune opened a new chapter in working class politics. And Russia took what happened in Paris to as yet unsurpassed heights. Formed in April-March 1917, the Red Guards proved crucial. Red Guards, and increasing numbers of army units, put themselves under the discipline of the Military Revolutionary Committee – a subdivision of the Bolshevik-led Petrograd soviet, formally established on Leon Trotsky’s initiative. On October 25 (November 7) 1917 the MRC issued its momentous declaration that the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky “no longer existed”. State power has passed into the hands of the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers.

Workers formed defence corps during the 1926 General Strike in Britain. American workers did the same in 1934. There were massive stoppages in San Francisco, Toledo and Minneapolis. In the 1920s the two main workers’ parties in Germany established their own militias. The SDP dominated the soft-left Reichsbanner, while the Communist Party formed the much more militant Rotfrontkämpferbund (at its height it boasted 130,000 members). Despite its 1923 founding statutes emphasising ceremonial paraphernalia, marches and band music, the Schutzbund in Austria served as a kind of “proletarian police force”.33 When it came to strikes, demonstrations and meetings, this workers’ militia maintained discipline and fended off Nazi gangs. Though hampered by a dithering social democratic leadership, the Schutzbund heroically resisted the February 12 1934 fascist coup. In Spain anarchists, official ‘communists’, Poum, etc, likewise formed their own militias against the Franco uprising.

Then, more recently, in 1966, there was the Black Panther Party. It organised “armed citizen’s patrols” to monitor and counter the brutal US police force.34 Even the “non-violent” civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, included within its ranks those committed to “armed self-defence” against Ku Klux Klan and other such terrorism.35 Countless other such examples could be cited.

Corbyn

Speaking to a Hiroshima remembrance event in August 2012, Jeremy Corbyn spoke of his desire to emulate “the people of Costa Rica”, who “abolished the army”. Leaving aside the actual situation in Costa Rica and the synthetic outrage generated by The Sun36 and the Daily Mail37, demanding the disbanding of the standing army has assumed a particular importance since Corbyn was elected Labour leader.

Put aside passing opinion polls and imagine that Corbyn wins a majority in 2020. Are the courts, MI5, the armed forces and the police going to be steadfastly loyal to the new government, or powerless to act behind ministerial backs, because of the results of a general election? Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc, rightly dismissed such naive politics as “parliamentary cretinism”.

The Corbyn government would doubtless be committed to swiftly reversing austerity, renationalising the rails, ending British involvement in the Syrian quagmire, decommissioning Trident and maybe negotiating a withdrawal from Nato. However, say in the name of keeping the Labour right, the Daily Mirror and the liberal intelligentsia onside, the Corbyn government decides to leave in place MI5, the police and the standing army. Frankly, that would be an open invitation for a British version of general Augusto Pinochet to launch a bloody counterrevolution. In Chile thousands of leftwingers were butchered after the September 11 1973 army coup, which overthrew the Socialist Party-Communist Party Popular Unity reformist government under president Salvador Allende.

There are already rumours swirling around of unnamed members of the army high command “not standing for” a Corbyn government and being prepared to take “direct action”.38 Meanwhile, the Financial Times darkly warns that Corbyn’s leadership damages “British public life”.39

Why trust the thoroughly authoritarian British army? An institution which relies on inculcating “unthinking obedience” amongst the ranks.40 An institution run by an officer caste, which is trained to command from public school to Sandhurst as if it is their birthright. And, of course, the British army swears to loyally serve the crown – believe it, more than a harmless feudalistic throwback. The monarch and the monarchy function as a potent symbol, and an ever-present excuse for a legal coup.

Why trust the British army, which has fought countless imperial and colonial wars, up to and including the horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan? A British army that has been used when necessary to intimidate, threaten and crush the ‘enemy within’?

No; instead, let us put our trust in a “well regulated militia” and the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”.

Notes

1 . HG Wells The war that will end war London 1914. See www.en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:The_War_That_Will_End_War_-_Wells.djvu&page=8.

2 . T Hoops and D Brinkley FDR and the creation of the UN New Haven 1997, p219.

3 . www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/st_war_peace.html.

4 . http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/five-futuristic-weapons-could-change-warfare-9866.

5 . A Rapoport (ed) Clausewitz on war Harmondsworth 1976, pp101, 119.

6 . VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p400.

7 . See S Pinker The better angels of our nature London 2011.

8 . J Guilaine and J Zammit The origins of war Oxford 2015, p75.

9 . Noted but inadequately discussed by Steven Pinker in his opening chapter of The better angels of our nature (2011).

10 . AFT Woodhouselee Elements of general history ancient and modern London 1818, p287.

11 . A view accepted by many mainstream historians. See P Kennedy The rise of the Anglo-German antagonism 1860-1914 London 1980; J Joll and G Martel The origins of the first world war Abingdon 2007; C Clark The sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914 London 2012.

12 . See ‘Augustine to Boniface’ in EM Atkins and RJ Doradaro (eds) Augustine: political writings Cambridge 2001, p217; JM Mattox Saint Augustine and the theory of just war New York 2006; GM Reichberg, H Syse and E Begby (eds) Ethics of war Malden 2006, pp-70-90.

13 . K Marx, ‘Confidential communication’ CW Vol 21, Moscow 1985, p120.

14 . AH Nimtz Marx, Tocqueville and race in America New York 2003, p170.

15 . K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 9, Moscow 1977, p197.

16 . See H Kissinger A world restored Boston MA 1954.

17 . H Draper and E Haberkern Karl Marx’s theory of revolution Vol 4, New York 2005, p166.

18 . P Hurdis and KB Anderson (eds) The Rosa Luxemburg reader New York 2004, p364.

19 . Washington Post February 14 2016.

20 . http://leftunity.org/manifesto-2015-international.

21  . ‘AWL election campaign: why we are standing and our policies’: www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/ge10/man/parties/Workers_Liberty.pdf.

22 . www.communist-party.org.uk/about-us.html.

23 . www.scottishsocialistparty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SSP_Manifesto_2007.pdf.

24 . See Weekly Worker May 21 2009.

25 . www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am2.

26 . http://constitution.org/cmt/mowarren/observations_new_constitution_1788.html.

27 . K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, p3.

28 . K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p371.

29 . www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm.

30 . www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm.

31 . I am grateful to Ben Lewis for his translation of the Hainfield programme.

32 . www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1902/draft/02feb07.htm.

33 . M Kitchen The coming of Austrian fascism London 1980, p116.

34 . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party.

35 . See CE Cobb This nonviolent stuff’ll get you killed New York 2014.

36 . www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6637495/Corbyn-Britain-should-abolish-its-Army.html.

37  . www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3233244/How-wonderful-d-scrapped-Army-ranted-Jeremy-Corbyn-s-call-dismissed-madness-Tory-MP.html.

38 . Daily Mail September 20 2015.

39 . Financial Times August 14 2015.

40 . NF Dixon On the psychology of military incompetence London 1976, p244.

Uncritical support for Corbyn

David Shearer of Labour Party Marxists reports on last weekend’s LRC conference.

The February 20 ‘special general meeting’ of the Labour Representation Committee was a strange affair, not least because of the poor attendance of only around 150 comrades. The leadership had gone out of its way to insist that there could be no annual general meeting – the 2015 AGM should have been called in November – because of the election of Jeremy Corbyn.

The new circumstances apparently meant that no motions from members or affiliates could be entertained, and there could be no elections for the executive or national committee. But, apart from that, the meeting had all the features of an AGM – officers’ reports and constitutional amendments, for instance.

The reason why only the leadership’s own motions were permitted was obvious. You and I might propose an ‘extremist’ policy or course of action that might embarrass comrade Corbyn and his number two, John McDonnell, at a time when they are under constant scrutiny and attack in the media. So the membership was permitted only to move amendments to the leadership’s own motions.

Having said that, however, the NC’s statement – ‘After Corbyn’s victory – building the movement’ – contained some useful points. For example, it correctly stated: “While participating in, and encouraging, industrial and social struggles, at the present time the LRC has to emphasise the internal battles in the movement.” It also declared: “… we need to work at every level in the unions to encourage participation, democracy and transparency …” Once again, quite correct – although the leadership was not best pleased by the attempt of Labour Party Marxists to add some meat to the bones when it came to union democracy (see below).

However, there was certainly some ambiguity over the LRC’s original and continued purpose. The statement claimed that, unlike others on the left, the LRC had always accepted that “the radicalisation of working people will at some point attempt to create a mass left wing within Labour”.

However, NC member Mike Phipps usefully pointed out that the “origin” of the LRC actually lay in the possibility of an “alternative to Labour” during the days when the right was firmly in control. In fact I seem to recall comrade McDonnell himself hinting on more than one occasion that such a possibility was not ruled out. But let’s not talk about that!

Nevertheless, taking into account such an “origin”, what today is the LRC’s purpose, now that the mass-membership Momentum has come into being? The statement read: “There is no contradiction between the LRC participating fully in the creation of a national network of local and internet-based Momentum groups and maintaining the existence of our own organisation – for the time being.” Indeed it foresaw a time when the LRC “has outlived its usefulness”. This point was also made by comrade McDonnell himself in his address to the conference. He thought that “maybe in the future” there will be “just one organisation”, but apparently we are “not ready for that yet”.

Mick Brooks, in presenting the leadership’s statement, said that Momentum was a “genuine mass movement” and we “have got to be in there”. The LRC has a “critical political role to play”, he continued – it is our job to help shape Momentum’s politics, it seems (even though the NC wants to keep those politics within safe bounds – ie, bounds determined by the rightwing media and its eagerness to blacken the name of the new Labour leadership in whatever way it can).

As the statement put it, our aim is to “advance the Corbyn agenda in the party as a whole” (my emphasis). The overwhelming majority at the meeting favoured more or less uncritical support for Corbyn – there was a clear consensus that the most important thing was to get him into No10 in 2020. According to Jackie Walker, speaking for the NC in the afternoon session on Momentum, we should “go to meetings, knock on doors” to “get Jeremy elected as prime minister”. There were several other such comments. Many were couched in the language of socialism – including the Labourite ‘socialism’ of the 1945 Attlee government.

Despite this, the meeting accepted an amendment to the statement, moved by Sacha Ismail of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which called on Corbyn and McDonnell to be “politically bolder” – it specified “taxing the rich, nationalising the banks, reversing all cuts” and explaining how such demands fit into a vision of a “different society from capitalism”. Within Momentum, the amendment proposed, the LRC should fight to go “beyond ‘progressive’ and ‘new politics’ towards a clearer political programme based on class politics, working class political representation and socialism”.

One comrade said the amendment “misunderstands where we are” – Corbyn and McDonnell are in a “precarious position”. We shouldn’t tell them “we know better”, that “they’re not being bold enough”. Our task is not to advise – “our task is to build”.

Together

While there were guest speakers from the junior doctors and Heathrow 13 campaigns, the star speaker was undoubtedly the shadow chancellor. John McDonnell was pleased to bring a message of “solidarity and thanks” from Jeremy Corbyn – who had, after all, been a “founder member” of the LRC.

Comrade McDonnell stated that the shadow cabinet was an example of the Labour “left, right and centre working together” – the implication being that this can only be a good thing. But the left was gaining ground: “When they realised we had momentum, they started taking some of our ideas.” According to him, most of the Labour right had now “bought into our idea of Labour becoming a social movement again”.

So Labour as a whole, it seems, is now attempting to “transform the social and economic system” and establish a “radically fairer and more equal economy”. And the LRC’s role should be “to the fore” – that of “campaigning to develop policy”. We should “aim for the election of a socialist government” in 2020. It was the “opportunity of a lifetime” – what he had been waiting for all these years: “Now it’s here, let’s grab it with both hands.”

Following a standing ovation, it was announced there would be questions from the floor, although only three were taken. In response, comrade McDonnell stated, among other things, that if there was a challenge to the Corbyn leadership, the left would “organise just as hard” as last time – but it would “do it in a way that holds the party together”. Answering a question from Pete Firmin on the party’s attitude to the European Union and the coming referendum, comrade McDonnell said that Labour should be “working with socialist and social democratic parties across Europe” in order to achieve “a workers’ Europe, a social Europe”. Otherwise we would be left with a “capitalist club”.

He ended by saying: “Now we are the Labour Party. We’re the mainstream!” Which earned him a second standing ovation.

Following this, Mick Brooks presented the leadership’s statement. He began by stating that we were attending a special general meeting, rather than an AGM, because it “was not a question of business as usual”. Since the 1980s Britain had been dominated by rightwing politics, where the situation for socialists was unfavourable. But now there is “radicalisation to the right and to the left”. In contradiction to McDonnell’s claim of a growing unity, comrade Brooks said that within Labour Corbyn is “surrounded by enemies”. Our job was to mobilise his potential support and “channel it into the Labour Party”.

Liz Davies spoke next from the platform. She was delighted to be “back in the Labour Party” after a couple of decades in organisations like the Socialist Alliance and Left Unity. Then she had thought that Blair and Brown had “changed Labour irrevocably”, but “I am delighted I was wrong.” Now Labour was once again opposed to the “wicked” Tory policies on welfare, housing, migration and so on.

Bolt-on

The first amendment to the NC statement was moved by Pete Firmin representing Brent Trades Council. This mandated the NC to “call the overdue 2015 AGM within three months”. The last AGM had been in November 2014 – when comrade Firmin himself had been elected political secretary – and there was no real reason why we should not now have a proper conference, where a full range of motions are heard and the leadership is elected/re-elected.

The excuses given by a range of NC and EC speakers opposing this were truly abysmal. The intention was to “call an AGM as soon after the Labour Party conference as possible” – didn’t comrade Firmin know that an AGM “takes time and money to organise”? It had been “a difficult year” and now was not the time for “the usual resolution-passing” (unless they are resolutions from the leadership, of course). It would be “an enormous distraction” to organise a “second major event”.

But Graham Bash, LRC treasurer and editor of Labour Briefing, was the most embarrassing: “For goodness sake, in the next three months there are local elections”, plus lots of local Momentum meetings, he said. Organising the AGM would “take the LRC out of politics” and we shouldn’t let such things “get in the way of the struggle outside”!

Other comrades, including Andrew Berry, pointed out that democracy was not a “bolt-on extra” and there was no reason why we could not fully engage in politics while preparing for an AGM. Although the amendment was defeated, the vote was close enough to necessitate a count – there were 35 in favour and 57 against.

This was followed by the LPM amendment mentioned above. This stated: “The fight to democratise the Labour Party cannot be separated from the fight to democratise the trade unions.” It was essential to ensure that both Labour and union officers are fully accountable and recallable, and are paid only the average wage of a skilled worker. The amendment put forward several other concrete proposals – we should, for example, aim to abolish the Bonapartist post of Labour leader.

In introducing the amendment, Stan Keable insisted that democracy must be seen to be implemented. Democracy was our best weapon against the class enemy, in that it could help to transform our movement into a genuinely powerful force. That applies to the trade union movement as well as to the Labour Party.

Once again there were some very weak arguments against such a basic proposition. One comrade said that it was “not for us to tell our affiliates how they should organise”, while another said that at last we have our own leader and yet here we have Labour Party Marxists making the “mad” proposal to abolish the post! Surely everyone knew it was our job to “get behind Jeremy’s agenda”? And you would have to be “bonkers” to expect him to get by on a worker’s wage.

LPM’s Jim Grant argued that if it was wrong for us to tell the unions how to organise, presumably we should not ‘interfere’ in their affairs by calling on them to support the junior doctors, for example. But it was to no avail: the amendment was defeated, with about 25 comrades voting in favour.

Unpleasant

After the lunch break NC members Michael Calderbank and Jackie Walker introduced the session on Momentum. Comrade Calderbank said that Momentum was “crucial to the Corbyn movement” and to “getting Labour elected” in 2020, while comrade Walker stated that the aim must be to double Momentum’s membership. She was very enthusiastic about her local Momentum group and its ‘consensus democracy’ – “and, you know, it works!” What is more, “If you say something unpleasant, we ask you to leave!”

Comrade Walker also thought it was better to have “more people who don’t have experience” coming into Momentum than members or ex-members of the organised left. But there were “too few blacks and too few women” – which was all down to people (like members of the experienced left, no doubt) “saying unpleasant things” and others (like herself, it seems) “being intimidated”.

In a similar vein Andrew Berry had raised a point of order in an earlier session objecting to the use of certain words – he specified “losers”, “mad” and “bonkers” – the last two having been directed against LPM. We don’t mind, Andrew, honestly!

The final session dealt with organisational matters, which revealed the poor state of the LRC. As Norrette Moore for the executive said, “Last August we got down to about £100 in the bank.” This was one of the reasons why the “very large national committee” had to be streamlined. The ‘streamlining’ consisted, amongst other things, of a constitutional change that would end the current two-tier structure, whereby the executive committee “takes proposals to a national committee”. Instead there would be a single national executive committee. The NC was proposing that the AGM (when it is eventually called) should elect not only the NEC, but eight individual officers (at least four of whom “should identify as female”), including a “treasurer”, “web manager” and “administrator”.

Our amendment called for all officers to be elected by the NEC itself, not the AGM. In moving it, I pointed out that very few LRC members knew which of those standing for election would make a good “web manager”, for instance. What is more, if the comrade elected turned out to be a total incompetent, then, under the current method of electing officers, there would be nothing anyone could do – they had been elected by the membership and could not be removed until the next AGM.

But comrade Moore said that if we elected the committee as a whole and gave them the job of allocating the various responsibilities from amongst themselves, that would make them a “clique”. No, I’m not sure how she worked that one out either. In any case, the amendment was lost, with, once more, around 25 voting for it.

 

Momentum: Fight for political clarity

Jim Grant of Labour Party Marxists surveys the left response to Momentum’s founding national committee meeting.

Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashōmon is based around the narrative concept of a series of self-interested characters giving their partial accounts of the same event –  a procedure borrowed by many subsequent works in all narrative media.

It seems also to have been borrowed, ingeniously, by Momentum: its inaugural national committee this weekend was undoubtedly an important moment, but the precise nature of its significance is something nobody can seem to agree on.

So, to the good news: proposals to ban leftwing literature from Momentum meetings were resoundingly defeated. That the impulse was there at all is, alas, hardly surprising – there is nothing a shiny new movement likes less than the reality of the haggard old Trots its meetings will attract, but it was still silly. Would Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament leaflets be banned? If not, then what about slightly more contentious campaigns (Cuba Solidarity, say)? Even on its own terms, it would be a bureaucratic nightmare, and a ridiculous price to pay for the slender benefit of keeping Socialist Worker at bay. (There is, of course, the small matter of elementary democratic principle to bear in mind as well.)

That Momentum is – for now – relatively open to the participation of avowed Marxists can be gauged from the fact that its steering committee (which will take care of things in between NC meetings) included a certain Jill Mountford of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Any regular reader of this paper will know that our criticisms of the AWL are legion; but, given that Momentum is screamed at in every paper for basically being the Militant Tendency with better social media nous, comrade Mountford’s election is a good omen for left participants in Momentum more generally. They are not yet buckling on this one. Good.

The most contentious issue, however, is related to Momentum’s membership rules. On the table were three options: Momentum is only open to Labour members; Momentum members must have Labour Party cards, but a separate category of supporters would have voting rights on all matters not directly connected to internal Labour politics; and finally, that Momentum was open to Labour members, affiliated supporters (such as members of affliated unions) and those who support the “aims and values” of the Labour Party, provided they do not support any party other than Labour.

The third option was chosen by a decent majority vote, and its vagueness is probably responsible for most of the leftwing confusion in the period since the meeting. We have argued repeatedly that Momentum should orient itself very firmly in the direction of the Labour Party, and aspects of the agreed wording fudge the issue somewhat. Talk of ‘aims and values’ is plainly lifted directly from the wording of the Labour Party’s ‘registered supporter’ category, which proved under the pressure of Jeremy Corbyn’s insurgent leadership bid to be somewhat elastic, with many of those who had left Labour for the Greens and suchlike excluded on the basis of ancient Twitter postings.

In context, the Momentum agreement is pointing in the opposite direction: it is, after all, the most elastic of the options available. Momentum members will merely have to employ the appropriate due diligence of not openly supporting opposing candidates under their own names. Yet it is still not nearly as elastic as some would like. Again – good. Momentum has chosen not to be yet another self-perpetuating campaigning mechanism along the lines of the People’s Assembly, Stop the War and sundry Trot fronts past and present. It is an (admittedly unofficial) organisation of the Labour Party, and all who sign up will at least have to stand in some proximity to the larger body.

Dogma

So, unsurprisingly, opinions divide. Many are pretty upbeat about the whole thing: “I believe the lobbying and pressure from grassroots Momentum branches won the day at the new NC on Saturday,” chirruped a triumphant Stuart King, formerly of the International Socialists, Workers Power, Permanent Revolution and the Anti-Capitalist Initiative (and possibly still a member of Left Unity, but who knows?), on Facebook.

The AWL’s Ed Whitby, who was present, used his own blog to accentuate the positive. “People should join the Labour Party, and it is right that Momentum will strongly encourage this; but there are still many people coming to the organisation who for whatever reason haven’t joined yet. We need to encourage and persuade them, not throw up an unnecessary barrier.”1 (The AWL, of course, has a longer track record of conducting Labour work, so the result is probably easier to swallow for its members.)

Many Left Unity members are … less enthusiastic. It is hardly surprising: as its membership shrivels, LU is more and more dominated by the ‘carry on as before’ tendency; those for whom the desire to stand candidates in their particular locality automatically supersedes any attention to the goings-on in wider national politics; those for whom the narrow horizon of politics is fitting in as much low-level do-goodery into a given week as possible. No doubt LU will continue to ignore the great shifts happening all around it, in favour of trying to turn out what remains of its membership on whatever demonstration is looming.

The ne plus ultra of this political approach is, as ever, the Socialist Workers Party. A headline in this week’s Socialist Worker asks: “Is Jeremy Corbyn supporters group Momentum cutting off its grassroots?”2 Beyond being a great exemplar of Betteridge’s law (which states that any headline which takes the form of a question can be safely answered with ‘no’), it differs very little from any of SW’s recent ruminations on the topic.

“Momentum’s national committee rightly agreed to support the CND demonstration against Trident nuclear missiles in London on Saturday February 27,” writes the article’s author, Nick Clark. “And it also committed to build for the People’s Assembly national demo in London on April 16. But the committee’s agenda emphasised a focus on building the Labour Party.” For shame!

Comrade Clark’s bizarre conclusion deserves to be cited in full:

“Such a strategy risks allowing the groundswell of support that grew around Corbyn’s campaign to melt away. Corbyn’s strength came from the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for him because they wanted an alternative to austerity, racism and war. Sustaining that will mean building a broad-based movement.”

Might we naively suggest that people voted for Corbyn because they, er, wanted him to be the leader of the Labour Party? Does the SWP really expect people to take no further interest in the matter now that he is Labour leader, and – worse – actually think that is a good thing?

We will not find out from comrade Clark, who refrains from anything so vulgar as justifying the claims he repeats mindlessly, like a penitent monk. For that, we turn to Mark L Thomas, writing at greater length in the latest International Socialism, the SWP’s quarterly journal:

“The key to social change remains through collective struggle from below. Every advance in the struggle creates a greater self-confidence among layers of workers, so weakening the hold of rightwing ideas. This in turn is Corbyn’s best defence of his position against the Labour right … But if the mass of Corbyn’s supporters are simply drawn into bitter internal battles over Labour policy and candidate selections, in practice their focus will not be mobilising in workplaces and working class communities, but on arguing with the right wing … Paradoxically, this can weaken, not strengthen, Corbyn’s position.”3

Things are, alas, little better here – we have proof only of the bankruptcy of the SWP’s hyper-activist tunnel vision. For decades, we have been told with increasing desperation that every passing strike or demonstration is ‘really important’ and the ‘start of the fightback’. Well, comrades, the fightback has come – and you are reduced basically to complaining that it was not the fightback you had in mind. Would a little rethinking be too much to ask?

This sort of dogma is, as we have already seen, hardly limited to the SWP, which merely presents it in its purest and thereby most ridiculous form. Indeed, even organisations that take the Labour question more seriously as part of their operative activity slip into this paradigm all too easily. Thus we find the aforementioned Jill Mountford and Ed Whitby, along with AWL stalwart Sacha Ismail, in last week’s Solidarity:

“It would be false [sic] at this stage to push for anything like a clear, sharp statement of socialist aims, but we need to go beyond Lib Dem-style platitudes and commit to goals for changing the labour movement and developing workers’ political representation. Momentum also needs a clear orientation to supporting workers’ and social movement struggles, and taking them into the Labour Party.”4

It is, we note, never the right time to push for a “clear statement of socialist aims”; nor are we certain that “supporting workers’ and social movement struggles” goes beyond the platitudinous. Mountford wants Momentum to be ‘socialist’ in some sense, still: just not clearly or sharply so. So it is somewhat odd to find comrade Whitby ambivalent on this point in his later blog post: “The basic statement of aims was amended to refer more to socialism and the working class [but] it is still, in my view, far from adequate.” It is a difficult thing, indeed, to satisfy precisely the AWL’s demand for blurry, blunt socialism!

Focus on labour

Still, we must agree with comrade Whitby that the Momentum decisions represent movement in the right direction. And there is a small nugget of truth even in the SWP’s Nick Clark, when he complains of “a focus on building the Labour Party”. However, it is clear that, left to its own devices, Momentum has a very clear sense of what building the Labour Party means, and that is to support Jeremy. At all costs, Labour must be returned to government in 2020, with the honourable member for Islington North at the helm.

So, although Clark’s crypto-Bakuninist ravings and the Corbynist electoralism of the Momentum mainstream may seem to be directly and diametrically opposed, they have in common one thing: the need to suppress political clarity. The object of working class struggle is the conquest of political power, and in fact the ‘instinctive’ class vote for Labour – as with other humdrum matters of official labour movement politics – is a distorted reflection of that reality. The existence of the Labour Party can be put down, ultimately, to the fact that even the infamously bureaucratic British trade unions of the 19th century knew that the workers’ movement needed an effective ‘political wing’ to make anything stick.

Yet there is a vast gulf between what the extant forces of the Labour left consider to be ‘taking power’ and what is actually required to break the grasp of the ruling class on society. For one thing, capital is organised internationally, as the recent Google tax scandals have neatly illustrated; ‘getting the Tories out’ and putting in a tax-and-spend budget does not change that by itself. Organising internationally, however, renders unavoidable the necessity to think at a very high level about the sort of world we want to create. More immediately, the very structures of the state are organised in ways favourable to capital and hostile to labour (in extremis, we have had off-the-record coup talk about Corbyn from army chiefs already). Again, a laundry list of worthy reformist policies gathered into a Labour manifesto is not adequate as a response.

In short, rigorous and effective political discussion is not some self-indulgent distraction from the ‘real work’ – be that getting a Labour government or nudging up attendance figures at some demonstration. The great promise of Momentum is that it provides an opportunity to fight for political clarity among greater numbers of people and, by focusing on the Labour Party – an organisation that, for better or worse, actually matters – the chance to make that clarity a practical force in society at large.

Notes

1 . https://edsunionblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/steps-forward-for-momentum-report-of-first-momentum-national-committee-6-february-2016.

2 . Socialist Worker February 9 2016.

3 . ‘A house divided: Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party’ International Socialism No149, winter 2015.

4 . Solidarity February 3 2016.