A united front against the cuts?

I've written a short introduction to an important concept in left-wing political strategy: 'Socialists and the united front', now up at Counterfire. I've limited myself to the emergence of united front strategy in the years following the Russian Revolution of 1917, rather than attempting a sweeping history of its application over nearly a century.

My own little contribution was designed to accompany a very illuminating archive piece already on the site: The united front and the Comintern by Duncan Hallas. My article hopefully provides the context needed to fully comprehend the landmark events Hallas wrote about.

It is also, however, prompted by a particular contemporary development: the emerging Coalition of Resistance is, like most examples of united fronts since the mid-1920s, a small-scale operation (at least for now) compared with the socially convulsive movements of the Comintern era. It is, nevertheless, an example of tapping into a widespread desire for broad unity in the working class to develop an active coalition on the central political issue of our times.

For revolutionaries, like me, this means working with people who largely accept reformist ideas and solutions. Unfortunately we revolutionaries are much smaller in number than the major Communist movements of 90 years ago, but the principles remain the same.

The urgent priority for everyone now is to forge broad opposition to the savage cuts pursued by the ConDem coalition. It would be sectarian for revolutionaries to remain aloof from a project designed to increase co-ordination and effectiveness of our campaigning, or to limit themselves to their own established, narrow front operations.  

It would also, though, be a mistake to simply tail-end larger forces, like the Labour Party or the TUC, in the misguided belief that such timidity and caution is a necessary part of unity. If we wait for them to act, we could be waiting a long time.

It is necessary for revolutionary socialists to work with others, typically on the political left, who also embrace the need for decisive action and a dynamic response - who are willing to show a little flair and initiative. Those who do not lead are destined to follow, lagging behind instead of shaping events.

For Lenin and Trotsky there was, as Duncan Hallas explained, a simultaneous need to build revolutionary organisation, and expand the influence of radical anti-capitalist ideas articulating opposition to the system as a whole and advocating socialist alternatives. It isn't a choice between broad campaigns or socialist argument - instead, the 'battle of ideas' takes place in the context of developing activism and resistance with people influenced by reformist ideas.

This remains true today. The growing opposition to austerity will provide revolutionary socialists, in organisations like Counterfire, opportunities to unite with others in common struggle - and, at one and the same time, creates an audience for discussions about how we abolish economic crisis, inequality and injustice once and for all.

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Next steps...

After the expulsions and resignations, what next?

'It is time to move on. Those who have left the SWP will be launching some sort of new left-wing organisation, inviting other activists and socialists to participate and to help shape the direction it takes. There are some things we can be sure of. Its activists will be thoroughly involved in broad-based campaigns around war, recession, climate change, fascism and more. There will be a high level of political discussion, seeking to renew the theoretically rich Marxist tradition for a new generation.

The internal democratic culture will be vibrant and inclusive. We will use the internet in dynamic and innovative ways to communicate ideas, with a website as an organising hub. There will be creative approaches to political discussion, using the recent Mutiny: Love on Trial event as a useful guide, rather than relying on tired old formats. We have to be willing to experiment, take risks and find new ways of connecting with people.

I expect anything we launch to grow rapidly. There is a thirst for radical politics and discussion of ideas, but also frustration amongst many radically-minded people with the perceived sectarianism and conservatism of the existing left, which seems stuck in old ways of operating and incapable of connecting with a new generation. We need to work together in shaping resistance across a range of political areas and, at the same time, bring Marxist politics to life for those seeking alternatives to the chaos and barbarism of our age.'

That's the final part of my article on the split from the SWP, published on New Left Project (sorry to spoil the ending). I flag it up because I've noticed two common misconceptions on the blogs, both of which are refuted by the above passage. One is the bizarre notion that former supporters of the SWP's Left Platform will simply 'liquidate' into the movements and not have any independent socialist organisation. Why would people fight so hard for the future of a revolutionary party - through its internal debates - if they didn't passionately believe in the need for such political organisation?

The second, equally wrongheaded, view is that we are looking to create something modelled on the SWP, but obviously far smaller. Anyone who suggests this really hasn't been paying attention! Again, it doesn't make sense: why would you put up such a struggle for your party to change direction if you merely wanted to do pretty much the same thing anyway?

Anyway, watch this space...

Gramsci, the united front and revolutionary strategy

Phil BC is posting a series of commentaries on the ideas of the great Marxist Antonio Gramsci, and I've just read an interesting new article on Gramsci's relevance for today. Here are a few thoughts of my own, particularly on the issue of Gramsci's relationship to the revolutionary and Bolshevik tradition (especially his ideas about the united front as revolutionary strategy).

Gramsci was an active revolutionary. It is remarkable how easily this is overlooked, since he has (since the 1970s) become firmly established as a 'respectable' Marxist in university departments. He helped lead the workers' councils movement during Italy's red years after the end of World War One. Gramsci learnt the lesson that a nationwide network of revolutionary socialists is needed at such times - and that such a network has to be built in advance, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had done prior to 1917's revolution in Russia.

Gramsci then helped establish the Communist Party in Italy, in 1921, but there were severe problems of sectarianism from the outset. The left was fragemented and, partly because of this, Mussolini was able to lead his fascists to power. Gramsci's Prison Notebooks were written after the fascists, accurately perceiving him to be a political threat, jailed him in 1926.

The Notebooks were his theoretical distillation of the experiences of that age of wars and revolutions, in Russia and Europe alike. While often viewed as advocating something radically different to the Bolshevik tradition for Western societies, Gramsci formulated socialist strategy as part of the Bolshevik tradition. There may be differences between East and West, but there were also profound similarities. His ideas about organisation and tactics appropriate to more advanced European countries were an adaptation of Bolshevism not a departure from it.

A key lesson concerned the limits of purely economic (or industrial) struggles. Just as Lenin polemicised against 'economism' in 'What is to be Done?' (1903), Gramsci stressed the need for politics, not just workplace struggles over immediate economic issues. Spontaneous economic struggles aren't enough to change society.

This is, fundamentally, because social transformation requires confronting the capitalist state. That is a political and revolutionary act. Gramsci has been tamed by academia so he appears as a gradualist, a reformist who wanted to develop 'counter-hegemony' without, apparently, confronting capitalist power through a mass revolutionary challenge. Yet that is a huge misinterpretation of his ideas and writings - he was clear that the state had to be overthrown.

But Gramsci also knew that social transformation wasn't something to just patiently wait for. Neither could it be brought about by any self-appoined revolutionary group, substituting for mass action. For the vast majority of the time revolutionaries' task is to help create mechanisms for uniting people in struggles and campaigns for reforms, generalising and politicising resistance wherever possible. Mere syndicalism - limiting resistance to specific economic demands - is never sufficient to challenge the system politically. Trade union struggles, while vital, can always be accommodated within the system.

Lenin had recognised the need for an independent revolutionary organisation, a core of dedicated socialists, but also for those revolutionaries to have an on-going, dynamic relationship with broader forces. The organised revolutionaries and the united fronts are two interconnected poles. Ultimately, revolutionaries want to - in Gramsci's terms - break capitalist hegemony completely. In pursuit of this aim it is necessary for revolutionaries to unite with reformists and others in struggles over concrete demands.

Perhaps Gramsci's greatest contribution was to flesh out what this way of operating meant in societies with much stronger reformist traditions and union bureaucracies - and a more sophisticated set of institutions helping perpetuate the system - than was the case in Russia. This makes him profoundly relevant for us today.

Gramsci saw the united front as the defining feature of revolutionary strategy in advanced capitalism, enabling often very marginal groups of revolutionary socialists to facilitate effective action by much larger social forces. They could, through united fronts, punch above their weight.

The notion of Gramsci somehow deviating from Lenin, Trotsky and the Russian tradition is simply wrong. Gramsci was, from the early 1920s onwards, an advocate of independent and cohesive revolutionary organisation. He saw his own theoretical work - in particular concerning political strategy - as extending Lenin and Trotsky's arguments, in the Third International (or Comintern), for united fronts as central to winning broad support and increasing Communist influence.

In fact, the Bolsheviks had previously adopted the united front method - Trotsky talked, in the 1920s, of the workers' soviets as having been an advanced form of the united front. Gramsci was preoccupied with how the struggle for working class hegemony should be waged in Western conditions, with larger and more powerful working classes but also more challenging obstacles.

Gramsci's work on hegemony complements Lukacs’ analysis of class consciousness, how it can transform from mixed and contradictory to being revolutionary, and his writings about revolution . Gramsci focuses more on institutions, Lukacs more on alienation and reification, but these are compatible and can be integrated. We need the insights of both Gramsci and Lukacs, together with the legacy of Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg, when examining the challenges ahead for the revolutionary left.

United fronts and all that: is Tyneside SWP becoming 'party isolationist'?

Tyneside Socialist Workers Party has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a public statement - aimed at the wider Left and labour movement in the North East of England - dissociating itself with one of its own members. The statement claims, 'The Tyneside district of the SWP have become increasingly concerned at the bureaucratic conduct of Tony Dowling a member of the SWP in his role as Secretary of the NESSN.' It makes a number of rather wild and scattergun assertions, with no evidence, but here is the central allegation:

'[we were] very concerned to see firstly the bureaucratic heavy-handed approach taken by Regional Secretary Dave Harker towards the Youth Fight for Jobs Campaign; this resulted in a number of activists wishing to be taken off the network list.... We were even more concerned when Tony Dowling Tyneside Secretary mirrored that bureaucratic approach with regards to an event organised by the IWW in conjunction with the National Union of Mineworkers. To discover that Tony an SWP member refused to circulate details of the event on the grounds that he regarded the IWW as 'political' shocked our members'.

The substance of the denunciation of Tony is something very minor and trivial. The reaction is therefore utterly disproportionate. It can only be understood as a political and factional attack on an internal critic of the leadership’s perspectives. It is a highly personalised attack on someone, rather than discussing the matter politically in a tolerant, respectful climate. It is also inappropriate – indeed unprecedented – for the party to openly denounce (there’s no other word for it) one of its own members to the wider movement.

The district leadership’s complaint is that Tony allegedly declined to circulate a particular message from the IWW group on the North East Shop Stewards Network (NESSN) email network. That’s it: there’s one email Tony suppsoedly didn’t send, which the SWP district leadership thinks he should have sent. This is extraordinarily minor.

The rest is unsubstantiated blather, e.g. accusations of a ‘bureaucratic’ approach without a scrap of evidence in support. The actual accusation isn't even true, as it was the North East-wide regional secretary who took the decision (based on the network's rules).

Tony would have been unable, according to NESSN’s constitution, to circulate the message. If he had adhered to ‘party discipline’ he would have broken the rules as a NESSN officer. The network’s last AGM specifically ruled that the IWW should be designated a political group, rather than a trade union in the conventional sense, so it therefore wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone in a Secretary role to circulate its messages.

The purpose of the network is to promote, and where possible co-ordinate, trade union campaigns, movement events and working class solidarity. In a non-sectarian spirit the Secretaries do not circulate material for specific politcal groups. However, networkers have access to the full list of around 200 email addresses and can always distribute political material if they wish.

If SWP members want to change this rule they should propose it at the next AGM – that would be an entirely reasonable approach. But it is unacceptable to pressure an individual comrade with an elected role in a broader organisation – in this case the NESSN – to break that organisation’s rules. It is also opportunistic: Tyneside SWP has no particular sympathy with the IWW, but simply wants to attack a key Left Platform supporter.

Parts of the Tyneside SWP statement are dishonest, for example its claim to having been enthusiastic supporters of NESSN. Tony is the only member who has been consistently involved in it during the last year. Otherwise the SWP has been remarkably lukewarm. The victimisation of Unison activists in the North East is referred to, inexplicably, but it is utterly irrelevant to all this – referring to it is merely an opportunistic attempt by the current Tyneside SWP organiser to smear Tony.

Tyneside SWP has, surprisingly, resorted to using a notoriously embittered sectarian to actually circulate the message. Clearly the organiser lacks the courage to distribute it himself. The sectarian sender of the document writes, 'The next committee meeting is in December and the next full meeting of the NESSN is in January. I think I might now start to attend these meetings'. He clearly approves of this attack, but all those who are non-sectarian and genuinely striving for left unity will be deeply troubled.

Tony is very well-respected throughout NESSN, as he is in Stop the War and other campaigns. He has a far better political relationship with activists outside the SWP in Tyneside than those attacking him do. It is reckless and sectarian for the SWP’s local leadership (with the full backing of Martin Smith, National Secretary) to publicly dissociate itself from him.

This reflects a wider turn away from sustained united front work, focusing instead on narrow ‘party building’ and short-lived SWP fronts. Local SWP members are currently trying to build an anti-war public meeting that bypasses Tyneside Stop the War completely. This, again, is unprecedented – the SWP has always worked through Stop the War in its anti-war work. The meeting has even, astonishingly, been arranged for the same evening (30 November) as the Tyneside group’s next organising meeting.

The situation has only got so awful becuase the SWP leadership allowed it to, in particular by foisting someone with a reputation for (what might politely be described as) an adversarial style on the membership. All concerns and criticisms have been ignored, and those making them have been heavily criticised.

The current abuses of democracy, the personal vilification, the use of disciplinary measures - all this should give SWP members and those who care about the future of the revolutionary tradition cause for deep concern. But just as importantly, we now see these growing problems damaging the wider campaigns and movements of which SWP activists are a part.

Is the united front a 'right wing' strategy?

This is an extract from the SWP Left Platform's perspectives:

For Lenin and Trotsky the strategy of the united front was essential to advancing the interests of the working class. A united front unites broad layers of people around shared demands and simultaneously provides the conditions for the revolutionary party to flourish and grow.

The united front is therefore integral to revolutionary strategy, unless the party is so small or the objective situation is so adverse that no such broad unity is possible. But what happens when the revolutionary party stops pursuing a united front strategy?

The lack of such a strategy can lead to revolutionaries accommodating to political forces to their right. This is because the party has no effective mechanism for changing the balance of forces in favour of revolutionaries.

At the same time the party is also prone to sectarianism and reliance on party propaganda. This is for precisely the same reason: no effective lever to change reality exists, so propaganda is all that is left.

In reality these two errors often co-exist. When propaganda manifestly fails to alter the real balance of class forces, panic sets in. Revolutionaries then collapse into accepting unity on terms dictated by other forces in the class.

The alternative to this vacillation is a structured united front, with reformists, in which revolutionaries can provide political and strategic direction to the struggle. For the SWP in recent years, Stop the War has been the most successful example of this.

The absence of united front method produces vacillation. Revolutionaries alternate between bouts of sectarian party activity (and ‘party fronts’, consisting of members plus our immediate periphery) and adaptation to conditions created by larger or stronger forces. What is missing is a systematic approach to class unity - the united front - and consequently revolutionaries’capacity for shaping events.

To put it in Marxist terms, we need a dialectical unity of opposed principles. In this case it is the unity of building an independent vanguard party with the need for working class solidarity (irrespective of party affiliation or ideological differences)in the united front. In the absence of this dialectical unity we are left with two wrong but mutually reinforcing poles: sectarianism (or propagandism) and liquidationism (or adaptation).