Date: Thu, 28 Nov 96 09:29:15    
Subject: M-G: On the Revolutionary Platform of the SLP


The Problems with the Revolutionary Platform of the SLP
By Robert J Byrne

Introduction
In early August the first national conference of the Revolutionary
Platform of the SLP  was held. Around 30 comrades attended this
gathering of the only attempt to organise the left in the SLP. The RP
conference tended to divide between two positions. On the one hand
there were comrades who advocated a transitional programme for a
socialist revolution. On the other hand there was a section who think
that Britain is not mature for a socialist revolution and that what we
need is a bourgeois democratic republic. These comrades believe this
would create the conditions for a workers' state which would then
build a state capitalist system. In line with this method this
position denies the necessity for fighting today for a transitional
programme or for any anti-capitalist demand. It tends to limit the
mass struggles to purely democratic-bourgeois demands. This finds its
expression in the project to create a hybrid party where all kind of
so-call communist factions co-exist with left-reformist labourites in
a perpetual atmosphere of unprincipled compromises. The original
platform was drafted by comrades who are in favour of a minimum
programme and for a federal republic. In the conference that position
was defeated by comrades who said that their aim is not to replace the
Queen with an imperialist federal republic like Germany or the USA.
The ultimate goal set was for a socialist republic rather that for a
democratic republic.
 Nevertheless, the final document is a contradiction in itself. The
 amendments adopted were correct and 
gave a Trotskyist tinge to final platform. But the document has
inheritances from the original confused draft. As a result it
conflates several different ideas and produces a mishmash which is
designed to appeal to the maximum number of people on their current
level of political understanding. We will try to make some criticisms
with the aim to assist the RP comrades to think and to re-formulate
some of their positions. The RP in particular is incorrect on the
nature of the coming British revolution, it is incorrect on the role
of the working class, it is incorrect on the nature of the SLP, it is
incorrect on the potential of the SLP and it is incorrect on the
Labour Party. It is therefore incorrect on the united front and has no
appreciation of the transitional method. It proceeds from
self-proclamation and not from a real estimation of the state of the
working class and how to relate to its present level of consciousness
with an orientation which can take it forward when it engages in
struggle. It is incorrect on Europe. Participation in the RP must be
on the basis of fighting for a Trotskyist Platform based on the
Transitional Method.

Point 1
talks of 'the revolutionary struggle for socialism and the
establishment of workers' power' but does not mention the type of
state necessary for socialism. Though it is ultra-left to continually
refer to the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' all the time we must
understand that this concept contains the key ideas of how a working
class in power would be obliged to operate. A 'battle for democracy'
conflates workers democracy with bourgeois democracy and leaves out
the lessons drawn by Marx from the Paris Commune, let alone the
experience of the first workers soviets in 1905 in St. Petersburg, the
experience of the first workers state after 1917 and the appearance of
these organs of dual power from the revolutionary committees in Spain
in 1936, the workers councils in Hungary in 1956, the shoras in Iran
in 1979 etc. What we fight for now, though it is not possible to
agitate for soviets everywhere, yet we are conscious that we must seek
to move the class struggle in that direction. Our tactics cannot
flatly contradict our strategy; not democracy in abstract but the
workers democracy of the picket line which denies the democratic
rights of scabs and capitalists, the workers democracy of the majority
rule in trade unions which enforces unity in action against the class
enemy under pain of fines or expulsions (thereby infringing the
individual member's freedom to scab) . Already in the first lines a
confusing formulation suggests that the left of the SLP should be
fighting for a democratic revolution in Britain, that is a revolution
for a few cosmetic reforms of the superstructure of the capitalist
state and that they should subordinate their own goals and class
interests to these miserable aims. Bad enough to suggest two stage
theories for colonial and semi-colonial countries, suggesting them for
Britain is just plain reformism dressed up in a few radical phrases.

Point 2
is restricted to democratic demands and seems to propose that the
working class restrict itself to these demands. It is correctly 'For a
socialist republic, for a united Ireland' but sees no working class
content to this. It does not explain why 'these demands will be a
vital element in the struggle for socialism in the UK' or point to the
role of the TU bureaucracy and Labour Party leaders in defending
British imperialist interests in Ireland. It does not understand that
the attitude to struggles of nationalist workers in Ireland is
directly related to its attitude to its own rank-and-file. The old
cross-class alliance of the labour aristocracy, which still lives on
in the north of Ireland is the ideological battering-ram to subjugate
British workers to their 'own' imperialism.

Point 3
again is confined to capitalist solutions and fails to raise any
socialist demands. Then it ridiculously advocates that capitalist
Wales and Scotland should have 'voluntary union with the working class
of England'. The workers in Wales and Scotland should be encouraged to
fight their own capitalists and not make any popular fronts with them
against English capitalists. And why would English workers side with
Scottish and Welsh bosses against their own? Again confusion is heaped
on top of confusion in a few short sentences.

Point 4
which includes good demands on MP's salary, discipline etc., says it
has 'No illusions in parliament', that 'there is no possibility of
socialism being achieved through parliament' and then says 'We need a
democratic workers' state'. Workers democracy implies loss of
democracy for capitalists and their agents - there is no such thing as
a non-class democracy.

Point 5
might seem to some as a confused version of Trotsky's transitional
demand for workers' control. However the point of this demand was to
expose the machinations and inner workings of capitalist enterprises
to workers in struggle, thus enabling the revolutionaries to make the
case for the expropriation of the whole of capitalist society. The way
this demand is put it is not a step to workers' ownership of the means
of production but an idealistic ultra-leftist schema for how workers
could make capitalism work for them Point 6 turns real campaigning
demands for workers democracy in the unions into an idealistic and
preposterous schema for how 'The rank and file must control their own
unions' within the confines of a capitalist society and without
mentioning the necessity for building revolutionary leadership in the
unions to oust the bureaucracy. Without a mass movement that is on its
way to power such an ousting is impossible to conceive and without its
victory it would be impossible to maintain. Again perfectly correct
demands in themselves are rendered into useless idealistic reformist
ones because they do not appear as part of a programme to mobilise the
working class to seize state power. Point 7 fails to oppose the
Maastricht Treaty. More on this in resolutions on Europe. Points 8, 
9, 10, 11 and 12 are OK. The Resolutions Resolution 1 This says' 'To
this end we should campaign for; a) a Communist Labour Party'. This
adds more confusion. What is meant by a Communist Labour Party? Do we
mean a Communist Party a la Marx and Engels? Or a la Lenin and
Trotsky? Or a la JV Stalin and Harry Pollitt? Or the CPB version
favoured by Bob Crow, Jimmy Nolan and Alex McFadden? Or the version
favoured by the current CPGB? Or the confusion between all these
radically different variants which honest militants new to
revolutionary or radical politics might have in their heads. Then to
have a hybrid 'Communist Labour Party' we will also have to
accommodate to Scargill's foolish illusions in what old Labour used to
be when the CPGB assisted in its formation almost two decades before
it appeared itself"! Militants in the SLP should seek to advance the
class struggle by turning the membership of the SLP towards that. This
will oblige it to politically criticise the ex-Stalinists (and not so
ex) like Bob Crow, Jimmy Nolan, Alex McFadden etc. and the others like
SLP General Secretary ex-Outlooker Pat Sikorski in a way that exposes
their practical activity in their own union struggles as anti-working
class and relate this to how they operate in the SLP. This requires
detailed analysis of their relations to strikes and how they have
misled and sold them out. The major theoretical orientation of the
intervention will be the elaboration of: (a) The transitional method
(b) the united front (c) the character of rank-and-file bodies
necessary to fight the labour movement bureaucracy and build
revolutionary leadership. We must seek to elaborate a unified
orientation for all struggles and seek to show the best militants in
the SLP that they cannot be the vanguard in themselves when they
cannot lead significant sections of workers. They must seek to utilise
the transitional method to relate to the consciousness of the working
class as a whole. They must be brought to see that the working class
does not develop politically as a result of propaganda alone but must
go through real political evolution of struggle and experience, which
our propaganda must intersect, before we can advance. Hence the
necessity of work in the Labour Party, the necessity for relating work
in the trade unions to work in the Labour Party and the necessity for
orienting the SLP militants to developing that contradiction. We must
always stress that it is the labour movement orientation that is the
prime political issue. That means that the organised working class is
ultimately the only force that can halt the advance of reaction and
begin the road to the socialist revolution. However low the level of
strike struggles, however far the right and the Blairites have
advanced in the labour movement as a whole and within the Labour
Party, that remains true and Marxists must continue to orientate
themselves in that direction. This obligates us to participate in all
campaigns and struggles with this orientation. We must argue that they
fight to make the SLP adopt a consistent orientation to workers and
socialists in the Labour Party. They must seek to assist the left in
the Labour Party to advance, must encourage it to fight the
bureaucracy and be prepared to launch joint initiatives with them -
e.g. on the JSA and the Asylum Act. Crucial to the future of any left
in the SLP will be a struggle to defend the union link between the
Labour Party and the trade unions. However many the middle ranking TU
bureaucrats will try to utilise membership of the SLP to rat on this
struggle we must insist in defending the link. The arguments must be
that the breaking of the link would be a blow to the whole working
class and would render immensely more difficult the type of fight-back
against Blair which we all agree will be the key to the revival of the
whole labour movement.

Resolution 3
For the next elections we do not  advocate a vote for the SLP or
Militant everywhere. We should only advocate a vote for non-Labour
left candidates when they have real working class support. In places
where they have not we should not endorse them. We don't support their
programmes but we support some of their progressive demands and, what
is most important, we try to make a united front with the best working
class fighters that are around that movement.

Resolution 6 and Reference back No 1
These have a wrong and self-contradictory position on the European
Union and must be opposed. The position that 'Whilst recognising that
the EU is a capitalist club, we will be guided by the understanding
that the more the process of economic and monetary union develops,
then the more identical will become the immediate practical issues
facing the working class of the EU nations' is wrong because it gives
critical support to a bosses' Europe with out counter-posing the need
for a socialist alternative. The point is that it is not that this
'process of economic and monetary union develops' but it is being
imposed with brutal and increasing savagery on the working class of
Europe and they are fighting back! If we take it that the huge French
strike wave and political mobilisation from November '95 to January
'96 was against Plan Juppe which was dictated by the convergence
criteria for monetary union dictated by the Maastricht Treaty. We
cannot be critically in favour of economic and monetary union and
opposed to the only way this can be achieved - massive job, pension
and all manner of welfare destruction. That is unless you wish to
leave the defence of workers rights to the tender mercies of the likes
of Le Pen and ridiculously propose, like Lutte Ouvriere and the LRCI,
that these mobilisations had nothing to do with the very thing which
caused them! No, a socialist workers Europe (or better a Socialist
United States of Europe) cannot achieve the unity of the working class
of Europe on the bosses' terms. It can only be achieved as a
revolutionary struggle against the bosses' Europe and against economic
nationalism (whether it be the extreme right chauvinist version of Le
Pen or the syndicalist/backward one of Scargill/Skinner/Benn). It can
only be achieved in a Europe-wide and international (guarding too
against Euro-chauvinism) struggle against every provision of
Maastricht's economic and monetary union. Therefore we must
counterpose the workers-in-struggle Europe to the bosses plans for
exploiting the semi-colonial world and waging low-waged trade wars
against the US and Japan. 




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