Date: Thu, 31 Oct 96 10:38:16 GMT From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com> Subject: Re: M-I: Revolutionary Party? robert scheetz asks me: > > Hope you won't mind an obvious question: > In a core country in "normal" times, excluding bourgeois > electoralism/parliamentarism/reformism, and also, of course, any romanticism of > militancy ("...the barrel of a gun", Hezbollah's megalo-notion of toppling the > World Trade Center, > Ted Kazinski, etc.), what's left, aside from cultivating itself with its > perfervid house organ and maybe proselytizing students,... for a "revolutionary > party" to do? > > Aren't there "issues", as with imperialism and racial justice in > the US in the '60's, (and corporate "downsizing" and digital "automation" today) > which have revolutionary potential but rather compel united front strategies? > In this context what would it mean to be "a party of > revolutionaries"? > First, what do I understand by "united front" ? Second, when is a united front strategy applicable ? 1. A united front is a an agreement between working class organisations on a particular action or set of actions to produce a particular aim : eg smash the Nazis, stop the war in the Gulf, stop the Criminal Justice Bill, etc. The SWP in Britain has every reason to be very proud of its initiation and participation in a whole series of united front style battles against the Nazis, the Poll Tax, the War in the Gulf, the Criminal Justice Bill, etc. Sectarians may snipe - but the reason there is no significant Nazi threat in Britain today is that the SWP set up the Anti Nazi League. During a united front, however, a revolutionary party cannot simply disolve itself into the campaign. If it does so, the campaign itself suffers, since other forces will lead the campaign away from working class, direct action, towards parliamentary dead ends. Hence the success of a united front itself depends on the strength of revolutionary political ideas openly argued for within that united front. Also, it more often than not requires an overall revolutionary political understanding, and organisation, in order to set up a united front in the first place. Had the SWP not been able to win a small but significant number of workers, Black + White, to a generalised set of revolutionary politics through the 1970's, the SWP would not have been in the position to found the Anti Nazi League, and we in Britain would face the same problems as the French, Italian, and Austrian comrades face today. This required arguments before and during the 1974 - 1979 Labour government about the nature of reformism, a decididly non united front activity, 2. There are times when a united front approach is necessary. The whole series of campaigns from the Poll Tax, the Ambulance workers strike, the pits campaign, the Criminal Justice Bill, etc etc, was practically one long united front, 1990 - 1994. During this period we the SWP grew from about 4,000 at the beginning to about 10,000 members at the end. One reason we were able to do this was precisely that while being active in each campaign, we also won people to our ideas. We did not start each campaign from scratch, but with a list of contacts and members built up during the previous one. Now, today, a united front style approach is completely and totally inappropriate. This is because everything, every argument, every battle, is conducted through the prism of the coming election. Put simply, if you want to fight, you are breaking in practise from reformism, from New Labour. The post office workers have just voted to continue their strike action, in the face of a barrage of hostile propaganda from the Tories, the bosses, the press, TONY BLAIR, and their own Blairite General Secretary, Alan Johnson. The argument for a yes vote was an argument against Blair. The argument to turn the vote into action ( Johnson will use the vote as a negotiating position, not a mandate for action ) is a further argument against Blair, about rank + file organisation and independent politics. These arguments are intimately bound up with the arguments about "Where is Blair taking Labour" in our "Statement to Tony Blair." So, today, really, the question is "United Front - WITH WHOM ?" > A recent news item told of an effort by holocaust survivors > to recover from Nazi Swiss bank accounts. To the extent that > this litigation threatens the world institution of numbered > accounts and off-shore banking, would not this constitute > a modern, core-country, revolutionary programme even tho > it would entail implicit validation of the bourgeois justice > system, etc.? > The only way socialists could actually DO anything about this is to hire a good lawyer - which we couldn't afford even if we wanted to ! Adam. Adam Rose SWP Manchester UK --------------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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