File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-06.190, message 5


Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 09:36:43 GMT
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-I: Revolutionary Party and United Fronts


For me, Adam Rose is the intelligent face of the (British - English?) 
SWP on these lists. In a serious spirit I would
like to take the opportunity of his post on "the Revolutionary 
Party" to ask him to clarify its policy about united fronts.

He wrote:

>>>
A united front is an agreement between working class organisations
on a particular action or set of actions to produce a particular aim
<<<

I will declare my practical prejudices first, and then ask the questions.

I am influenced by many recollections of attending
demonstrations by the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which was a member
based organisation of 10-20,000. It was common to find that SWP would
arrive in large numbers with many of its own placards and try to 
march at the front of the demonstration in such a manner as to give the 
impression to uninformed observers that the march was effectively
led by the SWP, and that the political line of the march, was the line
summed up in the SWP placards. 
In between these occasions SWP members would not participate 
in the meetings of the Anti-Apartheid Movement along with other 
members, and help build up the organisation. Many members of the
movement resented this behaviour and I doubt if it did much to 
extend the influence of the SWP within the movement.


Now the purpose of this post is not to engage in recriminations with
Adam. He will not be participating in these lists in the expectation
that everyone has only benevolent feelings towards the (Brit) SWP. 
Besides towards the end I think the AAM and the SWP settled down to 
a modus vivendi. The particular criticisms might be right or wrong 
for any one march, but what I have described was a distinctive pattern 
for the SWP's interaction with the AAM, and, I am confident in saying, 
with other member based movements when it chose to put on a show of 
political strength at a demonstration.

I want to get down to the political justification that may lie behind these
patterns.

Two points strike me in Adam's formula above

[ A united front is an agreement between working class organisations
on a particular action or set of actions to produce a particular aim ]

a) Why is it an agreement only between organisations, and not also 
a method of working within a membership based single issue campaign?

b) why restrict the agreement to working class organisations? I fear 
this latter question will seem self evident to Adam and to some others
but I suggest it is not. Because bourgeois, petty bourgeois and other
non "proletarian" ideas permeate all classes, including of course
members of these lists, and the SWP itself, (serious study IMO makes this
beyond refutation, even if Lenin was not explicit on the point).

But also if the basis of the agreement is between organisations that
constantly have to judge each other about whether they are 
truly "working class" or not, rather than whether their aims are 
furthered by the agreement, this is a recipe for an endless kaleidoscope
of subjective and sectarian splits, and is only stable when the 
united front has in practice shaken down to be a party front, 
(as for example the Anti-Nazi League in England, whatever its merits,
is seen to be)

I would be interested in Adam's reply on why united fronts should
be limited to *organisations*,
 
and why to those only that others would call working class?



Chris Burford

London.





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