Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 09:32:34 GMT
From: itusc-AT-gn.apc.org (Keith Standring)
Subject: M-I: re:  For and Against Jon


This message is from the International Trade Union Solidarity Campaign
(ITUSC) at:-
e-mail:        itusc-AT-gn.apc.org
webpages:  http://www.gn.apc.org/labournet/itusc/
'snail' mail:  P.O.Box 18, Epsom, Britain, KT18 7YR
Tel/Fax:  ++ (0) 1372  817 778
_____________________________________________________________________

Dear Comrades and Friends,
I do not claim to have a detailed knowledge of this exchange, however, Jon's
latest contribution leads me to conclude that some mutual benefit might be
derived ( for Jon and those directly or indirectly involved in this), if I
shared something of the thinking behind developments in which the ITUSC has
been involved.To do this I must first explain that the ITUSC was founded in
1991 and is an international and internationalist association of organised
workers and communities, dedicated to rebuilding the workers' movement and
to overcoming sectarianism and division in working class organisations. 

Much depends on how revolutionaries characterise the period they are in. In
the ITUSC, our analysis concludes that this as a period in which the
Stalinist bureaucracy has collapsed, social democracy is the conscious
political mouthpiece of capitalism and, capitalism itself is in structural
(not episodic or cyclical) decline. The workers' movement is everywhere
under major attack by capital, which, in the absence of Stalinism and the
transformation of social democracy in the West, is obliged to face the
working class (especially the organised working class) in an entirely
unmediated fashion.

Despite the foregoing, it is clear that capital is at its most weak and,
despite apparent appearances in certain parts of the world (due to the laws
of uneven development), the working class has a real, concrete opportunity
to rid itself finally of capitalism and begin to build a socialist
society.The response of the workers' movement is to fight back. Every month,
the pages of our own Bulletin stand witness to the magnificent struggles
being waged against capitalism and imperialism throughout the world. Workers
and toilers everywhere are arising and organising, not simply to defend
themselves, but rather to unite and fight internationally to overthrow the
barbarity that is capital.  

We, therefore, characterise this period as favourable to the working class
and for the development of revolutionary consciousness and organisation.
This, in our view, requires that a major rebuilding of the workers' movement
should be the primary concern of all who claim to be socialists.Hence, the
founding principles of the ITUSC:-
1) trade unions independent of the state and employers;
2) democracy within trade unions, and;
3) workers' internationalism.
Any individuals or organisations that accept these principles and are
prepared to work for them, are welcome within the ITUSC as comrades,
irrespective of their political outlook.

I include here a discussion document produced by Cliff Slaughter, the
Secretary of the (subsequently dissolved) Workers Revolutionary Party, for a
conference in London on 23 November 1996.It contains many elements that are
quite new and which accord with our own perspectives.The conference itself
was well attended and included individual members from various groups and
parties and other activists in the workers' movement who were unattached to
any organisation.In summary, the proposalsconsidered by the conference
included thefollowing:-

1) That a new, political organisation be formed, of those fighting for a new
socialist party. This organisation will be transitional towards a new party
in the near future;
2) The members of the WRP will be among its founding members, and the WRP
will then cease to exist as a separate entity, its resources becoming
resources of the new organisation;
3) The general perspective on the new party is:-
a) that a socialist and working-class party must be international and
internationalist;
b) that in order to deserve the name, a socialist party aimed at the
overthrow of capitalism, the new party cannot be just the merging of
existing minority socialist groups;
c) that we are not for a political party in the usual meaning attached to
that word;
d) that we must get right away from the sectarian idea of a vanguard party
'supplied' to the working-class, and learn to understand that what is
necessary is that the working-class's own vanguard organises into a party.

After a detailed and comradely discussion, the conference overwhelmingly
supported these proposals; established the new transitional organisation and
agreed it should be called 'MOVEMENT FOR SOCIALISM'. A steering committee
was elected to promote the  involvement of the members of MFS in the various
class actions and to prepare for a recall conference in February/March,
after the ITUSC International Workers' Conference in London- 18-22 January
1996, which all MFS members and other activists in the workers movement were
encouraged to attend.The ITUSC Committee had taken an earlier decision to
become a founder of MFS and to make an appropriate amount of its resources
available to the new transitional organisation. 

I also append the Editorial of the December issue of the ITUSC Bulletin,
which reveals the issue of rebuilding the workers' movement is an
international phenomenon.

Apologies for the length of all this, but it is evident that worker
activists throughout the world are wrestling with these issues, which Jon
and his fellow correspondents have conducted through this list. We in the
ITUSC trust this sharing of our own experiences and analyses contributes to
a better understanding of the crisis of capitalism and the role of the
workers' movement.

Yours in solidarity,
KEITH STANDRING
General Secretary
  

UNITE THE STRUGGLES!!
CRISIS IN THE LABOUR MOVEMENT (the need for a new socialist party of the
working class) RECALL CONFERENCE
Saturday, 23 November 1996, Conway Halls, Red Lion Square, London, WC1

WHAT KIND OF PROGRAMME? 

A new party for socialism: how to meet this urgent need of the working class
and all other people who come under the hammer from the rule of capital? 
CLIFF SLAUGHTER, Secretary of the Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press)
discusses the question before the above conference.


Following many months of discussion of this question in the working-class
movement, fuelled by the rush by Blair and 'New Labour' to dump Clause Four,
we in the WRP (Workers Press) decided at our Congress last July to put
forward the following proposal at the November 23 meeting:

That a new political organisation be formed, of those fighting for a new
socialist party. This organisation will be transitional towards a new party
in the near future. The members of the WRP will be among its founding
members, and the WRP will then cease to exist as a separate entity, its
resources becoming resources of the new organisation.

When we formally make this proposal Saturday 23 November, we will explain
our general perspective on a new party:

(1) that a socialist and working-class party must be international and
internationalist. 

This has always been true, but while capital expanded as a world system it
was at the same time able to buy off sections of the working class (and
especially its Labour and social-democratic leaders in parliament and in the
unions) in the main capitalist countries like Britain. On this basis the
majority of the working class in these countries were tied to the politics
of gradual reforms within a narrow national framework. Our own active
internationalism is the only way to confront and combat capitalism as it
really is, a world system in crisis whose operations depend on dividing the
producing class into separated national labour forces.   

(2) that in order to deserve the name of a socialist party aiming at the
overthrow of capitalism that new party cannot be just the merging of
existing minority socialist groups. 

It will be born from the political and economic struggles of large numbers
of workers and others who come up against the necessity of rejecting and
opposing their traditional party, the Labour Party. Such a confrontation is
inevitable as 'New Labour' comes into office and shatters any remaining
illusions that it is an alternative to Tory rule.

(3) that we are not for a political party in the usual meaning attached to
that word. 

The existing major parties, Labour included, are part of the existing
political system, the state power which rules on behalf of capital. What is
needed is a party in which the working class and its allies can organise for
the ending of capitalism. It therefore will not accept that politics be
confined to parliament, but will work for the working class to organise and
exert its industrial strength politically, along with communities in
struggle, in direct and coordinated action to build up the force that will
reverse the rule of capital over labouring humanity. It will therefore have
to work out how to be organised not in local constituency branches but in a
way which helps give strength, direction and cooperation to the formations
of the working class which come into the struggle.

(4) that we must get right away from the sectarian idea of a vanguard party
'supplied' to the working class, and learn to understand that what is
necessary is that the working class's own vanguard organises into a party.    

Therefore its relationship to the many struggles into which workers enter,
the kind of party needed must not see its role in any say as 'intervening',
'politicising' and so on, in the manner to which sectarian groups have
become accustomed. The job to be done is a different one, namely, to do
everything possible to ensure the success of each battle, and in particular
its success in contributing to the maintenance of a continuous build-up of
the coordinated strength and solidarity of all the struggles, so that in a
major social and political crisis the question of working-class power can be
properly faced.

We think that the prospect of a new party based on these broad principles
can be the basis for forming the proposed transitional organisation and for
working on its programme and constitution (In this I agree with Simon
Pirani, who wrote in the Workers Press, 31 August: 'I do not think the new
organisation should enter discussion about a new party saying," there's the
programme we have it all worked out". Rather, it could state key principles
on which its participants agree, and then discuss them with other workers'
organisations.')

We are encouraged in thinking this by the fact that since we set out on our
present course this sort of basic agreement (and, indeed, a good deal more)
has already appeared in ideas and in practical action. An example is the
action shared and statements issued by 'Reclaim the Future' and the
Liverpool dockers, and then in their collaboration in initiating a new paper
aimed at uniting the struggles.  

These developments took place after our July decision to move for a
transitional political organisation, and they pose some new questions. A
letter sent this week to Workers Press by a long-standing leading WRP member
highlights some of these:
   " I support the aims of the 23 November conference for the building of a
new socialist party.
The Workers Revolutionary Party had decided (at itsCongress in July) to
propose at the conference that an intermediate organisation, leading to yet
further organisation in future, be set up.
I suggest that this is unnecessary and that an organisation that is in
itself the embryonic mass party of the working class should be aimed for.
The pre-condition would be general agreement on its aims(strategy) and the
new organisation would decide on its forms of organisation, its programme
and tactics, and what kind of paper it should produce.
It would be Marxist to the extent that Marxist theory and analysis gains
support and leadership in it. In other words it would not be a
'pre-condition' of of forming the party.
The announcements of the Workers press editorial board on turning Workers
Press into 'Reclaim the Future' seems to have pre-empted the discussion in
favour of 'the pluralist movement'.
I agree that the mass movement needs a paper to 'organise' it. I sincerely
hope the new paper will be an aid in the building of the new socialist party
and not a substitute for it."
KSc
Barking  

Surely KSc is right to say that those who come together to organise for a new
party  would, in doing so, see themselves and all those who can be united
around that aim as, in a certain sense, the 'embryo' of the future mass
party that the working class needs in order to overthrow capitalism.

Such a party, with its roots in all important sections of the working class
and its allies, would have to be the core of the growth of that 'mass
communist consciousness' that Marx insisted is necessary for the working
class to carry through the transformation of society. 

That consciousness is a 'practical consciousness' of what to do and how to
do it. It is already growing out of many different struggles on issues which
at first appear separate, Through their hard fight for the success of their
particular struggle, those involved find the forms of solidarity, combine
their efforts and establish their continuity in one movement. 

It is, precisely, insofar as the new political organisation sets out to
facilitate this unity and continuity that the new organisation, the
'embryo', will live, survive, prosper and enable thousands who come forward
to be a 'vanguard', to be a truly mass socialist party.

It was of incalculable significance that a good number of organisations
which had been fighting 'single-issue' campaigns on environmental and
democratic rights questions, recently combined to form Reclaim the Future,
declaring plainly that in the fight they come up against the same obstacle-
capital- and their efforts must be combined.But in supporting the London
Underground workers and then the Liverpool dockers they simultaneously took
another giant-stride forward, in turning to the working class.

This development helps us to understand the problem raised by KSc and others:
will the new organisation be 'Marxist'? KSc says, 'it would be Marxist to the
extent that Marxist theory and analysis gains support and leadership within
it.' Yes it is not a pre-condition that those joining it avow themselves
Marxists. But we should go further. Marx insisted that what he had
discovered was not so much a theory as a guide to action, based on his proof
that capital itself could not avoid producing the  opposite force upon which
it depended- labour, the working class.

The combining of single-issue campaigns on the basis that the common enemy
is capital, and at the same time turning to the working class means that
there is also the reaching out for Marxism.

When millions of people find themselves up against the same
obstacle-capital- to their present and future aspirations for the welfare of
their children and grandchildren, and all alternative paths of struggle are
exhausted, they come together against their common enemy. It is through this
common struggle that they become conscious of the fundamental questions of
the structural crisis (among which is the threat of the destruction of
nature) and the necessity for socialist revolution.  

So deep and so universal (global in every sense) is the structural crisis of
capital that it provides the ground for this process of developing
consciousness- the reconstruction, reconstitution of the class movement of
the working class on new foundations after the now incontrovertible historic
failure world-wide of social democratic reformism and Stalinism.

In proposing the new, transitional organisation for the new socialist party,
therefore, we should draw the lesson that the programme should not be
something which is fixed at the beginning of this process, but it must be
integral to the process itself.

The programme for socialist revolution is not just the socialist and the
immediate demands which are raised along the road, but also the forms in
which the forces for change themselves come together and organise.

 Above all the new political organisation and the developing mass movement
in which it is immersed will have to study and work over all new 
developments and new forms of struggle, new ways of combining and advancing
in mutual solidarity.

 Too often socialists have understood 'programme' and 'transitional demands'
in a way that is dangerously narrow, in that they have concentrated only on
the road to taking political power. They forget that it was Marx himself who
insisted after the 1848 revolutions that the working class's revolution is
new, different. It does not stop at politics but goes through to the total
transformation of the social relations; it is 'permanent', continuous, the
social revolution.  

A truly socialist, revolutionary programme, therefore, while starting from
the immediate  struggles and organisation, must point the way forward to a
solidarity at the level of community, workplace, industry, national and
international, overcoming divisions. 

This solidarity is the assertion of the necessity of a society based on
mutual solidarity and the criterion of human need. We can see the
international solidarity with the people of Bosnia, for multi-cultural unity
against great-power nationalism and racist genocide, as just such
solidarity, rebuilding the international working-class movement. It is now
essential, to take another example, that the working class find ways to take
responsibility for helping the people of Rwanda and Burundi.

No party can prescribe the overall programme of struggle on hundreds of
issues that are now inevitably provoked by the crisis. Those in struggle
will formulate their own demands and creatively develop new forms of
struggle. They will look for ways to unite these struggles.

 When we go forward now towards a new party, it must be done so as to unite
all those, in the various sectors, who see that a high form of unity is
required if the common obstacle,  common enemy, is to be fought and
beaten.That unity is political, in this sense: it is the power of capital
that must be confronted and overcome, not only its particular manifestations. 

History is proving every day that reforms which do not touch that real power
are never permanent. They are taken back, and the old problems are
reproduced with even greater intensity and horror. It is political  in that
the state enters into all the major struggles. It is not simply this or that
employer or organisation. It is political in that there is no economic,
reform solution to the problems now forcing themselves to the fore, in
particular mass structural unemployment.The solution is at the level of the
system of capital as a whole, so the whole class, internationally, must be
involved. That is politics, that is the politics of the working class.  

CLIFF SLAUGHTER"

     ITUSC BULLETIN - EDITORIAL (Dec 96)

This issue of the Bulletin carries a report of the decisions of the November
23 London Conference 'Unite the Struggles' to form a new political
organisation working for a new socialist party of the working class
(Movement for Socialism).

Of great importance is that the aim is not a 'party' in the generally
accepted meaning of the word. Existing parties are in no way independent of
the ruling capitalist class and its state, but are part of its system, in
which the facade of the parliamentary confrontation keeps the working class
out of politics. The party we need is one which can unite the class and take
forward the struggles for the overthrow of capital and the beginning of the
building of a socialist, classless society.

In the nature of that task, the new party will be a mass party. No minority
can substitute for the working class itself. As Marx put it, the
emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself.
But as to the road to that mass party, the task now is to organise and
prepare politically for the great historical shocks which will put the
question of the necessity of a new party before millions.

The structural crisis of capital, marked above all by mass long-term
unemployment, means that inevitably, alongside the organised workers in
their unions, millions of people will be hurled into struggles against the
uncontrolled destructiveness of today's capitalism , on all manner of social
and environmental issues. The first and sure sign of the potential of such a
pluralist mass movement was the mass picket which stopped Liverpool Docks on
30 September, in which the young people of 'Reclaim the Future' joined
dockers in their fight for their jobs.

All trade union internationalists will welcome the decision to organise for
a fight for a new workers' party in Britain. The necessity for this arises
>from the structural crisis and from the proven failure of the
Social-Democratic and Stalinist parties which have led the working class in
this century. This failure is open and obvious in Britain with 'New
Labour's' open abandonment of even socialist words (Clause Four), the
disintegration of the Communist Party, and the shameful acceptance of the
anti-union laws by the trade union bureaucracy. But the same question arises
for the working class internationally- at different tempos and in different
forms in different countries, naturally, but for the very same basic reasons.

In Britain itself the new Movement For Socialism must be truly international
>from the start (as the ITUSC has been). Turkish, Iranian, Indian, Kashmiri,
Kurdish, Pakistani, African, Bangladeshi etc. workers working or exiled in
Britain must be part of the movement and its leadership and of a new party.
When our own comrade Toure (Ivory Coast) spoke at our international
conference, he referred to the many liberation fighters now living in
London- they can be a tremendous asset in the building of a party in Britain
and will do this as an international task, namely, the reconstruction of the
working class movement on new foundations, at the same time strengthening
the struggle in their countries of origin.

This reconstruction was the foundation- stone of the setting up of the
ITUSC. Toure explained in the October issue that the rebuilding of the trade
unions as the basic organisations of the working class is central to this.
We must take the lead in overcoming the deadly division between our
industrial organised strength and the political (class) field in which the
so-called working class parties have betrayed. As our comrade from Kashmir,
Afzal Tahir has said: since the collapse of the Soviet Union all
international institutions have been discredited and do not have the
confidence of the people. This is basically because these institutions are
revealed for all to see as instruments of capital protecting itself
desperately from the costs of its crisis and inflicting these costs instead
upon the exploited and oppressed masses. We need our own international
'institutions' for the working class and all the oppressed, unions with firm
international links which prosecute the struggle for socialism, and a world
party for socialism with sections in every country.

The movement for new parties is underway. At the recent COSATU Conference in
South Africa, three of the nine trade union federations voted for breaking
the 'partnership' with the bosses and the so-called government of national
unity. They called for a revival of  the 'Workers' Charter', for which an
independent party fighting for socialism is necessary. In Australia,
definite steps have now been taken in Sydney and all major centres towards a
'New Labour Party'. In the United States, after several decades, the idea of
a party of labour based on the unions is now being revived. In France, the
militant struggles of the last one-and-a-half years have produced an urgent
discussion on the need for a new working class party. Without doubt the mass
demonstrations in Italy and the strikes in Germany against the government
attacks on benefits and living standards will provoke the same discussion.

It is time, clearly, not only to reconstruct the trade union movement,
establishing international solidarity and ongoing organisational links
independent of the trade union bureaucracy, as the Liverpool dockers have
done, but also to build in every country the national sections (parties) of
a World Party of Social Revolution. There is no other alternative to the
destruction and barbarism inflicted on us and on our children by world
capital! This question will be in front of the International Workers'
Conference in January. Be there!  

 



 



 
 
 
 
Keith Standring    (itusc-AT-gn.apc.org)



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