On accusations of heresy

Enter Nick Grant, defending his leaders from the ravages of socialists who disagree with them. His role, and that of others of his ilk, as a bullhorn for CC insinuations is clear. The CC's traducing of its internal critics in Party Notes consists of nudges: no names are given, details are scant, hints are urgent but en passant. The CC wager that the faithful, whose investment in 'official' positions is unshakable, as libidinal as theoretical, eager for diktats to keep them safe from nuance, will parse these nuggets. Thus here. We respond to Grant not because he is an interesting figure in himself - he is not - but because he is a function, a meat-exemplar of the worst kind of loyalism. We argue not with Nick Grant, but with 'Nick Grant'.

'Nick Grant''s pugnacious if incoherent rhetoric involves barking questions as if their implied answers are damning, whether or not they are. We focus on his attacks on individuals, not least ourselves.

'Nick Grant''s accusations are rote. The SWP's external critics are suddenly motivated by 'default abhorrence of bolshevism', their motives questionable. This despite both figures so scowled at, Laurie Penny and Owen Jones, having worked closely with the SWP, spoken at our conferences and to our publications, never making any secrets of their disagreements, but engaging in the kind of non-sectarian debate we could hope would characterise disagreement on the left. Of the growing number of our other critics in the trade union movement and among sympathetic left-wing academics, 'Nick Grant' has nothing to say. They, presumably, also have 'questionable motives'. This is, after all, a given: it needs no proving. They disagree with the leadership who provide 'Nick Grant' with his opinions. This is definitionally questionable. To cite their disagreements with the CC is to invalidate them. Job done.

And us, internal critics? 'Nick Grant' imputes three positions to us, and further, insists they suggest 'a pattern', though of quite what, beyond that unconscionable disagreement with the CC, is unclear.

The heresies are as follows:

i) 'Political disagreement with conference decisions'

We confess, 'Nick Grant' has us bang to rights. It is indeed in the nature of disagreeing with decisions made at a conference (and elsewhere) that one disagrees with decisions made at a conference.

ii) 'A disenchantment with working-class agency in revolutionary strategy'.

In an epigoneal echo of the line of attack launched by the CC in Party Notes, 'Nick Grant' suggests that because of our opposition to the bullying top-down bureaucratic methods of the CC and its clique, we (whose combined membership of the SWP runs to thirty years) have given up on working-class self-emancipation. This contention demands to be read symptomatically. It is, clearly, prima facie both insulting and preposterous, yet 'Nick Grant' seems to expect it to be taken seriously. This expectation bespeaks simultaneous political debasement and self-aggrandisement. Its straw-person slander of opponents and the fetishistic equation of CC decisions with working-class self-activity should provoke nothing but embarrassed laughter.

iii) 'A very partial assessment - because they earn a living from it - of the value of online "debate" and its organizational importance'

We do consider debate - or "debate" - a good thing, whether that debate occurs online, offline, in branches, or anywhere. Unlike the CC, we think a) serious, respectful, open-minded and far-reaching debate is not only necessary but invaluable, and b) that the CC's internetophobia is a pathetic absurdity, an online stable-door bolting while the discussion-horse canters happily away. (Not only is the fact of online discussion now a given; it is overwhelmingly a good thing.  The years-long sluggish and suspicious response of the CC to the internet, exemplified by the embarrassing inadequacy of SWP websites and online resources, is a political dereliction. But we digress.)

'Nick Grant' insultingly implies that our current opposition is motivated by our wallets, though in fact neither of us 'earns a living' from online debate (it is unclear what that would even mean).

There is perhaps a subsidiary implication: that we are effete literati who swan about without getting our hands dirty and have no notion of party building or proper actual honest sweat and toil. This has more traction, not least because of its kernel of truth: we do both make a living writing, and our milieu does include such things as book launches. There is, of course, no contradiction between working as writers and being committed revolutionary socialists.

We contend that the failure to apply our politics of women’s liberation, evident in the cover-up of serious sexual allegations and the utterly inappropriate questioning of the women making them – and notably occluded in ‘Nick Grant’’s list of accusations – is the real source of our crisis, as well as the symptom of a deeper crisis of party democracy.  We contend that the SWP is in profound crisis, is being boycotted by comrades, haemorrhaging members, alienating our best young activists, because of disgraceful and appalling dereliction of leadership, of accountability, of sexual politics, of democracy, for which the CC scandalously refuses to accept a scintilla of responsibility.  We contend this because that is what we, activists and SWP members of many years' standing, see when we survey the political terrain. If 'Nick Grant' disagrees, the onus is on him to prove that the SWP is not in crisis, or even that it is but that the best way out is the ostrich arrogance of the leadership. It is inadequate to do as he does instead, to point out that we are writers, and to raise an eyebrow as if to add so they would say that, wouldn't they?

 - China Mieville & Richard Seymour