We Must Embrace Women’s Gains on Responding to Sexual Assault

On My Resignation from the International Socialists of Canada

The crisis in the British Socialist Workers Party raises an important issue of principle for socialists throughout the world. A serious accusation of rape was made by a teenage member of the SWP against a Central Committee leading member of the party in his 40s. How socialists respond to allegations of rape is not a tactical question nor is it the internal affair of a single organization. Internal organizational practices are reflections of principles. Although internal organizational mechanisms may vary, when mechanisms to address violations of principle fail, credibility and capacity to participate in movements against oppression are damaged.

As a nurse working in the emergency department, I regularly have patients who are victims of violence. Furthermore, I have loved ones who were the victims of sexual assault and abuse. I cannot reconcile my fervent wish to build a party for socialism with being associated to a political tendency that has as its most dominant constituent a party that has grossly violated its opposition to the oppression of women. As of March 19, 2013 I have resigned from the Canadian International Socialists for its continued association with the SWP through the International Socialist Tendency.

Rape is a crime that is equivalent to or worse than violent assault. It is a crime that not only has the potential to cause life threatening physical illness; it leaves many emotionally and psychologically damaged. With 90% of rapes unreported in the UK, any allegation should be investigated as a serious crime. Furthermore, according to one SWP member, at the 2011 SWP national convention, after the accused spoke to the meeting, “There had been an attempt by his allies to rally supporters, resulting in some comrades giving him a standing, foot-stamping ovation.” This reaction to accusations of sexual abuse, regardless of guilt, represents gross misogyny and creates a threatening oppressive atmosphere.

The capitalist courts have failed many people. Sexism and racism in our society is systematic and police often brutalize the oppressed. In Vancouver,  where I live, the police failed over sixty women murdered or missing since the 1980's. Many of these women were the victims of racism, sexism and other prejudices that grip our society. I have heard personal testimony of police arresting a young woman who had called 911 accusing her father of beating her.

Historically raped women were often forced into marriage. For hundreds of years it was believed that a pregnant woman could not have been raped because pregnancy required consent. In 1841 the Canadian civil code put the onus on the woman to prove she actively resisted rape. For most of history suspicion was put on the woman and investigation was done into her moral worth and credibility. In Canada, it wasn't until 1983 that spousal immunity to accusations of rape was eliminated. In 1984 a Judge of the Provincial Court of Manitoba said. “Unless you have no worldly experience at all, you'll agree that women occasionally resist at first but later give in to either persuasion or their own instincts”

In North American history, false rape accusations were a major tool of social control used against blacks and other oppressed minorities. “The accusations against persons lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute records for the years 1882 to 1951, were: 19.2 per cent for rape, 6.1 per cent for attempted rape”. Men using rape as a tool of racist oppression stripped the legitimate right of women for justice against rape by creating a culture of terror. The civil rights movement mobilized millions in the fight against racism. Alex Callinicos raising the specter of “lynch mobs” of angry members if the debate continued after the special convention of the SWP is a violently sexist statement.

Injustices happen to this day, however through the struggle of the feminist movements of the sixties and seventies to those of today some of the grossest injustice has been defeated. the police and courts in many instances protect the vulnerable and bring justice to victims of crime. Bourgeois democracy is a system of contradictions. While recognizing the role of police and courts in enforcing hegemony of the ruling class, it also must be recognized that the mechanisms of society, often fought hard for by activists, can protect individuals against acts of violence and crime.

The reality is, for all the flaws of British law, in 60% of rape cases that go to court the defendant is convicted. This proportion is higher than for some other violent crimes. In many places women have fought hard to change sexist and racist laws and won.  Evidence that consent is absent is no longer defined simply by a statement of “no.” Self-induced intoxication is no longer regarded as consent. In 1991 legislation was passed in Canada in which “complainant's sexual history is rarely relevant to the issues properly to be determined. The focus should be on the event which is the subject matter of the charge.”

Of course there are real limitations to the court system in contemporary society. That is why it is so important that in many cities feminists have fought for and created rape crisis centers. These centers can advocate for women and help mitigate the negative effects of individual police prejudice and reduce difficulties and feelings of isolation when approaching the legal system. Were I work in an emergency department there are specially trained nurses to deal with sexual assault. These nurses are some of the most caring human beings I have met.

The mentality fostered by revolutionary groups of extreme hostility to the police and courts, often resulting from historic police harassment of socialist organizations, creates conditions where victims of abuse by party members are alienated from mechanisms society has created, under intense pressure from the women’s movement, to bring a measure of justice. As socialists we must fight to make the mechanisms of society better, not substitute our organizations for society.

The utopian concept of building organizations that attempt to substitute for society inevitably leads to the formation of cults. I saw this as a member of the Vancouver socialist cult Fire This Time. When those with authority in an organization are only accountable to that organization for criminal behavior, rampant abuse can occur. After a politically motivated assault by one member on another, I witnessed what results when a criminal matter is dealt with as an “internal” issue. At first denial. Next “this is an internal issue” and a refusal to discuss. Then bullying and marginalization of those opposed within the organization. Those outside the organization who expressed criticism of the assault were labeled as slanderers and enemies. Finally an inward turn occurred in which the “line” was parroted so many times it became gospel and critical thought was crushed. The parallels between my brief experience in a cult and the behavior of the SWP leadership are striking.

The only appropriate response of any organization to an accusation of rape is to fully support the woman in accessing services and professional counsel. Furthermore the SWP should have offered full financial and moral support should the woman take the case to court. It should have been made clear, without a shade of gray, that by going to court for such a serious accusation she was honoring the struggle of justice for women and that it would be in the best interests of the SWP.

The fact that friends of the accused were allowed to sit on the dispute committee that held the investigation is completely unacceptable. Moralizing about revolutionary credentials is a sad failure on the part of the SWP to recognize biases. Being a revolutionary does not obviate the responsibility to respect impartiality. Furthermore, the Central Committee of the SWP stated that a trade union would deal with rape accusations in a similar manner. This is false. No trade union would conduct a rape trial.

In recognizing the right for party members to form factions, it is implicit that conversations must be permitted between individuals of similar mind. The SWP central committee's decision to expel four members of the SWP for Facebook conversations is an absurd affront to democracy. Furthermore, the woman making the accusation was refused the right to speak at the 2013 SWP conference.

It would be hard to imagine the SWP having an internal investigation had one member stabbed another. This fact alone shows the organization’s misogyny.

The SWP’s decision to handle the rape accusation through an internal investigation has proven disastrous. Not only has the party trial failed the woman making the accusation; it has led to a split in the organization. There have been mass resignations from the SWP over the handling of rape allegations, in one letter alone over seventy people resigned. Many student sections of the SWP have left the organization. Mainstream media is able to discredit socialism in public opinion because of the act of a small number of socialists. Had the case gone to court, a scandal might have brewed in the tabloids, but the party would have remained defensible. 

 - Ian Beeching

Ian Beeching is a former member of International Socialists–Canada. He lives in Vancouver.

The SWP Central Committee Breaks its Silence

Well, kind of.

In this article in the Guardian, Julie Sherry of the CC comments in public for the first time.

However, it's a case of smoke and mirrors. None of the substantive criticisms of the SWP's handling of this matter are responded to in any meaningful sense. In particular, the following questions remain unanswered (and I'm sure there are many more):

1) Why was it considered acceptable for Delta to be investigated by a panel of his mates (including his ex-girlfriend)?
2) Why were the two women who brought complaints questioned in a sexist way, about drinking habits and past relationships?
3) Why was Delta given weeks of access to Comrade W's evidence before being questioned, yet she still hasn't seen his?
4) Why does anyone think it's acceptable for a national secretary in his late 40s to abuse his position to start affairs with teenage new members?
5) Why have critical SWP members been bullied, slandered and ostracised by the party leadership and its loyal supporters?
6) Why were 4 comrades expelled just before conference when all they did was discuss their concerns regarding this matter privately with other comrades?
7) Why did the SWP think it could investigate a rape?
8) Why did the CC get the recent conference to pass a motion asserting 'Delta's right to a political life in the swp'?
9) Why were the women who brought complaints slandered as liars by party full-timers?
10) Why was 2011 SWP Conference not told of the allegation that had been made against Delta?
11) Why was the other woman, who brought a sexual harassment complaint against Delta, removed from her job working for the SWP after making her complaint?
12) What about the other rape investigation into a full-timer, discussed by Solomon Hughes here?

Sherry claims that:

"Everyone, rightly, took this issue extremely seriously, in line with our commitment to fighting for women's liberation. This is a world away from the culture of cover-up in organisations like the Catholic church, the BBC and the Liberal Democrats."

However, no explanation as to how the SWP's approach differs from that in these other organisations is mentioned. Indeed, the case referred to by Solomon Hughes is highly reminiscent of a priest being moved to a new parish when they've abused their position. One might also mention that Sherry's Dad was a member of the Disputes Committee in question - so has something of an undeclared interest.

Sherry claims that Laurie Penny's remark that "For some men on the left, it seems, feminism is just a petty bourgeois distraction from the real fight" is "highly offensive to SWP members, particularly to women members who have been at the forefront of fighting sexism." Offensive maybe, but it's hard to see how it can be an attack on women when it's directed against sexist men. It also happens to be true. At a recent SWP meeting, a former CC member was heard to explain that "the SWP doesn't agree with feminism because the Communards (Paris Commune) were killed by women". With this kind of nonsense floating around, it's difficult to see how anyone can claim the SWP doesn't have a problem.

In short, woeful. This fools nobody, and serves as nothing more than political spin. It certainly offers no hope or help to those SWP members who have stayed in the organisation but continue to take a principled position regarding this affair and the treatment of these women. Rather, it indicates a leadership that continues to put it's own interests above those of both party and class, and as such is utterly inadequate.

This post reflects the views of the author - Keith Watermelon - only.

More on Luxemburg

Another in a series of articles this blog will be carrying as the IS Network embarks on a wide-ranging discussion and debate about the IS tradition and the way forward for the left. Each piece reflects the views of the author, not a collective position taken by the IS Network.

Guest post by Roobin

The first, most obvious thing to say is thank you to Tim for kicking this off. The process of recuperation from the SWP Debacle starts with people sharing their thoughts, if necessary in depth and at length. The blog and the forum needs more of this.

Rosa Luxemburg does matter, but not for the reasons Tim gives. I find the question of what kind of organisation revolutionaries need to be fantastically dry. The recent debates have been no different. Loyalist arguments returned again and again to buzzwords and ideas centralism, discipline, submit to the authority, accept the vote etc. A party must justify its existence. Why should I join? How are you different from the rest? If you have to define a party by its internal regime it’s a sure sign that party is merely self-perpetuating. Put simply, what kind of organisation do revolutionaries need? What’s the best shape for a peg?

The interesting thing about Luxemburg and what relates her thought to our predicament is how she asked the right questions but did not find satisfactory answers. Luxemburg’s political life was defined by the Second International, which operated from 1889 to 1914. The last third of the 19th Century was a period of stability and frustration. After practically a century of turmoil, somewhere between the end of the American Civil War and the foundation of the German Empire, all that was molten turned to stone. 

A number of popular ideologies foundered in the new age, Chartism, Blanquism, Jacobinism1 and so on, but Marxism survived. It survived because its bearers, particularly those in Germany adapted their outlook. They faced not only a stabilised capitalism and a strengthened state but also an extended franchise, as the empire tried to incorporate rather than exclude the working class. 

The strength of the enemy was a given. JP Nettl’s biography of Rosa Luxemburg describes time and again how the SPD’s leaders created a vacuum around the party as a way of preserving its revolutionary mission. It rejected the capitalist society every year, voting down the annual budget in the Reichstag2.

We know this changed from a strategy of adaption to a strategy of self-preservation. The Social Democratic Party was part of the capitalist structure, even if a negative part, a state within the state. 

We face a similar problem today. Every movement against this or that aspect of capitalism seems to be of no avail. Both the institutions and processes of capitalism seem impervious to outside influence. The SPD leadership sought to build by decreasing the friction with official society. Rosa Luxemburg’s outlook and strategy was the opposite. She argued the apparently smooth process of capital accumulation was still based on exploitation and violence, and would therefore undermine the current stability. She also promoted immediate ways of breaking through the stalemate (though perhaps we might see this as a contradiction). 

Luxemburg sought to build through, friction, polemic and conflict, and that is what’s key. It is consistent throughout her thoughts.

A Quick Glance

We should go back to her argument with Lenin, even if only to park it to one side. I think Lars Lih has fairly conclusively proven Luxemburg’s polemic was a straw argument, even if it was unintentional, based on one man’s account of the 1903 RSDLP conference. 

Most of what she argues in the debate is incontestable. I’ll take a famous quote: “The errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee”3. Who could argue against that? Why, sir, you’d worse than Stalin. Except, even if it was the case in early 20th century Russia, are we seriously going to argue today that knowledge and experience are unmediated? Wouldn’t the cleverest central committee have something to offer? Doesn’t this put us an ace away from the reactionary proposition that theory serves practice?

But it very clearly encapsulates her preoccupation: change comes through conflict. This is almost the Mass Strike summed up in four words. The Russian Revolution of 1905 aroused great interest in the European workers movement. Luxemburg shone a spotlight on a new feature of the revolutionary movement, and tried to apply it to western conditions. The mass strike was a means for workers to break through capitalist autonomism:

Already in November 1902 the first genuine revolutionary echo followed in the shape of a general strike at Rostov-on-Don. Disputes about the rates of pay in the workshops of the Vladicaucasus Railway gave the impetus to this movement. The management sought to reduce wages and therefore the Don committee of social democracy issued a proclamation with a summons to strike for the following demands: a nine-hour day, increase in wages, abolition of fines, dismissal of obnoxious engineers, etc. Entire railway workshops participated in the strike. Presently all other industries joined in and suddenly an unprecedented state of affairs prevailed in Rostov: every industrial work was at a standstill, and every day monster meetings of fifteen to twenty thousand were held in the open air, sometimes surrounded by a cordon of Cossacks, at which for the first time social democratic popular speakers appeared publicly, inflammatory speeches on socialism and political freedom were delivered and received with immense enthusiasm, and revolutionary appeals were distributed by tens of thousands of copies. In the midst of rigid absolutist Russia the proletariat of Rostov won for the first time the right of assembly and freedom of speech by storm. 

Except of course they hadn’t:

It goes without saying that there was a massacre here. The disputes over wages in the Vladicaucasus Railway workshops grew in a few days into a political general strike and a revolutionary street battle. As an echo to this they’re followed immediately a general strike at the station of Tichoretzkaia on the same railway. Here also a massacre took place and also a trial, and thus even Tichoretzkaia has taken its place in the indissoluble chain of the factors of the revolution4.

One of the things we always must allow for, if we are to use authority by quotation, is context. The Mass Strike was in many ways an internal document, written for an SPD readership. It would have seemed odd in the middle of a discussion about the Russian Revolution to have thrown in a reminder “we must also build the party”, no SPD member would have needed reminding.

Even so we notice there is a certain mechanism here. The mass strike is lightning fast. It organises our side and scatters the enemy and destroys all capitalist certainties. But again it’s not quite true. There have been bureaucratic mass strikes. There have been mass strikes that have been reigned in by union/party bureaucracies. There have been mass strikes that have dissipated and those that have been beaten off the streets (i.e. the ruling class was not fatally disorganised). Gramsci was very apt when he described a theory of class struggle based around the mass strike as like a theory of war based around artillery5.

There is a similar mechanism at work in The Accumulation of Capital. It is a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating book. It starts from the observation that Marx’s explanation of the reproduction of aggregate capital in Capital Volume Two is incomplete. 

In a fully capitalist society, consisting of capitalists and workers (and those that attend to either group) there is no way to realise surplus value generated. In Luxemburg’s scheme the solution is for capitalism to grow into the non-capitalist surrounds. Luxemburg cited the trend after the depression of the 1870s toward colonialism, which exported surplus capital (and surplus population) and restored the general rate of profit. The crunch comes when the non-capitalist surrounds are completely incorporated, when the world is completely colonised. What happens then? The struggle to re-divide colonial possession begins.

And World War One happened… so far so good for the theory. But then capitalism lingered for another 100 years. Taking capital out of immediate circulation does indeed reverse the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, but that doesn’t mean you’re negating it as capital, that you are taking it outside capitalism, otherwise long-term fixed investment is outside capitalism, the welfare state is outside capitalism, war is outside capitalism. 
Drawing non-capitalist societies into the system did indeed lead first to stabilisation then to further turmoil and conflict. It did not lead to the dramatic, apocalyptic simplification of class struggle, implicit in the Junius Pamphlet. Lenin was right when he predicted revolutionary nationalism as a major factor in 20th Century politics.

Our situation

What should we take from all this? To begin with it’s probably a negative proposition. I remember in SWP conference 2006 a comrade responded to John Molyneux’s argument about the stability of capitalism, “John says capitalism is stable but things can take off just like that”. I remember thinking to myself, “yeah, trouble is they never do”. They then produced a bastardised version of the mass strike argument. 

Class struggle today is exceptionally mediated. Instants of open class struggle are not unequivocally transforming. If it was ever common it is now rare for our side to be able to land an unequivocal blow on the capitalist class. Europe is going through an age of mass strikes against austerity. Greece has seen dozens of them in recent years, yet according to Alex Tsipras Greece is on verge of a humanitarian crisis6. It takes more than spectacular movements of people to effect lasting change.

We should take the Gramscian view. War of manoeuvre rarely yields meaningful results, especially when it has not been reinforced by war of position. In this case it means chasing mass strikes (the SWP industrial strategy for too long) will not result in long term gains for the socialist movement. We will see rebuilding happen through aggregation of smaller struggles, consistent argument and long-term organisation… perhaps that’s what Rosa Luxemburg would argue in our place too.

1. A good example – the opening chapter of Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary captures the largely pointless (certainly fruitless) turbulence of anarchist Paris. 
2. August Bebel’s slogan: “not one man not one penny for the system”.
3. www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/ch02.htm
4. www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/ch03.htm
5. His comments open up the intriguing notion: even if you hold onto the revolutionary goal, the outcome of instants of open class struggle, just like battles in regular war, depend much more the period of material and ideological preparation than on the acts themselves.
6. www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/21/alexis-tsiparas-greece-interview-syriza

IS Network members can join the discussion on the forum

Statement of Resignation - IS Canada

Statement of Resignation

1. Opposing violence against the oppressed, including violence against women, is a question of principle for socialists.

2. There has been an allegation of very serious sexual violence involving a leading member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party UK (SWP).

3. The SWP Central Committee has failed to deal with this with the seriousness it deserves. It has persistently rejected efforts by a substantial number of its members and supporters to address this adequately. In fact, members of the SWP have faced disciplinary action for attempting to remedy this situation.

4. The International Socialists (I.S.) in Canada has been for many years, and remains, a member of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), of which the SWP is the largest and leading organization.

5. In January 2013, delegates to the annual convention of the I.S. in Canada voted (14 to 2, with one abstention) to reject a resolution calling on the leadership to write a public a letter of concern over these matters.

6. It is now March. The SWP has held a special conference on this issue. The SWP leadership remains intransigent. The leadership of the I.S. in Canada still remains silent, and therefore continues to be undifferentiated from the SWP in the IST.

7. Silence is not an option. On principle, therefore, we the undersigned can no longer remain as members of the International Socialists. Regretfully, please accept this as our letter of resignation.

Abbie Bakan
Ian Beeching
Brian Donnelly
Jay Gannon
Paul Kellogg
John Riddell
Suzanne Weiss

How to become a Leninist

A comrade asked me why I had ever chosen to become a 'Leninist'. I reflected on this for a bit and then wrote a reply.Its been suggested to me that it might open up a useful discussion.

I didn't join the SWP because it was 'Leninist'. I joined initially because of the idea of 'socialism from below'. The touchstone of the organisation was 'the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class'. The theory of state capitalism came to be directed against both reformist and Stalinist bureaucrats who saw themselves as doing things on behalf of the working class or the people or the nation or whatever.

This conception had very broad implications for all areas of politics and practice (and I believe still does). One of them involved a revisionist theory of Leninism. We believed that talk of ‘the vanguard party’ had been distorted by the Stalinist tradition (beginning of course with the degeneration of the Comintern from a very early stage) into a species of substitutionalism. Here the vanguard was seen as an elite separated from the class, not that different from various kinds of underground nationalist organisations. Within a degenerated orthodox Trotskyism there were more scholastic and less militaristic forms of elitism. What they had in common was a reification of both ‘leadership’ and ‘theory’ as something that developed independently of the class struggle. In our tradition, by contrast, the vanguard was simply something that already existed in the working class, and our argument was that this vanguard (which hopefully we were a part of) should organise itself: in other words actually existing militants and fighters and not a bunch of experts with some special esoteric theory. We incessantly asked ‘who teaches the teacher?’ to such pretenders.

The Leninism of the organisation was, at least in theory, firmly subordinated to the self-consciously heterodox version of revolutionary socialism which the IS tradition had emerged out of: a combination of dissident Trots, the new left of the 1960s, and many of those attracted to radical politics by the new struggles of the time.

This revisionist Leninism was a doctrine of the rights of fighting minorities, and its truth was pre-figured in the actual life of the class: In the shop stewards movement of the 1920s that said they would follow the leadership where they represented the interests of the membership but act independently if they misrepresented them. In the Great Strike of 1984 where the vanguard of the NUM acted independently of a ballot proposal designed to split the class. In every unofficial walk out, in every protest and campaign.

That's how we linked the texts of old to the more prosaic politics of the present. But this practice also allowed us to debate orthodoxies. I recall criticisms of Trotsky’s 'piston and steam' metaphor as implying too unconscious a conception of the working class and too mechanical notion of leadership. There was the turning of a theses on Feurbach into an incessant question: Who Teaches the Teacher? Steam is not educational and a piston has no brains. We need both. This whole conception could not but also inform our attitudes towards discussions about oppression.

The revolutionary possibilities of self-emancipation emerged together with the working class but these ideas had the potential to galvanise and change the way militants and fighters saw all struggles against oppression and exploitation and inevitably shape the debates and arguments of the oppressed. There is a lot to discuss here about how the analyses of oppression actually went (particularly on gender) but I remain convinced that that framework remains a relevant one, particularly in relationship to developing a critique - that is now so obviously necessary - of the ossified position on women’s oppression. Here it is important to point out that if we opposed what we then described as 'seperatism' we always defended the rights of self organisation in the movement even whilst continuing argument. And we always believed that the oppressed themselves would lead a united fight against oppression.

It was this kind of a (imperfectly realised) Leninist organisation that at various points had succeeded in merging with and carrying with it live streams in real struggles in the outside world. The radical youth in CND of the mid-1960s opposing the arms race and the prospect of nuclear catastrophe. Some of the best of the student militants of the late 1960s taking part in the fight against the Vietnam War and racism. A very important layer of industrial militants in the 1970s at the cutting edge of the class struggle. It always combined this with attracting some of the best intellectuals who came into activity in these battles, not just as ornaments for rallies, but often as key figures in the elaboration of ideas within the group (as well as loudly proclaiming their dissidence at various points). There was also, in a genuine sense, a merging of these different layers of the membership (rather than what often seems an arbitrary division of labour today with its separate conferences for activists and intellectuals, with no real sense of the relationship between theory and practice, and one suspects a reification of both).

The understanding of Leninism as essentially a doctrine of the rights of a fighting minority within the wider movement led to the SWP becoming one of the most important of the forces on the far left outside the Labour Party, although there are of course many debates about how the organisation conducted itself, missed opportunities, mistakes and worse. I joined at the point when the level of struggle had fallen very low but ideological arguments about the way forward for the left were very prominent. It's what we called in our organisation the ‘downturn’ - a period of defeat and ideological retrenchment.

If the general period was bleak there was also struggle. We were flung into the miners' strike and after some initial mistakes and a bit of sectarianism, we succeeded in becoming a central force on the far left at that time as well. Even during a ‘downturn’ it was the connection between the party and those involved in struggle that was the most important thing (and it was that connection that led to the development of cadre: educationals are a poor substitute, and work best when comrades can relate them to their own experience).

The arguments about the need for a party were ones I agreed with and it was clear to me at the time that socialists did need to be organised and should avoid being merely a lobby group or on the other hand simply campaigning in the Labour Party. It also seemed true that whilst there were many interesting independent intellectuals without organisation, they inevitably faltered on the question of political agency. My own attitude towards the Eurocommunism of Marxism Today was shaped by this: it wasn’t about hostility towards theory - this was stuff where the ‘to do’ part wasn't addressed to activists on the ground. In short it was writing which had very little conception of agency other than the conventional ones of public opinion, politicians and parliament.

Having said all this what seems to have happened to the SWP is that as one struggle after another was defeated disorientation led to new forms of substitutionalism and the resulting reified practice came to be associated with Leninism. The high profile of debates about Leninism (as if this phrase summarised our entire tradition) is in itself a mark of the decay of the tradition I have tried to describe above and, I believe, its increasing irrelevance to the politics of the SWP today. This is not the place to talk about the process that led to this ossification. But the reality is that I still hold to a distinction between socialism from above and socialism from below, still believe that there must be an organised extra-parliamentary left, still believe then, in a distinction between revolution and reform. Its important to say that I still think these remain real divides in the movement and my goal would not be to fudge them but to clarify them - without using such clarification as reason to avoid working with those with whom I disagree.

One of the things that hits me most about the contemporary SWP isn't some outlandish fossilised Leninism. Its the close resemblance between the forms of organisation they have adopted and the kinds of things we see with politicians right across the spectrum today. One thinks of the endless emphasis on 'punching above our weight', 'leadership', the substitution of managerialism for politics, the hierarchy, the instrumental approach to politics etc. The logic of praxis, the logic of self-emancipation has become an excuse for little more then a crude realism in which all that matters is to keep the machine ticking over. The whole thing is like a brand not a political party at all. It was terrifying to me that many believed that without apparatus you couldn't get people to do stuff or make things happen. What kind of a Leninism is this? It is not the Leninism of a fighting minority but a Leninism much more akin to the dead hand of the unrevised Leninist tradition.

I remain broadly a Leninist in the sense that I want to see organisation based on the most militant sections of the movement rather then simply a passive organisation reflecting the whole class (or, to put it in contemporary language, the electorate). I don't think though that democratic centralism is appropriate for the small band of socialists that exist at the moment (I do think a network is much better) and I think a new leadership should be built from the bottom up in the localities. I think the notion of a democratic centralism without such a base can only end with the absurd idea that 'leadership' can be built outside the context of class struggle.

If there is a crisis of leadership in the country I think it’s a crisis of not enough organised socialists on the ground. We don't need more bureaucratic united fronts (surely the class by now has enough competitors to choose from, and of course, where appropriate we should work with them whilst recognising their limitations). The same is true in terms of would-be pretenders to lead the vanguard.

We need to grow the left from below right across the country around existing campaigns and struggles in a non-sectarian way.

We need to learn to work with forces to our right without collapsing into either opportunism or sectarianism.

We don’t have to be in charge of every movement we take part in (whether we are IS network or SWP) because if we are its likely to be insignificant (and if not it probably soon will be).

We are a fighting minority within and not outside the wider movement.

We need to drop the grand pretensions and catastrophism but keep in mind that we have a distinctive tradition which might contribute to the building of a real mass alternative.

My vision of such an alternative is of democratic centralism without a single full-timer, with formal leadership of every kind based on the electoral principle from top to bottom. If we need a paper we can write it ourselves, if we need speakers we do it ourselves - we don’t require herding around or substituting for. It’s a challenge, organising democratically in such conditions: but I think such a challenge can be met. More importantly if it could be done it would put flesh on the bones of the proposition that self-emancipation is compatible with mass socialist organisation.

- John Game

IS Network members can join the discussion on the forum

A resignation statement

I joined the SWP in February 1977, just after the party had changed its name (and always regretted never having been in the IS). I went straight into the thick of things - Grunwicks, Lewisham, Right to Work marches and then the ANL. I lost my job as a result, got thumpings and death threats from the NF and ended up, unemployed with a young daughter, selling the paper on my own in Chester through the Falklands war. Never regretted a moment of it and don’t now.

Later in the 1980’s I got work in welfare rights, a field I’ve stayed in ever since; politically ambiguous because it involves individual advocacy, rather than collective action but it earned me a living and at least did no harm. Did my bit during the miners’ strike and waited for better times. But things are a bit different in a modest provincial city rather than a metropolis. You work with the rest of the left - Militant and CND at the time - because you have to. The SWP kept me active and, yes, probably did keep me out of Cliff’s swamp, preventing cosy compromises.

But by the end of the 80’s I had a problem: the poll tax. The SWP took a disgracefully sectarian turn, in active opposition to the non-payment campaign. Let no-one tell you this was a principled position, arguing for action by council workers. It may have started like that but it went on, long after it was obvious that there was going to be a mass campaign of non-payment, as a reflex opposition to anything the Millies were doing. So I ignored the party and worked in the anti-poll tax unions. Fortunately the SWP changed position - just in time for the first Iraq war.

We talk about the IS tradition, meaning the ideas of state capitalism, the permanent arms economy, deflected permanent revolution and so on. But just as important is the ingrained tradition of praxis found in the party. And in the SWP perhaps the strongest such tradition is that we know what to do when our ruling class starts a war. We oppose it, actively and up front, whatever the difficulties. The period of my political activity of which I am most proud is the early 90’s when the poll tax and the anti-war campaigns ran into and fed from each other.

And so the reactionary ‘80’s became the nondescript ‘90’s. Without having a very clear idea what was going on (remember ‘the 1930’s in slow motion’ anyone?) the SWP grew quite impressively, partly because we were the only people left standing after the collapse of communism . I joined in intermittently.

Then came 9/11. Stop the War swept us all up and along. I woke up one day at a Merseyside aggregate to find John Rees telling us that because a Labour left challenge to Blairism had failed to materialise we were going to have to provide it ourselves, through Respect. News to me, having spent the whole of the 1980’s arguing against Labourist perspectives, (and having tried to make a real go the the Socialist Alliance). Never mind, the leadership had real, earned in action, authority back then.
But has anything gone right since?

TO COMRADES IN THE CC FACTION
You think you won in Hammersmith. You didn’t: you lost. For all the foot-stamping and cheering you lost, comprehensively and probably irrevocably.
I’m not going to go into ‘ the case’. But just look at the effects. And keep looking because it isn’t over yet.
● Hundreds of members have resigned with more to come. Hundreds more will just drift away. You only had 2,500 members to start with (don’t bother lying about the numbers - ask Mark H about the Merseyside members list).
● UtR backing is evaporating, as reported at last week’s branch meeting
● Marxism is going to be a small, dispirited event this year; most of the non-party speakers have already withdrawn
● the SWP in short is a small, shrinking and ageing organisation, living on past glories
● the CC do not have a clue what to do. They are divided and will split again at or before next conference (but they won’t tell you about it beforehand). Mark Thomas at last week’s meeting might as well have been represented by an empty chair for all the ideas and spirit he showed (in fact was he really there? It’s all rather vague in the memory...)

And don’t be fooled by the fact that people still talk to you. That’s because you’re all, as far as I’m concerned, decent socialists and militants, with your own records to lean on. People feel sorry for you.

I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel like giving each and every one of you a kick up the bum. Most of you have long and honourable records as class fighters. Yet you allow yourselves to be dragooned and misled by a completely mediocre leadership. You are each worth 10 of the current CC. 100! (1,000! Cliff would say but he always exaggerated).

Stay members, that’s fine, better than being inactive. But don’t put up with being lied to, patronised, kept in the dark, told what you can and can’t discuss, being required to say everything’s fine when it isn’t and listening to dreary speakers trying to reheat 30 year old ideas that you have already learned verbatim. Try not to believe (because it really can’t be true if you think about it) that your party’s problems are all being caused by the internet, young people today, ruling class attacks (they’re not attacking the SWP they’re laughing at you), uppity feminists or Richard Seymour. If bad things keep happening to your party, then it is not unreasonable, or disloyal, to hold your leadership at least partly responsible.

(But you’ll need to be ruthless and stick together or the Professor will get you too).

TO COMRADES IN THE IDOOP FACTION
I apologise. I voted for the sense of the final faction statement and so was committed to staying in with you. Then I contemplated going public and selling the paper. And I just couldn’t do it. I would be ashamed. For the first time in my life not just temporarily embarrassed by a turn I wasn’t convinced about but comprehensively ashamed.

I know we voted for the long haul of recovering our party from the present morass. But I’m not, after all up for it. And I’m afraid it’s all your fault. Yes, each and every one of you. Bastards. Because in the faction I experienced more creative political discussion and political passion than I have in years. And I want more of it.

We each have to make our own personal reckoning with the Party and I’m not going to tell anyone what to do. The faction leadership’s claims already to have made a difference within the party are not empty and I’m sure that, as you go on, you will force further movement. And I think the struggle is on the rise again, which will be good for everyone. For myself I’d just say that my MS is only gently progressive but it is progressing and I would like to be involved in something politically creative while I still can. Anyway, that’s my excuse for impatience.

WHAT NEXT?
The Professor opened proceedings at Hammersmith by announcing that “the SWP is not an institution of bourgeois society”. Note the polyvalent and evasive “of”. But the SWP is definitely an institution within bourgeois society and duly affected by that. That we have Marxist ideas in no way exempts us from the Marxist insight that the social relations of production in which we are embedded profoundly affect both our ideas and praxis. SWP comrades above all should know this.

And we have a problem with a party bureaucracy which has taken on many of the forms of the stratified and managerialist society in which it sits. We never discuss this. But that is the root cause of our current problems. The party’s bloated centre (3% or more of party membership is made up of full timers by my estimate) is identified with the party itself and must be defended at all costs. And so a pesky 19 year old making a complaint becomes a challenge to ‘Leninism’.

It doesn’t even work well. Our leadership is out of touch and ineffective. Our branch is working well round the bedroom tax. The leadership contributed nothing. Indeed they have offered no way forward since the collapse of the pensions dispute in December 2011 at least.

Of course they have some basic competence. They can produce an OK paper. They can defend an existing corpus of ideas competently, as can we all. They can occasionally take an effective initiative - the RtW assault on companies exploiting Workfare springs to mind. But nothing comes out of it.
Perhaps above all, in unprecedented times, when the ruling class is conducting open class war as never before in recent times, when Southern Europe is convulsed by revolt, when existing political and ideological structures are collapsing around us our leadership have next to nothing to say: just carry on with the routine, prattle about a weak government (our Coalition government might be weak; our ruling class is not) and wait for an upturn.

What does it mean to be a revolutionary in these times? What do we mean by socialism after the collapse of the supposed alternatives in the East? What would a socialist revolution look like and what sort of crisis might engender it? We actually need answers at this sort of level because history is asking us questions anew. Every day. Today, for instance, in Cyprus. Is the bank raid a model for the revolutionary appropriation of private property? Is there a prospect of a hegemonic alliance of the working class with small businesses against the oligarchy? Neil Davidson started to think about this sort of thing in his Big Book only to be slapped down in his usual patronising way by the Professor.
But it’s not just about high theory. What do we say and do about UNITE community branches? How do we fight back in the war on welfare? How do we relate to the million of workers in non-unionised private sector workplaces? We say nothing or talk about something else, even when faced with these everyday practical problems.

So, anyway, I say it’s time to try again. I actually find myself agreeing with every single proposition in this piece by John Game.

So I’m off to join the IS Network (temporary name I hope) and give that a try. Anyone else tempted is very welcome and there’s quite a few people there you’ll know.

Otherwise, I will see you around I’m sure. No particular hard feelings, and lots of respect, for everyone in the branch on my side; and I propose happily to ignore the convention that we do not talk to ex-members. Good luck with your project and if you can turn the SWP round (when you’ve sacked the Professor I’ll take notice) I will gladly admit my errors.

 - Richard Atkinson

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