There is the appalling record of Keir Starmer's Labour government in office. For every crumb of improvement conceded by Number 10, they've dished out a bellyful of crap. They've attacked the most vulnerable members of our class, and are sensibly salting the earth for themselves in time for the local elections, never mind the general election four years hence. They're upsetting their media outriders too. Even those who loyally shilled for the Labour right between 2015 and 2019 are finding their frequent Faragist forays hard to stomach.
The left's disgust with Starmerism long precedes the shameful attempt to sack Diane Abbott's candidacy prior to the election. But, for once, this does not come from a place of electoral impotence. The re-election of Jeremy Corbyn in the teeth of the Labour machine, and the so-called Gaza independents - plus, you might say, the Greens - shows that constituency-level left insurgencies are possible. It is disappointing that nothing has come from this, nor the suspension of left wing Labour MPs where the development of a new working class party is concerned. And the vacuum has meant the Greens have leaned into their left wing credentials without much pushback from anybody. Meanwhile, reports continue circulating of behind-the-scenes efforts to cobble something together, without (it seems) much enthusiasm from Corbyn nor the other independents. Yet the party gap remains.
Which is something the SWP has noticed with their latest front, We Demand Change. An effort to link up (capitalise on) the new struggles emerging in reply to the cruelties and stupidities of Starmerism, its broad-based orientation makes it well-placed to pivot from anti-cuts to anti-corruption to anti-racist to anti-Trump campaigning in the blink of an eye. But at the inaugural rally in London on 29th March, the question of building a left electoral alternative kept cropping up, despite the customary SWP emphasis on building demonstrations and organising rallies. Being confronted with this appetite for something more, Tengely-Evans writes "There are two dangers - one is to stand on the sidelines of this debate about elections, the other is to go into it without fighting for revolutionary politics." But, as ever, the silences are significant too. What's missing is any justification for "SWP members ... standing as independent socialists". Sure, having seen the Jane Hindle - the Chesterfield candidate - literature, there is no doubt where she stands on Labour, war, capitalism, and the centrality of the working class. But why stand as independents instead of straightforward SWP candidates?
The reason? None is given. Could it be that, sadly, independent candidates for several reasons are more likely to do better than socialist candidates that stand under a socialist banner? The obvious answer is yes, if the TUSC experience is anything to go by. But it has the happy side effect of any campaigning not generating an organisational dynamic for a wider body the SWP might otherwise sit in and lose activists to. Thinking about the relationships the SWP wants to cultivate, it does not put the Corbyn/Collective crew on the spot, nor pressurise the three remaining Labour MPs without the whip, nor the Gaza Independents, nor the conservatives in its own ranks wedded to the SWP's customary syndicalism. A smattering of "independent" councillors also gives them a bit of heft if a new party/umbrella alliance does eventually emerge too.
The problem with this approach is the anti-party logic independent candidatures play to. The SWP say they want to enter electoral politics to fight for their revolutionary views. But central to any understanding of Leninism is the irreducible nature of party organisation, which subordinates the individual to the collective will. How are they going to make the principled case in the coming years for a common and united leftist approach to elections if, between now and 2028/9, the SWP and anyone vaguely associated with We Demand Change are going to build election campaigns around individuals as individuals? This is not the stuff a cohesive, solidaristic politics is made of. And how then are those voters going to be carried over if, the next time, they do stand as socialists on a socialist outfit's ticket? It appears to me the Socialist Worker article forgot their ABCs even as the editor wrote them.
If the left, regardless of which part we're talking about, want to build an organisation to tackle elections as the left, they need to take a leaf from bourgeois politics and Labourism. Unite around a party identity, promote it over and above petty factional projects while rooting it in communities and workplaces, and when elections happen stand consistently. This is not a silver bullet, but it is the minimum level of seriousness required if Labour is to be taken on and taken out at the ballot box. The SWP's offering, despite their turn to elections, puts them on the path to ensuring such an outcome will come about very, very slowly.
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5 comments:
The issue here is a simple one - the people who most want a new left organisation/party are the people who would most stand to benefit, aka the SWP etc - whereas the Green Party is perfectly happy with what it has and would rather people just join them; and independents don't need a party to get elected as they've proven. Any attempt to build a new party is doomed to failure in this regard - nobody wants to subsume themselves to a new brand with no track record of winning, when they don't need to!
Good piece Phil. I was at "the Summit" and filed this piece in THE LEFT LANE : https://theleftlane2024.substack.com/p/to-challenge-starmer-and-farage-we Alan Story
I ( and many other socialists) am not in any group or party. Lots of us stand to benefit from creating and building a mass socialist party. Let me count the ways.
.Not the first time the SWP has dabbled in electoral politics under their own banner. They did so in the mid 1970's with no effect and swiftly gave it up. As to the left sectarian groups getting together and agreeing a common platform? They couldn't even agree a menu for lunch.
«But at the inaugural rally in London on 29th March
TheLeftLane2024: “the overall direction and control of a left event was almost totally London-centric.”
That means "London middle-aged middle-class progressives" and while our blogger here has a photo of the audience from behind, TheLeftLane2024 has one from the front which is pretty clear:
https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/710ecc02-96c0-497b-a752-69dc0b233306_1400x933.webp
So the question of which class interests the new "socialist" party should represent is settled. It would be more useful to call it "Progressive Social-Democratics" ("Labour representation committee" was taken long ago and "Change UK" too). The political base is then inevitably a coalition of the declining sections of the middle class plus the immiserated working class, which is indeed the political recipe for social-democracy (the middle class, even those declining, is not fond of socialism).
«But central to any understanding of Leninism is the irreducible nature of party organisation»
The "left" (as it were) in England has been more Methodist than Leninist and perhaps the decline of methodism is one of the reason why Labour was supplanted by New Labour.
«anyone vaguely associated with We Demand Change are going to build election campaigns around individuals as individuals?»
The name of that party suggests itself: "The Independent Group". Ah but that was already taken too :-).
«they need to take a leaf from bourgeois politics and Labourism. Unite around a party identity, promote it over and above petty factional projects while rooting it in communities and workplaces, and when elections happen stand consistently.»
Once the political coalition question is settled as in the above, the next big question also “from bourgeois politics” is who is going to fund the party, because “bourgeois politics” is largely pay-per-play and who pays the piper call the tunes (even if less in the UK than in the USA but that has been changing). That is in effect the biggest question for the new party, and is the big question that the SWP has been trying to avoid for decades (I guess because of bitter experience). Looking at the past:
* The "Labour representation committee" was funded by the mass subscriptions of trade-union members.
* One of the "prime directives" of the Mandelson Tendency was and is to ensure that the trade unions stopped funding Labour and indeed New Labour was and even more so now funded mostly by big donors (with a large part of them from a few minorities).
* When Corbyn was elected leader it turned out that Labour could fund itself well with mass membership fees, and that was one of the reasons (perhaps the main one) why “the establishment” (and in large part people from a few minorities) attacked him ferociously.
* Relatedly "the establishment" in various countries has been quite keen do deal with "enemies of democracy" by de-banking them or lawfare etc. (which is better than grape shots or cavalry charges as in the past), for example against the actual-independentists in Scotland, so "Progressive Social Democratics" should never talk about Palestine or Donbas or Kashmir or Scotland (or Trump but for different reasons), whetever the feeling is about them.
So the bigger question is which potential groups have the material interest to fund the "Progressive Social-Democratics" and to fight on regardless of the resulting persecution.
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