Movement for a Socialist Future

The question of truth raised by Mike Marqusee in his open letter⁴ also needs to be addressed. Marqusee’s equation of SWP dogma with the “reifying” of the truth could suggest that the search for truth itself is inherently dogmatic. If this is what he is hinting at then Marqusee would seem to be denying the possibility for truth to have an objective content outside of the “ideology” of a person’s individual experience. Thus the truth becomes entirely subjective, essentially relative and a question of opinion that has no firm basis within the material world and the interaction between nature and humanity.

But what the SWP is distorting is not the truth itself, but rather their conception of what is true. Their view is a pragmatic one in that truth is what works for the party in relation to its immediate needs and interests, based on its own experiences. This alienated, subjective and limited standpoint actually denies the objectivity of actual truth. So the SWP can recognise the empirical and limited character of truth in terms of being an expression of the accomplished fact, such as the actuality of the Blair government. But their subjective, non-Marxist philosophy does not allow them to understand or acknowledge the deeper, dialectical reality of the relationship of New Labour to the process of globalisation and the domination of the transnationals within the world economy. To do so would, of course, lead to political practices designed to encourage a struggle to overthrow New Labour.

Thus it is the opportunist character of the SWP which produces a limited and narrow conception of the truth. “Truth” in their hands becomes the instrument and mechanism of the empirical needs of the party in terms of its organisational influence. The importance of developing dialectical truths that are related to an understanding of the contradictions of objective reality is effectively denied. Their philosophical standpoint is based upon the primacy of empirical facts and the surface impressions that are related to these facts. This is an entirely bourgeois philosophical method and has more in common with the ideological outlook of New Labour and its wishful thinking than serious revolutionary politics.

This is precisely why the SWP attempts to deny the significance of the material and objective reality of globalisation, and instead tries to uphold a nostalgic and reformist call for pressure politics and modifying the policies of nation states.⁵ For globalisation is an inconvenient fact in relation to their perspective of trying to put pressure on New Labour. In contrast, a revolutionary standpoint recognises that the objective content of globalisation enhances the possibility for the revolutionary transformation of society. On this basis the perspective of the overthrow of New Labour is both necessary and possible. Such a standpoint would, however, alienate the SWP from the Labour left allies it is trying to cultivate.

Conceiving the truth in terms of the pragmatic requirements of the party made it possible for the SWP to find ideological consolation in the apparent progress of their influence within the STWC. In this manner the SWP could, for a period, portray its practical success as a truth which transcended whatever could be said by critics of their opportunist politics. But the very objectivity and profound character of the truth existing independently of what they thought undermined this conclusion almost before it had been reached. What seemed an apparent practical success has turned into its opposite and the real objective content of the situation now expresses itself in terms of a crisis for the elitist party regime. For the very opportunism of the SWP within the SWTC has only intensified its marginalisation from important political developments. Furthermore, the SWP has not made the expected numerical gains, its most important criteria of success, and so the hollow triumph has become a party crisis. The result has been desperate bureaucratic manoeuvres in order to try and organisationally transcend this crisis. These can only make the crisis worse, because “practical” measures are proposed as an alternative to theoretical reflection on this crisis. The only possible alternative to the process of crisis of the SWP is for a real development of revolutionary Marxism, rather than the anti-Leninist pragmatism proposed by Marqusee.

Marqusee tries to connect the undemocratic and authoritarian political practices of the SWP with what he describes as a Leninist partisanship. He outlines this point in the following terms: “Finally, what has disturbed me most in working with the SWP has been their flagrant ethical relativism. This is an ancient foible of the left, a conviction that the class struggle, or the building of a revolutionary party, or the sheer evil of the forces we find ourselves up against justifies any behaviour, no matter how dishonest, duplicitous, or destructive to others.”

One possible interpretation of this comment is that the very commitment to the class standpoint of the working class in Marxist terms is what represents the basis for unprincipled, bureaucratic and undemocratic political behaviour. Consequently, there is a connection between a nihilistic rejection of any firm ethical principles and the standpoint of “anything goes” which is allegedly permissible in relation to the requirements of the class struggle. In saying this, Marqusee is providing another argument that connects the approach and actions of the SWP with Leninism. He seems to suggest that Leninism has to be rejected if a principled and ethical standpoint is to be developed in relation to the requirements of political practice.

But why does he stop at the SWP and Leninism? Could it also not be argued that the very revolutionary character of Marxism is premised on the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society by the political action of the working class? This would suggest that Marxism too was based upon a narrow ethical relativist standpoint of what constituted the interests of the working class, and so was also unacceptable. Marqusee’s stance is reminiscent of the rejection of Marxism by Bernstein, one of the leaders of German Social Democracy in the 19^th century. He essentially argued that in order to defend an ethical and moral basis for socialism it was necessary to reject the dialectical and revolutionary character of Marxism. Bernstein’s choice of nihilism and revolutionary Marxism or ethical socialism seems to be upheld by Marqusee. He present us with the contemporary choice of the hegemony of the nihilism of the SWP and its alleged Leninism or some new version of ethical socialism. This is a false choice, as we will explain.

Firstly, it is important to recognise that the validity of Marxism, and its Leninist elaboration, is not primarily because of the coherence and cogency of the texts they produced. The significance is that these texts explained important aspects of objective and material reality. Thus Marx outlined why the capital-labour relation is a most important aspect of the contemporary content of the interaction between nature and humanity. Lenin and others, such as Hilferding, Luxemburg and Bukharin, showed why capitalism was intimately connected to the development of imperialism. Thus, even if it can be shown, as various reactionary cynics try to, that Marx and Lenin were nothing more than unprincipled nihilists only interested in advancing their own political prestige, the objective and material content of the capital-labour relation, and the historical necessity for the revolutionary transformation of society, would still remain.

This is an important point to make, because Marqusee does not start from the material reality of the significance of the capital-labour relation, but rather from the unethical and unprincipled practice of the SWP. It is on this basis that he effectively rejects the revolutionary validity of Marxism and Leninism. But the objective truth of the situation is that regardless of the character of the political role of the SWP, the exploitative and alienating content of the capital-labour relation requires a revolutionary process of transformation to overcome these limitations of capitalism.

Secondly, Lenin makes the point in “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”⁶that the partisan standpoint of the working class is not a pretext for reducing what constitutes truth to narrow relativist criteria, such as opinion, popularity, and what is immediately apparent. On the contrary, the approach of a partisan class viewpoint is a recognition that it is necessary to establish objective truth, even if this objective truth is uncomfortable and not in accordance with what seems to be most useful and successful in relation to political practice. In 1914, the majority of the Second International decided to support national imperialist regimes in the world war. Lenin recognised that it was necessary to explain the objective basis of this degeneration in relation to the imperialist epoch of capitalism and the development of a labour aristocracy.

He concluded that it was not possible to reclaim the parties of the Second International for Marxism, even if that was the aspiration within the most advanced sections of the working class. For Lenin, the requirement of outlining an objective truth about material reality was what accorded with the revolutionary interests of the working class, even if this view was rejected by most workers at the time. If, instead he had adopted the standpoint of “anything goes”, and reduced principles to issues of utility, he would surely have tried to establish a standpoint that reconciled the role of revolutionary Marxism with that of opportunist social democracy. But such a dilution of revolutionary principles would have been to Lenin to undermine objective truth because the resulting practice was in conflict with the partisan class interests of the working class.

In contrast, to the connection made by Lenin between partisanship and objective truth, the SWP tries to accommodate to existing reformist illusions about what is necessary in order to bring about social progress. Consequently, their starting point is not the objective and material truth of globalisation, and the importance this has for understanding political practice. Instead the significance of globalisation is minimised, and New Labour is conceived not as a political representation of the needs of global capital, but instead as a bourgeois workers party of the reformist era of the welfare state.⁷ On this opportunist basis, the SWP tries to develop support and influence for the politics of putting pressure on New Labour. This type of politics has a certain popularity because instead of challenging the illusions of existing and spontaneous consciousness they adapt to existing illusions in order to build up their organisational influence.

Consequently, it is this opportunism that encourages the ethical relativism of “anything goes”, because political principles and the search for objective truth do not define the essentials of political activity. What is important is the attempt to recruit on the most minimal basis, and using the most pragmatic methods to achieve this end. This means the most diverse, impressionistic, and illogical methods can be used to realise these narrow ends. Thus the tendency towards ethical relativism by the SWP is not an expression of revolutionary political partisanship. The importance of principled partisanship is in practice rejected in favour of attempts to enhance popularity and influence. On this basis, the striving for objective truth is undermined by these forms of subjective criteria that do not facilitate the process of theoretical clarity and the striving for principled political practice.

Thirdly, Trotsky outlined the classical Marxist view on the role of ethics in the work “Their Morals and Ours”⁸. Trotsky was replying to the progressive pragmatic philosopher John Dewey, who had also argued that the class conceptions of Marxism encouraged an ethical nihilism and relativism. Trotsky showed that whilst an aspect of relativism cannot be avoided, what may seem to be truth to the bourgeoisie and proletariat will be understood differently in accordance with their particular class locations. Furthermore, the requirements of the class struggle do not mean that truth is reduced to an expediency that is of little value and significance. Rather the relative value of truth has an objective content, in that whilst lying to the bourgeoisie may be politically necessary it is not ethically and politically principled for Marxists to lie to the working class. In other words, a process of systematic lying about the objective situation cannot facilitate the development of class consciousness within the working class. In fact, lying has a real objective effect of limiting the capacity of the working class to transform society in revolutionary terms. The Stalinist lies that totalitarianism and increased misery for workers and peasants constituted socialism in this way undermined objectively the historical necessity for the workers to build real socialism.

The point being made by Trotsky is that Marxism tries to uphold the highest standards of morality, ethics and truth, because this is what is required by the class struggle. In contrast, the degeneration and undermining of Marxism into a pretext for lying is because Marxism has been transformed from its revolutionary intentions into a justification of opportunist social interests. Hence, the Second International justified its accommodation to national imperialist interests in 1914 by suggesting that the struggle for socialism had been postponed until the more favourable conditions of peacetime. The struggle for socialism was never renewed by the Second International. Whilst Stalinism argued it was building socialism, objective reality showed that the Stalinist bureaucracy could never build socialism. In relation to the SWP, the “big lie” is that it is advancing the struggle for social revolution when its opportunist political practice shows a reformist adaptation to capitalism. This explains the ethical nihilism of the SWP on the question of lying. It cannot tell the truth, in terms of trying to explain the complexity of the contradictory character of reality. To do this would be to recognise the importance of a revolutionary strategy of political change. Instead it has to reduce contradictions to what are adaptable to a more evolutionary process of change, via the re-emergence of the welfare state.⁹On this basis, we can understand the tendency towards bureaucratic deceit in the political actions of the SWP.

Obviously the tendency for the SWP towards a disdain for the truth is not of the scale and significance of Stalinism. It would be foolish to suggest a social similarity. Nevertheless, the same objective basis for lying is present, in that what is important to uphold is an ideology that formally conceives of the self-emancipation of the working class, but which in practice strives to maintain the self-importance of the party bureaucracy. In this context, anything goes in relation to discrediting authentic Marxism, reducing it instead to a caricature. Marqusee has grasped an aspect of the essence of the ethical nihilism of the SWP. But in equating this with Marxism he does not recognise that the political actions of the SWP are in practice anti-Communist when it comes to class morality as elaborated by Trotsky.

What Trotsky showed is that on the one hand Marxism is critical of the Kantian type of approach that suggests the possibility for universal moral imperatives that can be imposed onto society in a timeless manner. On the other hand this does not mean that Marxism rejects the importance of ethics and morality in relation to the requirements of class struggle and the realisation of communism. Hence the view that any means is permissible in relation to realising the primary aim and end is only true in the most formal and abstract terms. For the very aim of communism dictates that only those means that facilitate the development of the class consciousness of the working class are permissible, and so the saying that the means justify the end is actually modified by Marxism. Only those means that objectively and consistently enhance the striving for communism within the working class are necessary and principled. So particular means are not always applicable, and the changing circumstances of class struggle will indicate what means are both feasible and relevant.

Marqusee then argues that the actions of the SWP should be located within the context of an alienated society that provides the objective basis for their elitist and bureaucratic actions: “However, we should remember that all of this is a part of a much greater problem. We are all the products of the society we aim to challenge and overturn. In their hunger for status, their competitiveness, their reified perception of social realities, and their ethical relativism, the SWP mimic the dominant forces in the society they oppose.”. Once again, their is an aspect of truth in what Marqusee is outlining. The ideology of capitalist social relations is not something that can be easily and lightly overcome in the struggle against capitalism. For bourgeois ideology is more than a collection of ideas that can be effectively challenged and transcended in the process of ideological struggle. It is an expression of dominant and material social practices that are constantly generated by the alienating social relations of capital. Thus when a person becomes a revolutionary they do not automatically and mechanically overcome the effects of bourgeois ideology. This has a material and social content and so constantly influences human activity and consciousness.

Nevertheless, it is questionable to then assume, as Marqusee seems to, that it is almost impossible to challenge the role of bourgeois ideology within capitalist society. Indeed, the very possibility that revolutionary parties can emerge based upon the theory and practice of Marxism shows that objective and material reality has a contradictory character. This facilitates the development of oppositional political tendencies that are critical of capitalism. That it has been difficult to sustain principled Marxist politics within capitalism is also an undeniable truth. This complex situation shows that alienated ideology, as an expression of the domination of bourgeois ideology, is significant in holding back the possibility of social revolution. But capitalism continues to create the material and objective possibilities for revolutionary social change. The aspiration for an alternative to capitalism is not the illusory dream of a few dogmatic Marxists. Instead the potential for the new is an expression of the historical possibility of the old, even though the development of the consciousness for this task is a complicated process and is constantly in a struggle with the alienated ideology of capitalism.

It is also questionable to suggest that the SWP are basically revolutionary, but their political practice has become dominated by this alienated ideological context. For what Marqusee describes as their competitiveness, concern for status, ethical relativism, and reified perception of reality, is connected to an opportunist political content. Marqusee is surely right to maintain that these traits are generated by capitalism, and they would influence any revolutionary party. But the difference is that a revolutionary party would attempt to challenge such traits in its political practice. Instead the SWP seems to revel in this kind of practice precisely because it is an opportunist organisation. A revolutionary party would be in constant conflict with the domination of bourgeois and alienated ideology because it is aiming to facilitate the process of the self-emancipation of the working class. In contrast, the SWP can adapt to the concepts of competitiveness and status, because it is aspiring to realise a left-wing type of adaptation to capitalism.

In contrast, Marqusee tries to show that capitalist ideology has a serious impact on revolutionary organisations, which is how he still characterises the SWP. Thus for him, the only alternative is democracy, and this must be premised by a rejection of the revolutionary standpoint of Leninism: “It is argued that the Leninist party provides this correction and discipline but the evidence - quite overwhelming at this juncture in history - is that it actually institutionalises and reifies those weaknesses and fallibilities, cocoons them from the harsh winds of social reality, and insulates them from collective scrutiny.” Marqusee is only able to arrive at this conclusion not by summarising the history of Leninism, but rather by a projection of the political practice of the SWP onto Leninism. This means that he glosses over an important difference between Leninism and the SWP, in that Leninism is based upon the political principle of “going against the stream” in order to uphold the requirements of class struggle. Leninism is about challenging the domination of bourgeois ideology, such as opposing the role of reformism within the working class.

The SWP has continually accommodated to bourgeois ideology by not challenging reformism and the role of the trade union bureaucracy. This is why it has always preferred the tactic of establishing rank and file groups within the trade unions as an alternative to political struggle against the trade union bureaucracy. In this way, the SWP accepts the trade unionist conception of a division between economics and politics. This was shown most noticeably when the miners strike of 1984-85 was portrayed as a struggle over wages and jobs, and was not connected to the necessity of a general strike. Thus the SWP has been historically characterised by an adaptation to trade unionism, rather than trying to develop working class consciousness beyond the limits of trade union politics.

A real revolutionary and principled Leninism has nothing to fear from the extension of democracy, because this is an important aspect of the self-expression of the working class and the development of its political capacity to transform society. But the SWP has a dread of such a development because it fears that “events may get out of control”, which means that a situation may arise whereby a more ambitious and principled leadership will develop in mass struggles. This is why the SWP was against even the most modest spontaneous gesture, such as direct action against the war on Iraq, even while it held meetings devoted to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the US. So the SWP was vehemently opposed to plans for a sit-down in Whitehall by anti-war marchers. A real Leninist organisation would not fear the creative potential of mass struggles, but instead would recognise that leadership means trying to articulate the logic of struggle, and would strive to extend and realise the potential of these struggles. The SWP is bureaucratic, because in the last analysis it prefers a situation in which it is in control of its own little empire rather than have the risks and problems of trying to develop a leadership that is really about leading a struggle to overthrow capitalism. When the Paris Commune arose between 1870-71 Marx supported it wholeheartedly even though it had no direct Marxist influence, because he recognised that it was based upon working class political power. The approach of the SWP would be to criticise a similar Commune because it had no SWP involvement, and might even challenge the bureaucratic limitations of the SWP. This is why the SWP are not Leninist, and never will be.

Notes:

4 Mike Marqusee, Formations for the Next Left, www.signofthetimes.org.uk

5 For an extended analysis on this question, see Phil Sharpe’s critique of Alex Callinicos’s Anti-Capitalist Manifesto and the views of the SWP on imperialism and globalisation at www.socialistfuture.org.uk

6 Lenin, Collected Works Volume 14

7 Alex Callinicos, Against the Third Way, Polity Press 2001

8 Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours, Pathfinder Press 1972

9 This view is outlined by Callinicos in his Anti-Capitalist Manifesto

Now read Part 3: You can’t ‘cheat’ reality

Phil Sharpe examines what lies behind the moves by the Socialist Workers Party to form a Peace and Justice Party with representatives of the Muslim community.

In the second of a four-part series, he examines the background to mounting criticism of the SWP’s methods and its growing internal crisis.

Part 3: You can’t ‘cheat’ reality

Part 4: Developing a revolutionary alternative

or download the complete article (pdf file 94kb)