The theory and practice of the Socialist Workers Party - a critical assessment - Part II
"The strategic result of this opportunism is to create an objective divide between reforms and revolution as an expression of an immediate short-term and long-term goal, or the division between minimum aims and maximum aims"
By Phil Sharpe
Alex Callinicos admits that reformism has problems, in that it may be self-limiting and become incorporated into the present economic and political system: "Easier said than done some might say: engaging with states to achieve reforms might easily lead to the movement's incorporation. This is a real enough danger. The ambiguity of reformism as a political strategy is that it represents both a challenge to the system and a means of controlling that challenge. There is no easy way round this problem. To refuse to seek any partial improvement for fear of contamination by the status quo has always been one of the prime marks of the political sectarian and dogmatist." (p140)
What Callinicos does not ask is why the anti-capitalist movement could become specifically incorporated into the requirements of capital on the basis of his programme. It is for the reasons that have been outlined. His approach does not express a revolutionary logic because it represents idealist and utopian illusions that facilitate adaptation to the present requirements of capital. For the point is that reforms are progressive if their realisation increases the confidence and consciousness of labour to struggle against capital. But, this requires that the reforms are actually based on the material interests of labour and are against the requirements of capital.
This does not mean that the primary aim should be reforms, but reforms can be a by-product of militant struggle against capital. In contrast, Callinicos is proposing measures that do not advance the material interests of labour, in that they represent the criteria of what is acceptable to capital. This is precisely why the so-called reforms are not aimed at tackling the power of the TNCs, but rather are about trying to modify the process of capital accumulation in the "interests" of the working class. Thus the reforms that Callinicos advocates are based upon the supposed reconciliation of the interests of capital and labour.
This is a self-deceiving illusion, because in relation to the material and antagonistic interests of capital and labour it is not possible to realise such a reconciliation in practice. Hence the objective content of Callinicos's reforms - if not his intended result - is to facilitate the subordination of labour to capital because it can always adjust to such measures. In practice, these so-called reforms will not be implemented because they are dependent on the "goodwill" of the nation state, which is not likely to be forthcoming.
The strategic result of this opportunism is to create an objective divide between reforms and revolution as an expression of an immediate short-term and long-term goal, or the division between minimum aims and maximum aims. Nevertheless Callinicos tries to counter this type of criticism, by arguing that he still envisages some type of connection between reforms and revolution:
"As I have already indicated, all the demands listed are directly at odds with the neo-liberal consensus. Even the most moderate - say, a shift from indirect to direct taxation - would seem, from the standpoint of this consensus, to be utterly unrealistic. For all that, these demands aren't just a wish list to be plucked from the air. They represent responses to contemporary realities, and have all been raised by existing movements. At the same time, the tendency of these demands is to undermine the logic of capital. For example, to introduce universal direct income at a relatively generous level would severely compromise the present workings of the labour market, and thereby remove one of the most essential conditions of capitalist exploitation. In other words, while not necessarily formulated for explicitly anti-capitalist reasons, these demands have an implicitly anti-capitalist dynamic. They are what Trotsky called transitional demands, reforms that emerge from the realities of existing struggles but whose implementation in the current context would challenge capitalist economic relations." (p140)
A strategic paradox emerges. In order to formally defend revolutionary politics Callinicos now has to eclectically insist on the anti-capitalist logic of his reforms, while still asserting that the existing bourgeois nation state will implement these demands. What is implied is that the bourgeois nation state will become the vehicle of a transitional process of ongoing transformation from reform to revolution. In other words, socialist transition is being carried out on "behalf" of the working class by a still bourgeois nation state. In order to give this tenuous strategy some credibility Callinicos has to assume that a left-wing government will be elected that will preside over the bourgeois nation state and start to introduce the necessary transitional reforms for socialism. Hence it is not surprising that Callinicos's strategic model is not the development of Soviet power (workers councils), but rather the Popular Unity Government of Allende in Chile between 1970-1973. (p141)
This to Callinicos was a left-wing reforming government which was not sufficiently intransigent enough against the counter-revolutionary power of capital, and which should have mobilised more consistently to defend itself against reaction. But this does not explain why the Popular Unity government was undecided about what to do in relation to the threat of counter-revolution. For, in the last analysis, the Popular Unity government was still a type of bourgeois regime that defended capitalism, even if the capitalist class was increasingly alienated by its political rule.
The question of defending the Popular Unity government against a counter-revolutionary coup was not about putting political pressure on this government to become a revolutionary government. Instead it was necessary to defend the Popular Unity government in order to tackle the immediate threat of a reactionary coup. But this could only have been organised by the working class developing its own revolutionary initiative in order to enhance the possibility of overthrowing the Popular Unity government after defending it against reaction. Instead Callinicos considers the working class as an auxiliary mass force whose main task is to support and uphold a Popular Unity type government, which is ostensibly carrying out "anti-capitalist" type measures (redistribution - tax the rich) and preparing the possibility for socialist transition.
It is also an illusion to consider that a reformist parliamentary government - however left-wing - can legislate socialism on "behalf" of the working class. Nor does this strategic stance somehow express a modern form of Trotsky's transitional method. For instead of "alienating" or projecting the revolutionary power of the working class onto reactionary social forces, Trotsky's approach was about developing the independent political role of the working class. The aim was to enhance its class consciousness and practical capacity to realise its distinctive class interests. In this context, the role of the working class was not to be a foot soldier of the actions of a "left-wing" reforming government, because this situation could not ultimately advance the victory of labour against capital.
Consequently, the strategic content of workers' control over production could not be objectively realised by measures of a bourgeois parliament, but rather would require the revolutionary mass activity of the working class. Formally, even a bourgeois parliament could accept workers' control, which was what the 1919 National Assembly of the German Weimar Republic did. But only the working class can give a real meaningful content to workers" control in terms of structurally transforming production and practically acting to overcome the alienating domination of capital over labour. Needless to say, the Weimar Republic quickly withdrew its measure of "workers' control".
In other words, Trotsky's transitional approach is about how the working class can relate and connect existing and immediate concerns with the ultimate and conscious revolutionary aim of the overthrow of capital. It is not about a left-wing reforming government somehow introducing an anti-capitalist transitional logic to its measures. Rather only the working class can realise and develop a transitional anti-capitalist logic to its actions, because it is the only group that has material, objective and potentially revolutionary possibilities.
In contrast, a left-wing government can ultimately only uphold through new hybrid forms (e.g. state capitalism) the rule and domination of capital, because it does not have the material content to socially overcome the power of capital. Instead its political actions, whatever their level of formal anti-capitalist content, will only uphold the rule of capital in new forms and not overcome the domination of capital over labour.
For another transitional approach suggests itself, which is that of following the initiative of an "anti-capitalist" government. This apparently has the option of implementing its anti-capitalist measures by progressively breaking with capitalism, or retreating and ultimately accepting the policy agenda of neo-liberalism. (p141)
In this context, the working class has an "important" political role, but only as support to this process initiated by an anti-capitalist government: "Alternatively, the movement could press ahead in the face of growing resistance from local and international capital....To press ahead would be, in effect, to undertake a revolution....But the latter option would be a revolution not simply in the sense of a systemic transformation: it could only be achieved by overcoming - forcibly if necessary - the resistance of capital and those it mobilised behind it. A movement that followed this path could only succeed by winning the active support of the majority of the population, particularly with the reserves of collective strength that only the organised working class possesses, and by appealing to the solidarity of like-minded movements around the world." (p141)
As Marx pointed out in his writings on the Paris Commune, the bourgeois state is an alienating entity that can ultimately only uphold the interests of capital over labour. Hence if labour is to act in a revolutionary manner against capital it cannot use the already existing bourgeois state. Instead it must act politically to overthrow the bourgeois state and establish a transitory state formation that facilitates the transformation of the economy. Consequently, to conceive, as Callinicos does, of working class revolution as a process initiated by a left-wing bourgeois government of a bourgeois state is an idealist illusion.
Only on the last page of his analysis of strategy and programme does Callinicos conceive of the importance of "democratic processes of self-government" to "combat the excesses of the market", and as an expression of the development of "mass struggles from below". (p142) Indeed he poses the choice between this self-organised economic democracy and the alternative of the logic of the market: "The revolutionary choice is really this: should these democratic forms of self-organisation progressively take over the management of the economy, in order to replace the logic of capital with the claims of need, or should they limit themselves to serving as a humane supplement to the market, in which case all historical experience suggests that the two logics cannot indefinitely coexist and that the empire of the market will, sooner or later re-establish itself." (p142)
This comment is not an expression of what is central and integral to Callinicos's strategy. It is instead secondary and derivative of its main component, which is the progressive strategic logic established by an "anti-capitalist government". Callinicos makes a formal and eclectic concession to the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky. He does this in a way that tries to reconcile an essentially reformist approach with a revolutionary standpoint through the use of phrases about mass organisation and economic democracy.
But these phrases are given no content in terms of explaining how mass organisations can comprehensively challenge the logic of capital. Instead it is only his strategy of the anti-capitalist logic of reforming governments which is given strategic coherence. So the importance of mass workers" democracy remains at the level of a "good idea". Thus the ultimate political result of these radical phrases about mass democracy is to try and reconcile a reformist and revolutionary approach. But the revolutionary standpoint has no practical content; only the reformist stance has any coherent strategic meaning. Hence revolution is posed by Callinicos as a moral and ethical assumption of his approach.
For it is the reformist path which is presented as being best able to create the necessary momentum for the "break" with capitalism. In this context, revolution is effectively presented as a "last resort" in the process of overcoming capital. This opportunist view glosses over the important question of revolutionary strategy - the necessity to develop the capacity of labour to be able to transcend the power of capital. For Callinicos, this question is automatically resolved by the approach of reformism and its relegation of the working class into a secondary support of an "anti-capitalist government". Callinicos is showing scepticism and defeatism about the revolutionary potential of the working class within his adherence to "left reformism".
Callinicos concludes with the view that the logic of the anti-capitalist movement is to support this "revolutionary" programme. (p142) But what he is actually doing is reducing revolutionary politics to reformism in order to try and opportunistically obtain popular support within the anti-capitalist movement.
