Below we reproduce a blog post from a comrade who has publicly resigned from the Socialist Party/CWI. The original post is here https://markettownmarxist.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/my-resignation-from-the-cwi/
My Resignation from the CWI
For approximately 4 years I have been an active and committed member of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), an international “revolutionary” Trotskyist organisation, represented in England and Wales by the Socialist Party.
When I first joined I was full of enthusiasm for the party. So much so in fact that I became a Branch Secretary and a member of the Regional Committee. During my time as a member, I rarely missed a Saturday stall and was proud that in one quarter Northampton topped the Fighting Fund league. I was also very active in my union, Unite, putting forward the SP position and raising donations for the SP-led organisations, Youth Fight For Jobs, the National Shop Stewards Network (including successfully moving a motion for our branch to affiliate) and for 3 years obtaining quarter or half-page May Day solidarity greetings in The Socialist at around £300 each. I even argued for the support of Len McCluskey for Unite General Secretary.
My doubts began to surface when a debate was raised by 11 comrades regarding the cause of the capitalist crisis. At the time I had no view on this but I was disturbed at what appeared to be the lack of willingness by the leadership to allow the debate the freedom it deserved. My initial concerns were therefore more on the organisational methods of the party and its (incorrect) interpretation of democratic centralism. I later came to be convinced of the political arguments of the “eleven” and also how what might be seen as a relatively abstract theoretical disagreement could have profound effects on the programme of the CWI. I won’t go into the details of the disagreements here. The full text of the Members’ Bulletins written by the supporters of Marxist World and the replies from the Executive Committee of the SP can be found here, on the Marxist World website. In brief, it centres around a belief that the leadership has abandoned core Marxist theories and is pursuing a more reformist line.
Recently, I made the decision to resign from the SP/CWI. I submitted my registration by email to the East Midlands Regional Secretary on 10th September 2015. I have yet to receive any response from anyone in the party, other than being blocked from the Socialist Party Facebook page with no explanation or communication of any kind. Prior to sending in my resignation, most attempted posts by myself were blocked in any case again without any messages from either the page admins or anyone in the party. One of the most recent was simply a polite suggestion for someone from the SP to speak at a public meeting in Northampton regarding the EU referendum. I would add that this request was posted by myself on Facebook only after an email to the centre had been ignored. There seemed little point in remaining a member of an organisation I could not participate in actively and which I was not convinced offered a way forward to recruiting people to Marxist ideas.
Despite this resignation however, I would like to make it clear that I am still happy to work with members of the CWI in political activities and support their campaigns where appropriate, in the same way as I have always been prepared to work together with people in other organisations who have the same aims, for example Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) and local anti-cuts organisations, in unified action despite differing political viewpoints.
The full text of my email is below. To this, I would like to add a further point regarding the resistance of the party to public debate. This regards the initial invitation by Hannah Sell, Deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Party, to Andrew Kliman, an American Marxist economist who supports the position of the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall as the central underlying cause of capitalist crisis and the subsequent refusal to take part in any debate, despite the fact that it would have allowed the leadership to put their position. Their refusal to debate was on the premise that this debate has been done internally within the party and there was nothing left to say on the matter!
Hi Becci
After considerable thought, I have decided to resign from the Socialist Party.
This was not a decision taken lightly as I still feel it is the organisation on the left that I identify most closely with.
However, I feel that the line taken by the party regarding the cause of crises and its interpretation of democratic centralism are incorrect for the reasons already explained by the Marxist World faction, which I support.
I am saddened by both the lack of tolerance and interest in debate within the party particularly, but not exclusively, when it is felt to threaten the leadership’s position. There is also a laughably Stalinist attitude to debates on social media with discussions on such dangerous topics as consciousness being closed down by Danny Bryne because it was “too long” or “boring”. Also, there was the recent farce of Ben Robinson changing the status of the TUSC facebook group to “Secret”. However, I’m sure TUSC can reach more people by talking to 5 people on a weekly stall than through social media.
I am also opposed to the suspensions – effectively expulsions- of Bruce Wallace and Steve Dobbs, the latter seemingly based on a non-existent disciplinary code.
The organisation has a skewed priority of frenzied activity over theoretical understanding. Whilst recognising the importance of both, not enough attention is given to the latter by the party.
I believe the party has wrongly prioritised, at the expense of other equally important actions, its courting of so-called “Left” trade union leaders such as Len McCluskey and Billy Hayes. I think McCluskey’s position as an out-and-out bourgeois bureaucrat is now indisputable with his intended support for Andy Burnham in the Labour leadership elections, which was only over-ruled by the Unite Executive Committee. Also, where the party has gained influence in a union, such as in PCS, it has not engaged with members to increase their activity – only 10% of the members voted in the last elections – seeming to be content to simply hold those positions bureaucratically without furthering socialist policies. Similarly, largely uncritical support for the No 2EU campaign in order to “stay in with”, as one full-timer put it, the RMT, was misguided with at least £10,000 of members’ subs being spent for no political gain.
More recently, whilst correctly giving support to the Corbyn campaign and engaging with those involved in it, it has failed to highlight the dangers of Corbyn’s reformisms and how it would ultimately fail. Even in the entryist days of Militant where the party needed to be more circumspect in some respects, very vocal criticism of Bennite policies and the “Alternative Economic Strategy” of the Tribune group – which were to the left of Corbyn’s – was voiced.
Additionally, its prioritisation of campaigns such as “£10 an hour now” at the expense of others and without a Marxist explanation of what that would actually mean under capitalism shows a misunderstanding of the current economic situation where the leadership believes that the rate of profit is high, companies are making mega-profits and sitting on mountains of cash and can easily afford to redistribute wealth to their workers – in effect that capitalism is actually quite a successful system and there are no problems with its mode of production. All we need to do is get our hands on the profits.
As an example, whilst searching for some material on the EU referendum to put the SP’s position at a public meeting in Northampton – after my email and facebook post were completely ignored by the party – I came across an article by Peter Taafe with the following statement:
“In Europe, the way to proceed against the bosses’ attempt to split the working class is to demand fairness for all, above all ‘the rate for the job’, of at least a £10 minimum wage in Britain. “
What on earth is “fairness for all” in a society which is based on exploitation of workers? This is the kind of line I expect to see, and do, in Unite or LRC literature, not that of a revolutionary socialist organisation!
It is true that my position is aggravated by not having an active branch in Northampton. But in a way this has highlighted my issue with SP membership. The bottom line is I cannot argue the case to any activists I meet as to why they should join the Socialist Party. In this light, I feel I have no option but to resign.
I still, however, remain a committed Marxist and support the positions held by the Marxist World faction.
Comradely
Steve White
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