Marxist World – Who We Are

A struggle within the Socialist Party of England and Wales and Socialist Party Scotland (both part of the Committee for a Workers International) started nearly two years ago over Marxist theory, which soon led to a questioning of the ideas held by the leadership.

Two members, Steve Dobbs and Bruce Wallace, were declared “indefinitely suspended” by the CWI leadership in 2014 for spurious apolitical reasons, but in reality were expelled (in all but name) for raising Marxist ideas and challenging the wisdom of the Socialist Party Executive Committee - namely Peter Taaffe and Lynn Walsh.

Throughout the period prior to suspension, Steve and Bruce continuously enquired about the right to form a faction, which, according to the constitutions of both respective parties, is the right of all members. These requests were completely ignored and, in one case, facetiously rejected outright.

As members of the CWI, we had no choice but to form a faction (despite the refusal of the SP to recognise us and grant us faction rights) to defend the genuine ideas of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky from centrist and reformist distortion.

Our criticism of the Socialist Party Executive Committee

We outlined our primary differences with the Socialist Party leadership in three documents we produced that were circulated in internal members’ bulletins, plus additional articles we hosted on our website, some of which we submitted to the editorial of Socialism Today (the SP journal) but were never published. In brief, our criticisms of the Socialist Party EC are:

1. They reject that declining profit rates were behind the 2007/8 crisis and subsequent Great Recession, and instead hide behind a “multi-casual” explanation of capitalist crisis. This is a reflection of capitalist economic theory that is based on under-consumptionism (“lack of demand”) and Keynesian ideas. They reject the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (LTRPF) which forms an integral part of Marx’s theory as outlined in Volume 3 of Capital.
2. This under-consumptionist theory marries up with a reformist, Keynesian solution to the crisis in order to “increase demand”, which is also promoted in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) and the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN).
3. The Keynesian programme also attempts to align the party with the official full-time Trade Union leadership and win influence with them, instead of building a clear socialist, rank and file alternative to the TU-bureaucracy.
4. Their reformist attitude to the capitalist state, such that a parliamentary party can bring about socialism through a Keynesian spending programme.
5. The undemocratic leadership style of the Socialist Party, which we understand as bureaucratic centralism, and lack of genuine democratic centralism. We believe that open democratic debate is healthy and essential within any revolutionary Party in order for the membership to keep the leadership in check, to educate members and raise the theoretical level of the entire organisation. We also reject the slate system in this context, which tends to reproduce the leadership in its own image without challenges.
6. We reject the current “dual strategy” of simultaneously building a reformist Party and a revolutionary Party. In practice, the former takes places at the expense of the latter, which paves the way for watering-down of Marxist ideas.
7. Furthermore, we reject the notion that the Labour Party is a bourgeois party, no different to the Conservatives. Whilst the direction of the Labour Party was certainly towards an American style Democratic Party, this process of bourgeoisification did not complete, and in fact is beginning to reverse under Corbyn at this time. We regard the Labour Party as a bourgeois-workers Party, and therefore regard the idea of building another reformist electoral Party, such as TUSC, as a mistake.

Breaking with the Socialist Party/CWI

We have come to the conclusion that the very nature of the undemocratic structures of the Socialist Party and CWI make it impossible to change or reform it in any meaningful manner. There has been no contested election for leadership in living memory. Along the way, we have won support from current and ex-members of the CWI. However, many of those current members have subsequently left the CWI (although not Marxist World) because of the bureaucratic barriers and methods used against them. The lack of internal democracy makes the task of putting forward our ideas without distortion, bureaucratic manoeuvres and, in some cases, outright harassment, virtually impossible. Unlike the Socialist Party EC, we have no intention of repudiating the fundamentals of Marxism. We have no choice but to leave the Socialist Party/CWI.

We split from the Socialist Party/CWI partly with regret because of the history of “Trotskyism” and the seemingly endless history of splits and splits of splits. For example, in recent years the SWP has had two splits and Workers Power three. In many ways these are manifestations of the crisis within so-called Marxism following the 2007/8 economic crisis and the perspectives and methods of these organisations. Yet all these splits have either recreated the same bureaucratic centralist structures as their parent organisation, or threw out the baby with the bath water and abandoned the notion of an independent revolutionary party. Either way the effect on the rest of the Left has been demoralisation, disgust and distrust towards revolutionary Marxism.

Militant Tendency - Roots of degeneration

During the process of clarifying our political positions over the last several years, we have been forced to critically examine not simply the Socialist Party but its precursor, the Militant Tendency. From this we have drawn the conclusion that, while maintaining orthodox Marxist economic theory until the early 90’s and maintaining various correct positions such as:

1. The political independence of Marxism from reformism, shown for example in Militant’s refusal to endorse the Alternative Economic Strategy of the Bennite left,
2. Permanent revolution in the neo-colonial world, without capitulation to guerrillaism,
3. The Trotskyist conception of political revolution in the Stalinist countries, without raising illusions that the national bureaucracy of any such country could reform itself away.

None the less it must be conceded that, from its inception, Militant did not have a genuine approach to democratic-centralism. The bureaucratic-centralist organisational model that exists in the Socialist Party was, fundamentally, in Militant as well.

The only difference was that, in carrying out an entryist strategy in the Labour Party under extremely hostile conditions where Militant had to formally deny they even existed as a group, there were only limited opportunities for open discussion, with members accepting the need for a high degree of centralism to defend the organisation. This was exploited by the leadership of Militant to impose their bureaucratic-centralist system.

Also, there existed in Militant’s leadership two secret, undeclared, factions, one around Peter Taaffe and one around Ted Grant. In both factions’ political manoeuvring, they would at times lean upon the rank and file to bring pressure to bare on the other. This required a more active membership that the leadership could engage with and ensured that a higher level of discussion and debate, within limits, took place in Militant. This is why when, following the Grant/Taaffe split, both former factions were able to fully consolidate their position in their own organisations, and we saw a decline in the relatively more involved membership and its replacement with a more passive one.

In our view, this accelerated the opportunist and reformist trajectory of the leaderships of both factions abandoning many Marxist positions over the preceding period. It should be noted that the vast majority of our criticisms of the Socialist Party EC are equally applicable to Socialist Appeal, who hold an under-consumptionist position on the cause of crisis and maintain the same bureaucratic-centralist leadership style.

Where We Stand

We make it clear that we would be willing to work within or join any revolutionary organisation that adheres to the fundamental ideas of Marxism as we’ve previously defended, whilst guaranteeing genuine democratic centralist rights and faction rights for members based on democratic open discussion and unity in specific actions.

As we are unaware such an organisation currently exists, we are in favour of building an independent revolutionary Party. We do not claim to be a Party at this stage. We seek to reach the leftward moving youth, particularly in the wake of Corbyn’s victory to Labour leadership, and those Marxists who have come to reject the bureaucratic methods of the so-called Trotskyist parties.

Next year we will be producing a hard-copy journal, in addition to more regular updates on the website, to help propagate Marxist ideas and encourage debate and discussion within the workers movement. The rebuilding of genuine Marxism will not be an easy task, but we encourage all those interested to contact us and join us in our mission to forge a new class-struggle organisation based on razor sharp theory and polemic.