Review of Peter Taaffe’s critique of the British SWP
Steve Wallis
Proportional Representation-based Socialism newsletter (number 6), for
distribution at Marxism 2009 (starting tomorrow, organised by the
SWP). I've put a letter on reconciling PR with Marxism, as sent
recently in a separate message, on the back. The newsletter can be
downloaded in Micro$oft Word or PDF format from http://www.PRsocialism.org.
An extended version of this review of "Socialism and left unity: a
critique of the Socialist Workers Party" by Peter Taaffe (the general
secretary of the Socialist Party of England and Wales), reviewed by
Steve Wallis, will appear in the first edition of DSA Voice, the
bulletin of the Democratic Socialist Alliance
(www.sademocracy.org.uk). The extended review will take into account
views expressed at the SWP's Marxism 2009 event, at which this
newsletter will be distributed.
The most striking thing about this critique is the mutual loathing
between the Socialist Party (SP) and the SWP. The book is filled with
snippets of ammunition against the SWP on this issue and that, which
are presumably designed to be used by SP members to try to win over or
demoralise members of the SWP. In the preface (page v), Taaffe quotes
Leon Trotsky as saying in a letter "Without the smallest exaggeration
one can confirm that from 1923 (for Britain especially from 1925) had
the Comintern not existed, we would have today in Britain an
incomparably more important revolutionary party" and adds
"Unfortunately, on a smaller scale, the same conclusion can be drawn
from the role of the SWP in the 1990s and since."
Taaffe alleges (page 2): "In every collaboration they have been
involved in, it is a question of 'rule or ruin' - they must exercise a
dominating influence, not through political argument but
organisationally, or they would seek to undermine or bypass those
organisations if they do not get their way." The book contains a
number of examples where this has been the case, including the demise
of the Socialist Alliance and the Respect split, but it is rather an
exaggeration.
I have found in Manchester that SWP members tend to be committed and
non-sectarian, while the SP nowadays avoids getting involved in joint
campaigns and only sends along its most committed members (cadres) on
demonstrations, presumably because its newer members and contacts
would instantly notice how much bigger the SWP is and quite possibly
defect. This is a big problem for the SP, and a major motivation for
setting up a large number of front organisations, some with more
democratic legitimacy than others, with the main aim being recruitment
to their own party rather than furthering the struggle and trying to
achieve victories. I was a member of the SP from 1990-98 (through its
transition from the Militant Tendency and Militant Labour) and I
noticed a shift of emphasis from winning struggles to recruitment,
aping the approach of the SWP. Perhaps Taaffe was hoping that this
book would inoculate members against the SWP and lessen this problem.
He cheekily starts the introduction (page 1) by saying the SP and SWP
"are the two largest organisations on the 'Marxist left' in Britain",
implying that the SP is bigger!
The biggest weakness of the book is that it concentrates so much on
ways in which the SWP has allegedly been sectarian towards the SP that
it fails to point out the biggest 'mistakes' of the SWP (which are in
my view sometimes deliberate ones by infiltrators on the side of big
business). For example, (on page 23) Taaffe criticises the organisers
of the two million-strong anti-war demo in London for denying the SP's
Youth Against the War front a speaker, ignoring the main reason it
failed to stop the war in my opinion - that the SWP and Stop the War
Coalition mainly argued on grounds of pacifism and no weapons of mass
destruction, not mentioning oil (as the SP and I did at the time
independently). [I now think that the divide-and-rule strategy of US
imperialism, perhaps changing under Obama, was more to blame.]
It is clear that uniting the SWP and the SP in a new formation won't
be easy, never mind the two Respect splinters, unless it is a loose
federation (at first anyway). The SP ridiculously left the Socialist
Alliance due to not having a veto (and never built it seriously so the
SWP didn't stay dominant) and refused to join Respect for the same
reason. A democratic revolutionary socialist party, calling for both
proportional representation (PR) and "participatory democracy", should
be part of the federation. Adding PR to Marxist forms of democracy
would make it popular!
--
Steve Wallis (Manchester, England)
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