Committee for a Workers’ International reply to the International Socialist Movement, August 2000

Introduction

The ‘International Socialist Movement Political Committee (PC) Reply to the Factional Document and Platform’, written by the International Socialist Movement PC of the Scottish section, was supposed to be a reply to ‘The Platform of the Minority [of the International Socialist Movement]’ (Scotland). Because of the issues raised in the International Socialist Movement PC’s document the International Secretariat [of the Committee for a Workers’ International] considered that it was necessary to write a substantial reply.

The reason for this is that the International Socialist Movement PC’s document is not just a reply to the faction. Their document is a political justification for the policies, tactics and methods adopted by the International Socialist Movement PC majority.

The comrades, in a clearer fashion than before, are challenging many of the fundamental positions upheld by the Committee for a Workers’ International. These include the role of the revolutionary party, democratic centralism, the tasks of Marxists today and the transitional method. A revolutionary programme, how Marxist should relate to other trends in the workers’ movement, the development of political consciousness, Cuba and building the International also form part of the discussion. Furthermore, the PC’s document re-writes the history of the Committee for a Workers’ International and the British section in an attempt to justify their position.

The PC’s document also contains some serious accusations against the Committee for a Workers’ International and in particular the International Secretariat. The comrades say “We have serious criticism of the central leadership of the Committee or a Workers’ International”, which they claim, “is over-centralised and seeks to impose strategy and tactics upon individual sections”.

The PC’s document states in paragraph 27 that there “has been no attempt to constructively engage in a serious discussion of any of these issues. Instead there is a constant attempt to undermine and denigrate the work of the Scottish section”.

Yet all material produced by the majority has been circulated to the Committee for a Workers’ International membership. Debates have been organised whenever the comrades have requested them. Comrades have put forward their views, in writing and verbally. Recently, debates have been organised at a London aggregate (11th May 2000) and a Socialist Party National Committee meeting (13-14 May 2000). These debates were requested by the International Socialist Movement comrades who wanted to put forward their criticism of the perspective, policy and tactics adopted by the Socialist Party.

In addition to these meetings, since early 1998 two meetings of the International Executive Committee, two meetings of the European Bureau, the 1998 European school, and the 7th World Congress have discussed Scotland.

We welcome the comrades’ efforts to clarify their ideas. However, in our view, their method prevents a genuine dialogue and discussion from taking place. They make false claims, tear quotations out of context, throw serious allegations into the debate without substantiating them, and ignore questions previously raised in the discussion. This discussion should clarify ideas. It should not be an opportunity to score cheap debating points by distorting the views of others.

The PC’s document was sent by email to all sections and groups of the Committee for a Workers’ International as soon as it arrived at the International Centre.

This reply was prepared by members of the International Secretariat and International Executive Committee who have been involved in the recent discussions.

The origins of the Minority Faction

The International Socialist Movement PC’s reply begins by posing the question “Why form a faction”? The majority asserts that they bent over backwards to find common ground with the minority prior to the formation of the faction. They cite the example of the organisational resolution that was unanimously agreed by the Scottish Militant Labour EC and the membership in February 2000. They ask why, if there was agreement, did the minority re-open the discussion and produce “Scottish Socialist Party Conference Review and Conclusions”.

They claim that the faction was formed at the behest of the International Secretariat which supports “splitting the International Socialist Movement and establishing a puppet organisation in Scotland”. These allegations are an attempt by the International Socialist Movement PC to evade the political issues raised by the International Socialist Movement minority. The minority comrades formed the faction having drawn their own conclusions during the debate and because of their practical experiences of the application of the ideas of the International Socialist Movement PC majority.

Philip Stott’s document, “Scottish Socialist Party One year on – A Marxist review”, raised all the main questions that arose in the debate leading to the formation of a faction. The political platform of the minority faction originated in the issues covered in that document. For over 10 months there was an attempt by those who later formed the minority to seek clarification about the character of the Scottish Socialist Party, its programme, and the role of the Committee for a Workers’ International within it.

It rapidly became clear, however, that there was no agreement on these questions and that a political divergence had opened up on fundamental issues of principle. The majority of the Scottish Committee for a Workers’ International EC produced a document, “Marxism in the New Millennium”, in October 1999. This document argued for the winding up of a cohesive revolutionary organisation and its replacement by a “platform” or “current” whose role would be primarily “ideological”. The majority argued that the Scottish Socialist Party was “our party” and that it represented “our programme”. The Committee for a Workers’ International was invited to draw the conclusion that a separate and distinct Marxist organisation was no longer necessary. This invitation was declined.

Incredibly, the comrades assert that “The leadership in Scotland have made every attempt to reach agreement with the comrades.” Following the production of “Marxism in the new Millennium” and the debate at the Scottish Committee for a Workers’ International conference in October 1999, it was clear that no agreement would be possible without one side or the other changing their position. The method of the majority, however, was then to try to sweep the differences under the carpet. The resolution agreed at the 6 February 2000 Committee for a Workers’ International Scottish conference was an organisational statement. It avoided mentioning the central political issues under debate.

The statement from Dundee to that conference confronted these issues. It stated: 

“In our view the debate that has taken place has been an important and beneficial discussion about the role, character and tasks of the Committee for a Workers’ International in Scotland. There has also been discussion on wider questions such as perspectives for reformism, the nature of the Scottish Socialist Party and the character of a revolutionary transitional programme.

 Many of these issues are still unresolved and they will inevitably arise as part of the discussions of the Committee for a Workers’ International. Central to these discussions will be clarification of the character of the organisation we are building. In our view, we still require a cohesive revolutionary organisation that is based on the principle of democratic centralism.

“We re-state our support for the political positions outlined in the documents written by comrades from Dundee. At the same time we accept the need to agree resolutions that can take us forward at this stage. We, as will comrades who disagree with us, maintain our right to raise our views and criticisms now and in the future.” 

(Dundee Committee for a Workers’ International statement to February Committee for a Workers’ International conference)

The Scottish Socialist Party Conference

The Scottish Socialist Party conference (26-27 February 2000) was a turning point where the consequences of the methods of the majority were clearly evident. There was no distinct Committee for a Workers’ International intervention at the conference. The resolutions passed did not reflect “our programme or analysis”, as the majority claim. There was a need, in the view of the minority, to rapidly change course in order to defend the programme, perspectives, methods and organisation of the Committee for a Workers’ International in Scotland.

The document ‘Scottish Socialist Party Conference Review and Conclusions’, was an attempt to alert the International Socialist Movement membership to the fact that our forces are dissolving into the Scottish Socialist Party. The last vestiges of our revolutionary party are in danger of liquidation. Comrades had the right and a duty to produce this document. It flowed from the statement the submitted to the Committee for a Workers’ International conference in February. However, even then they did not form a faction. They insisted on opening a discussion after the Scottish Socialist Party conference.

They requested that the International Socialist Movement PC should discuss these issues at its meeting in March. The International Socialist Movement PC informed the comrades this would not be possible because in their view the “Situation in the international” would dominate the agenda. This discussion was to deal with splits and resignations (some of them years ago) from the Committee for a Workers’ International and with “International Socialist Alliances”. It was a discussion about internationalising the Scottish Strategy.

 Eventually, the meeting discussed the Scottish Socialist Party conference for forty-five minutes! Although this was completely inadequate, it was long enough to make clear that no agreement was possible. The faction was launched quickly following that meeting. It had become clear that the two trends existing in the Scottish organisation had developed into two distinct tendencies.

The idea that the faction in Scotland has been an artificial creation of the International Secretariat is a smokescreen to evade discussing the political differences. The minority faction is an organisational reflection of these profound differences.

Apart from differences on the character of the Scottish Socialist Party, the role of the International Socialist Movement in the Scottish Socialist Party, and questions of programme and other issues have emerged. At the International Socialist Movement National Committee (National Committee) on 16th of January 2000 there was the beginning of a sharp divergence on the economy. 

At the meeting, the Dundee comrades moved a series of amendments. Although Alan McCombes accepted them, he still raised some of his own differences openly at the Scottish Socialist Party conference. Alan used Cuba as an example of what an Independent Socialist Scotland could achieve, arguing that Scotland has greater wealth and resources than Cuba.

The Committee for a Workers’ International organisation is being dissolved into the Scottish Socialist Party. This is illustrated by the leading International Socialist Movement members, who draft discussion papers for the Scottish Socialist Party without any discussion with the International Socialist Movement membership or in any leading bodies of the Committee for a Workers’ International section.

The International Socialist Movement National Committee in January agreed to produce a resolution on Northern Ireland dealing the question of parades and a written statement on Ireland for the Scottish Socialist Party conference. Without any discussion neither of these documents were produced.

The International Socialist Movement PC document claims that the full-timers for the Scottish Socialist Party who are International Socialist Movement members are “involved in political discussions within the International Socialist Movement and the building of the International Socialist Movement”. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Some are, but many leading comrades do not attend the International Socialist Movement branches regularly and do not participate in building the International Socialist Movement.

Prior to the Scottish Socialist Party conference there was no preparation among the International Socialist Movement membership regarding the intervention into the conference. Most of our comrades participated only as Scottish Socialist Party members. As the minority comrades stated in the Scottish Socialist Party review document, nobody intervened to put the position of the Committee for a Workers’ International or identified with it.

However, one thing was clear. There was little, if any, discussion within International Socialist Movement about our intervention at the Scottish Socialist Party conference.

What do we refer to when we talk about the disintegration of an organised Marxist presence inside the Scottish Socialist Party? The majority say we have no evidence. It is necessary to begin from first principles. 

What is our role inside the Scottish Socialist Party? It is primarily to advance a Marxist programme at all levels of the Scottish Socialist Party and to win the best layers of the Scottish Socialist Party to that programme. 

This means winning the best activists to the organisation that defends that programme. It means explaining to new members and the general membership of the Scottish Socialist Party how to achieve socialism and what programme and type of party are necessary. 

It may not be possible to win a majority of the Scottish Socialist Party to our position at this stage. However, we can win a significant minority. The PC majority opposes this approach. They are merging our distinct banner with that of the Scottish Socialist Party and disarming our forces politically.

The comrades wrongly claim that the Scottish Socialist Party has adopted, or is in the process of adopting, our programme. Therefore, they argue, we should not build a ‘Marxist faction’ or a ‘revolutionary wing’ inside the Scottish Socialist Party. This in turn has had an increasingly detrimental effect on our structures and has led to the liquidation of our once cohesive organisation in Scotland.

The fact that fewer than 50 comrades are currently active in the International Socialist Movement illustrates the degree of atomisation of the organisation that has taken place. This compares to an active Scottish Socialist Party membership as a whole of hundreds. How is it possible to stand up against the pressures of working in a broad party, never mind the weight of ‘official’ society, without active involvement in our revolutionary organisation?

Incredibly, the majority document argues that when intervening in the water campaign, the anti-poll tax work and solidarity campaigns we did not “give our name, branch and International Socialist Movement membership”. They claim we never said we are members of Scottish Militant Labour, or explained our ideas. 

This is totally one-sided. From 1992, Scottish Militant Labour participated in broad campaigns but we always had a clear independent banner and actively recruited. Even during the poll tax campaign when we were still in the Labour Party we recruited a new generation to our ranks with an audacious and open approach. Contact meetings and ‘What we stand for meetings’ were commonplace. We used our paper at all stages and the best activists were recruited as members. At the same time, we did not make membership of our organisation a condition to participate in the campaign.

In a broad party we should clearly differentiate ourselves and explain that we are members of the Committee for a Workers’ International. This is especially necessary when we are dealing with political differences. How would a new Scottish Socialist Party member attending the Scottish Socialist Party conference know who was defending the programme of the Committee for a Workers’ International? Would they know that Committee for a Workers’ International members were the driving-force in the Scottish Socialist Party, or would they simply regard our comrades as good Scottish Socialist Party members?

The Scottish Socialist Party conference only served to re-enforce the arguments of the International Socialist Movement minority and the Committee for a Workers’ International that the policy of the majority was lowering the consciousness of our members. The political differences between the Committee for a Workers’ International and the Scottish Socialist Party were blurred. 

At the Scottish Socialist Party conference, the International Socialist Movement majority fused our programme together with other trends in an unprincipled way. There was no distinctive coherent intervention by the International Socialist Movement. The minority faction was formed to fight this liquidationist policy and struggle to build a cohesive revolutionary organisation that defends the programme of the Committee for a Workers’ International.

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A revolutionary party

It is ironic that the International Socialist Movement PC claim “there is utter confusion” (paragraph 43) amongst the faction on the question of a revolutionary party. The way the International Socialist Movement PC document is written engenders confusion. The failure to give sources for any quotations is misleading because it makes it difficult to read the original quotations in their full context and is an unacceptable method.

The comrades assert what “most people would understand a party to be…” (paragraph 45). Who are “most people”? Given today’s currently confused and often low consciousness, we would get many different opinions among workers and youth as to what a party is. However, our debate is within the Marxist movement which has its own criteria.

From the beginning of this debate in 1998 the current Scottish leadership have raised question marks over whether it is necessary or desirable today to build a revolutionary party. In their March 1998 Conference document, Initial Proposals for a New Scottish Socialist Party” ([referred to here as “IP”], IP British MB [Members Bulletin] no 27), they wrote “it is not possible to gauge at this stage whether or not it will be necessary to retain a separate Scottish Militant Labour structure” (IP paragraph 22), “It may be desirable to retain an organised structure”, (IP paragraph 24), “That is one possible variant; another is to throw everything into the new party (IP paragraph 25).

In their next document, “For a Bold Step Forward” ([referred to here as “FBSF”], FBSF British MB 28), they tried to justify their agnostic attitude towards building a revolutionary organisation by asserting that “…there are many historical examples of Trotskyist and Marxist groupings armed only with ideas that have been extremely effective.” (FBSF paragraph 160). However the only example given, that of the US Trotskyists entering the US Socialist Party in 1936, does not support their case and was in stark contrast to the situation in Scotland today.

As the US Trotskyist leader, JP Cannon, explained, by early 1937, after one year’s work in the Socialist Party “…our faction everywhere was better informed, better disciplined, and better organised, and we were making rapid headway in recruiting new members into the faction” (History of American Trotskyism, 7997 edition, page 296). Unfortunately, this is not the situation that exists in the International Socialist Movement today. 

Of course, the leadership of the then US Socialist Party was reformist. However, just because a majority of Scottish Socialist Party leaders are International Socialist Movement / Committee for a Workers’ International members does not negate the necessity of building a revolutionary organisation.

This debate is not in any way an organisational one about which type of structure it is necessary to build. Nor, as the comrades say, is it “…a battle over definitions” (paragraph 80). It is primarily political and ideological. At the start of the debate in 1998 the Scottish majority argued that in today’s conditions it is sufficient to concentrate on building a party with what was loosely described as a “…full-blooded socialist programme” (FBSF, paragraph 78). They claimed that there would be the serious possibility of it embracing “a clear revolutionary programme” (FBSF, paragraph 7 08).

The Socialist Party EC replied to these arguments in numerous articles and documents including the “Thesis on the Revolutionary Party” (British MB 28) and “In Defence of the Revolutionary Party” (British MB 29). In a subsequent document, ‘Reply to “New Tactics for a New Period” (paragraphs 8-77 British MB 29), the British EC answered very clearly the Scottish majority’s arguments about “What is a Revolutionary party?” ( “New Tactics for a New Period” paragraphs 5 to 10).

The British EC wrote: 

“This section (‘What is a Revolutionary party?’) does not answer the question it poses. There is no logical line of argument. The document sets up an association between the idea of a ‘revolutionary party’ and ‘Sectarian grouplets’, ‘deluded sectarians’, etc. It claims that the terms ‘revolutionary party’ and ‘broad party’ have been bandied about in an abstract way. In the view of the Scottish Militant Labour EC, both can co-exist in the same ‘hybrid’ party.

“By ‘revolutionary party’ we mean an independent revolutionary organisation, a proletarian organisation (whether in the form of an organised tendency within another formation or a separate, detached party) based on the programme of Marxism (in the sense of a body of ideas), organised on the basis of democratic centralism which works to build a force of Marxist cadres and to develop support amongst wide layers of the working class. 

The revolutionary party is “independent” because its aims and organisational methods are based on the principle of a commitment to a distinct ideology and programme (it is not a question of whether or not the organisation is a separate party detached from other parties).

“Cadres are party members who understand our ideas; who can independently involve themselves in struggle on the basis of our programme, strategy and tactics; and who are capable of recruiting and of building our organisation. 

Cadres are required at every level of a revolutionary organisation, in the branches, in trade union and other party caucuses, in public campaigning work, etc., as well as in the leadership. The role of cadres is to provide the ‘framework’ (the term comes from the French word meaning frame’), the revolutionary core, around which much broader, mass forces can be won in the future. Cadres not only carry the party’s ideas to wider layers of workers, but they also play a vital role in testing ideas in practice, and in formulating new policies, strategy and tactics.

“The character of the party is not determined by its size, but by its ideology and methods. Where parties (sections of the Committee or a Workers’ International) are small we recognise, of course, that they are at the stage of embryonic parties which are developing forces of politically-conscious Marxist activists in preparation for the future development of mass revolutionary parties.

“We have never proclaimed ourselves ‘the revolutionary party’ or adopted the sectarian approach of the Socialist Workers Party, WRP and other groups.

“We have never put the interests of our organisation above the interests of the working class. We participate alongside workers in struggle, while working to win support for a clear programme, perspectives, etc. Nevertheless, we consider (following the theoretical tradition of Lenin, Trotsky and our own organisation, that a Marxist revolutionary party with mass support among the working class is essential for the successful carrying through of the socialist transformation of society. 

Clearly, to carry out this role a revolutionary party requires overwhelming mass support, which has to be built on the basis of objective events and the intervention of the ‘subjective factor’, the revolutionary party itself. Mass support, however, does not make a revolutionary party a ‘broad’ party in the political sense …

“It is, in our view, nonsense to claim that “there can exist transitional or hybrid formations which are part ‘revolutionary’ and part ‘broad’.” Of course, there can be broad formations which include within them revolutionary elements, centrists (who waver between revolution and reform), left reformists, militant trade union activists, radical campaigning activists, etc.

But such formations are broad parties, not revolutionary parties. It is also true that such broad formations can, under certain conditions, be ‘transitional’ in the sense that, under the impact of events and mass radicalisation of the working class, they are being pushed towards revolution. 

The POUM (Workers Party of Marxist Unification) in the Spanish revolution in 1936 was a classic example of a ‘transitional’ centrist party. A more recent example is the MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement) in Chile under the 1970-73 Popular Front government of Allende. 

A transition, however, can only be decisively carried through with the intervention of a Marxist revolutionary organisation fighting to transform the broad party on the basis of the adoption of a Marxist programme and methods of work. 

A broad formation, particularly a mass party, cannot hover indefinitely between reform and revolution. Without a decisive transformation into a revolutionary party, any such formation will be unstable and inevitably enter a crisis, with sections sliding back towards centrism or reformism.”

The Scottish leadership never even commented on these arguments. As the Socialist Party EC’s “Reply to Scottish Socialist Party A Political Justification” (British MB 31) pointed out later, the Scottish majority had not answered, and has in fact avoided, the questions: “What constitutes a revolutionary party” and “How is a revolutionary party distinguished from a broad party?” In this latest document, the International Socialist Movement PC returns to the general issue of the revolutionary party. However, this is not to achieve clarity. It is another attempt to divert the discussion and allow the comrades to evade replying to specific questions.

This incorrect method is seen in paragraph 49. This mixes up the question of when the word ‘party’ should be included in a revolutionary organisation’s name with the issue of how revolutionaries in Scotland should organise today. While carefully considering when it is politically correct to use the word ‘party’ in the name of a section, which is a purely tactical question, we have always worked to build and maintain revolutionary organisations, i.e. parties, as a strategic objective, irrespective of the tactics employed at different times.

As the British EC wrote above, Committee for a Workers’ International sections have not presented themselves in the sectarian, ultimatist way implied by the International Socialist Movement PC when it writes “Until relatively recently, no section of the Committee for a Workers’ International described itself as ‘the revolutionary party'”(paragraph 53). 

The comrades write that, in the past, the old Scottish Militant Labour was “acting as a party” despite not having the name party or publicly describing itself as a party. This is not at all unusual: on the contrary, we want to engender a “party consciousness” and “party loyalty”, without stifling criticism, among all our members internationally. The basis for this loyalty and consciousness is political agreement and understanding of the tasks we are faced with.

In reality the Scottish majority have substituted building the Scottish Socialist Party for building the Committee for a Workers’ International section. At the same time the International Socialist Movement PC refuses to give either a Marxist characterisation of the Scottish Socialist Party or outline what possible perspective they have for the Scottish Socialist Party. 

They no longer describe the Scottish Socialist Party’s programme as ‘revolutionary’. However, they do not outline how or when they intend to transform the Scottish Socialist Party into a politically coherent revolutionary party. Is this meant to occur some time in the dim and distance future? Or does the International Socialist Movement PC think that this is now an outmoded, sectarian approach?

In practice the International Socialist Movement PC’s emphasis on winning support for the “ideas of Marxism” leaves open the question of whether it is necessary today to lay the basis of building a revolutionary party through day-today activity, political education and a struggle against opposing ideas.

Far from clarifying the issues, the International Socialist Movement leadership further confuses things by mixing up the question of how revolutionaries organise (“a party”) and how debates/differences of opinion are handled within revolutionary organisations, “a tendency or platform” (paragraph 45).

Then the International Socialist Movement leadership throws in another item to divert the issue, namely the issue of whether a Trotskyist organisation should use the word “party” in its name. Murray Smith already attempted to raise the same issues in his “Contribution to the Scottish Debate” (Special International Bulletin October 1998). We clarified this point in “The programme, the party and the International” (paragraphs 141-142). A document neither Murray Smith nor the International Socialist Movement majority have ever replied to.

The confusion of the International Socialist Movement PC when they mix up the internal and external issues relating to how revolutionaries organise is illustrated by the quotation they use from Trotsky. In his letter (“Differences with the British Minority”, 23 January 1934, Writings of Leon Trotsky Supplement 1934-40, page 442) Trotsky clearly argues for the then British section to end its open (“independent”) work and enter the ILP. But Trotsky was not proposing that the British section dissolve itself as the International Socialist Movement PC implies.

This particular letter of Trotsky does not explicitly deal with the question of how the British Trotskyists should organise within the ILP. However, this had already been explained by Trotsky. In an earlier letter, ‘The Lever of a Small Group’ written on October 2nd 193 3, he wrote: 

“Whether you will enter the ILP as a faction or as individuals is a purely formal question. In essence, you will, of course, be a faction that submits to common discipline. Before entering the ILP you make a public declaration: 

‘Our views are known. We base ourselves on the principles of Bolshevism-Leninism and have formed ourselves as a part of the International Left Opposition. Its ideas we consider as the only basis on which the new International can be built. We are entering the ILP to convince the members of that party in daily practical work of the correctness of our ideas and of the necessity of the ILP joining the initiators of the new International…’ (Writings of Leon Trotsky 1933-34, page 126).

Neither the Committee for a Workers’ International nor the International Socialist Movement minority faction accepts that the Scottish Socialist Party is a revolutionary party. In the course of the debate the leadership of the majority have changed their argumentation about the character of the Scottish Socialist Party. Murray Smith at one stage argued that “…Our party in Scotland is the Scottish Socialist Party” (“Contribution to the debate for the Scottish congress”. Murray Smith, 21 September 1999). Now, however, the comrades write that “…we agree the Scottish Socialist Party is not a revolutionary party” (paragraph 85).

This is not an abstract question. How we characterise the Scottish Socialist Party determines the way in which Marxists should work and organise. When quoting later, in paragraph 89, from Trotsky’s article “On Democratic Centralism” (8 December 1937, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1937-38, pages 89 to 91) the International Socialist Movement PC ends the quote just where Trotsky writes, “A party is an active organism. It develops in the struggle with outside obstacles and inner contradictions.”

The comrades’ opposition to Option 2 since the 1998 debate is precisely a rejection of this idea of a revolutionary organisation as “an active organism” that “develops in the struggle”. 

The International Socialist Movement PC again and again say that the International Socialist Movement should struggle for the “ideas of Marxism” (paragraph 83) within the Scottish Socialist Party. However, nowhere do they deal with the question of how revolutionaries are, to use Lenin’s phrase in “Left Wing Communism”, “steeled”. 

It is not a question of the Committee for a Workers’ International telling the comrades to “..pronounce the International Socialist Movement a rival party” to the Scottish Socialist Party (paragraph 74). That would be absurd. However, International Socialist Movement members need to be clear that unless they are able to win a majority of Scottish Socialist Party members to a revolutionary party, then the Scottish Socialist Party’s future will be put in question. 

Either it will disappear or else it will develop in a reformist direction. The fact that the majority of the Scottish Socialist Party’s current leadership are International Socialist Movement members is no guarantee of the future. Only building a solid Committee for a Workers’ International section can provide a lasting basis of support for our programme and tactics.

The International Socialist Movement PC’s rejection of the idea of trying to build ‘small mass parties’ is not just a question of debating what it is possible to achieve in this period. It is also a rejection of the conception of the ‘dual tasks’ facing Marxists today. They favour concentrating on rebuilding a broader workers’ movement. The building of a fighting revolutionary organisation is postponed until sometime in the future.

On Democratic Centralism

The reply states that “…comrades have asked us to describe democratic centralism in a kind of ten easy-to-remember points”. This is false – when and where has this question been posed? Democratic centralism is not a set of ready-made formulas of “easy-to-remember-points”.

The legitimate concern of the International Socialist Movement minority, expressed in the ‘Scottish Socialist Party Conference Review and Conclusions’, is just ignored. The minority comrades warn that:

 “There is a real danger in a situation where our leading comrades are no longer accountable to the Committee for a Workers’ International membership in Scotland – even if they are in leading positions in the Scottish Socialist Party as well. 

If this goes unchecked the ideological and political pressures of operating in a broad, non-revolutionary party and pressures of parliamentary work will affect all of us, including the leadership. Democratic centralism is vital for a serious Marxist force ensuring a powerful anchor that can act as a counter to these very real dangers”.

The International Socialist Movement PC document quotes Trotsky’s 1937 article “On Democratic Centralism, A few words about the Party Regime”. This excellent article is partly a response to “individual comrades who asked me to give a clear and exact formula on democratic centralism”. 

However, as Trotsky answered “… no one can give such a formula that once-and-for-all would eliminate misunderstandings and false interpretations”. But nothing in Trotsky’s article gives ammunition to the position put forward by the International Socialist Movement PC document.

The PC reply does not clarify the attitude of the majority on democratic centralism, something which is not simply a question of organisational structures and measures.

In 1998 the Committee for a Workers’ International was assured that “…the Scottish section of the Committee for a Workers’ International will be organised as a Marxist tendency with the methods of ‘democratic unity’ (democratic centralism), and will also serve to ensure accountability of the leadership” (“Proposals for Progress On the New Scottish Turn”, Scottish Militant Labour EC 27 May 1998). This undertaking has never been implemented.

In fact the International Socialist Movement leadership no longer supports this idea. This is not an accident. It flows from the political arguments put forward to justify why International Socialist Movement should not act, at least in this period, as a distinct revolutionary organisation. Organisation flows from policy, perspective and programme.

The principle of “Bolshevik organisation, ‘democratic centralism’, is assured by complete freedom of criticism and of groupings, together with steel discipline in action…”, wrote Trotsky in 1935 (“The Crisis of the French Section”. page 47). Even before the birth of Bolshevism the norms and the spirit of democratic centralism started to guide the independent organisations of the working class. Instinctively, the working class realises that unity in action is a prerequisite in the struggle against capitalist oppression and a centralised state apparatus.

The rise of Stalinism and the degeneration of the Communist Parties and the Communist International transformed democratic centralism into its opposite – bureaucratic centralism. The Stalinists then created the myth that Bolshevism was equal to a monolithic party and the leadership’s ‘iron grip’.

This sharply diverges from the real history of Bolshevism during Lenin’s leadership. This was characterised by Lenin’s struggle to uphold and defend the revolutionary programme of the party. This would not have been possible without discussions, sharp debates and the formation of temporary groupings or factions, even splits, amongst the Bolsheviks. 

The essence of Bolshevism was that democratic centralism was grounded in the revolutionary Marxist programme of the party. 

“Yet rather than attempting to secure his own ‘iron grip’ over the organisation, Lenin sought to establish ever more securely the principle of democratic centralism, grounded in the revolutionary programme. 

He seemed convinced that only this could ensure the health and growth of an effective revolutionary organisation that would be best able to utilise his own remarkable abilities and those of his comrades. Democratic centralism meant majority rule, freedom of discussion, unity in action” (Paul Le Blanc, “Lenin and the revolutionary party”, page 140-141).

Of course, democratic centralism means more than this. The fundamental issue is that the way the party operates, its internal life, the level of activity, the authority of the leadership, etc, has to be put in a wider political context. 

Democratic centralism is a method that allows the party to function on a democratic basis, giving the members the right to hold the leadership to account and subject to recall. Without freedom of discussion, comradely debates, then a common understanding of the situation today, and clarity on the demands and programme required, a genuine agreement and understanding of how to intervene in the class struggle is not possible.

Trotsky explained that “Only a correct policy can guarantee a healthy party regime” and that “the formula of democratic centralism must inevitably find a different expression in the parties of different countries and at different stages of development of one and the same party”. (‘On Democratic Centralism’. Writings of Leon Trotsky 1937-38, page 90)

At the same time, only a correct policy and a healthy internal structure and procedure can prevent temporary groupings, a loyal opposition, becoming a permanent faction. And it is impossible to reverse such a situation, of course, by simply banning the faction or by proclaiming a moratorium on the debate!

What we are debating is not the specific application of democratic centralism but the principle. It has become clear that the International Socialist Movement is not acting as a collective political force. Reading from the document it becomes even clearer that the majority do not even desire that this should be the case. 

The thread running through it is that our political dominance inside the Scottish Socialist Party is largely unchallenged by anyone – with the possible exception of the ultra-left Revolutionary Communist Network. Therefore, it is neither necessary nor desirable to act on the basis of democratic centralism. This is what the comrades mean when they state “… it is unnecessary to operate as a tightly knit caucus” (paragraph 98). The document states that “neither are we in favour of caucusing before every Scottish Socialist Party branch meeting” (paragraph 103). The document says caucuses would mean that Scottish Socialist Party meetings would become “rubber stamps for decisions taken elsewhere”.

In the broader workers’ movement we have always organised caucuses in order to bring our comrades together on a regular basis. This is a means of preparing our interventions at bigger events. It is also to discuss and evaluate the state of the movement, our own demands, slogans, campaign initiatives, proposals for actions, etc.

International Socialist Movement policy should be discussed and decided upon by its members, within the established structures of the section. After democratic discussion the agreed policy should be supported by Committee for a Workers’ International members in Scottish Socialist Party meetings, conferences, etc. 

That is the norm in a Marxist organisation. It ensures that the membership is fully involved in formulating the policy of the International Socialist Movement and also holds the leadership to account. This does not exclude that occasionally some members of International Socialist Movement may argue and even vote against each other at some Scottish Socialist Party events. 

However, this should be the exception not the rule. If this method is not applied, then it will inevitably result in the policy of the International Socialist Movement being decided by unaccountable “leaders” with little or no involvement of the members.

At the beginning of paragraph 100 the document states: “We obviously expect all International Socialist Movement comrades to defend the basic ideas and principles of Marxism. We are in favour of discussing and where possible reaching agreement within the International Socialist Movement on key issues that will be of major importance to the party”. 

However, the comrades totally ignore the fundamental issue that it is not possible to maintain and develop the ideas of Marxism without a revolutionary organisation. It provides a framework for discussion, education and the training of cadres. Moreover, the majority has always stressed that the monthly branch meeting of the International Socialist Movement should become a debating forum. 

Therefore, they would not give the members an opportunity of evaluating and testing our ideas in relation to other political trends in the Scottish Socialist Party. Neither would they allow the members an opportunity to discuss all aspects of the work.

The International Socialist Movement PC majority opposes describing the International Socialist Movement as a “party”. Even internally they strenuously oppose defining the International Socialist Movement as a party. 

No one has urged that the comrades should state bluntly in public that the International Socialist Movement is a party. The issue is not one of presentation but of the character of the International Socialist Movement and its aims. The entrist period compelled us to deny in public that we existed as an organisation, let alone a party. Comrades referred to themselves as a “Tendency” an ideological and political current that produced a newspaper. 

We popularised the term “tendency” which became part of the political vocabulary in Britain. When conducting ‘entry’ work we educated and consolidated our members on the basis of a revolutionary programme, method and organisation. We made clear that entrism was a tactic adopted in order to build the revolutionary party and workers’ International.

The PC’s reply contains many references to the past, but it is difficult to understand what the comrades are trying to say. Sometimes the text is extremely confused. For example, we read: “Comrades were not free to stand up at Labour Party meetings if they disagreed with the strategy and declare that we were an organisation as this would have led to reprisals. This is not the situation within the Scottish Socialist Party where we are the leadership”(paragraph 93.)

The hypothetical example given is an absurdity. We do not know what “agreed strategy” the document has in mind. If someone who joined us in the past suddenly went over to the side of the bureaucracy, then that person has obviously left the very same organisation or party that she or he joined. This happened more than once in the 1970s and 1980s. Defectors from our ranks, who no longer agreed with us, went over to the bureaucracy. They told them everything about the organisation.

Working in the Scottish Socialist Party today cannot be compared with yesterdays entry work. It is also true that the “emphasis has to be on openness, transparency and democracy”. But what does that mean? Truth is concrete. 

It is ironic that the majority emphasise, “openness, transparency and democracy” in the functioning of the International Socialist Movement in the Scottish Socialist Party while in the International Socialist Movement they have declared a “moratorium on debate on the core issues until the run up to next conference in the 2001”! (Resolution 2, adopted by the International Socialist Movement all members meeting 21 May 2000). 

This decision set an incorrect norm and tone inside the section. Moreover, it will be unworkable. If there is no agreement, the “core issues” will inevitably be discussed. Time needs to be set aside and agreements reached between the majority and the minority on how to proceed.

The Socialist Workers Party is now proposing to enter the Scottish Socialist Party in the autumn. This will have to be discussed within International Socialist Movement, and such a discussion will inevitably raise many of the “core issues” which have been under debate.

Reformism and Reformist Ideology

An important issue in this debate is how illusions in reformist, left reformist and centrist ideas will develop in the working class.

Reformism in its broadest forms seeks to find a way of ameliorating the conditions of the working class within the confines of capitalism or to gradually change capitalism into socialism. The exact form reformist and centrist organisations take can differ in different historic and objective circumstances.

Right-wing reformism in the period of the post 1950’s boom dominated the Western European Labour movements in countries like Britain and Sweden. Reforms were conceded to the working class in order to buy social peace. These concessions were given either as a result of workers’ struggles or under the threat of struggles.

State expenditure was increased as part of the attempt to boost the economy. Right-wing reformist leaders used to relegate discussion on socialism to the far-oft future or for speeches on May Day. Substantial concessions could be afforded by capitalism at the time. Right-wing reformism turned to vicious counter-reform following the 1973 economic crisis under the pressure of the ruling class. Globalisation, the failure of the left and the effects of the collapse of Stalinism resulted in the bourgeoisification of the former workers’ parties.

Left reformism is generally characterised by the fact that its leadership reflects the pressure from the working class to take radical measures against capitalism. In the past, left reformist trends in Britain demanded the nationalisation of the top 25 companies as part of the “Alternative Economic Strategy” in the 1980s. However, left reformism always evaded the issue of how to deal with the capitalist state.

Centrism

Centrism describes formations which waver between reform and revolution. The rank-and-file workers involved in these organisation are attempting to find a revolutionary socialist alternative. The leadership of such parties, although using Marxist or revolutionary phraseology, ultimately act as reformists in deeds. Centrism is marked by amorphous lack of precision in thought, programme and action. 

These parties are inherently unstable and move rapidly towards either the left or the right. They normally arise in an extreme crisis in society, in either a revolutionary or a pre-revolutionary situation. Centrist formations developed particularly in the inter-war periods as Left split-offs from Social Democracy and in and around the Communist Parties. In analysing centrist organisations it is important to determine if they are moving to the right or the left.

Despite their ‘revolutionary’ phraseology and programmatic demands, centrist or left centrist leaders have consistently failed to take decisive action when the time for revolution was ripe. They have played a fatal role in the historic struggles of the working class. What is the prospect for the re-emergence of reformist and centrist ideas and parties? This perspective is linked to our general appraisal of the international economic, social and political developments that will unfold.

During the 1990’s, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, together with the uneven growth in the world economy, allowed the ruling class to launch a massive ideological offensive against the ideas of socialism. These factors, and the bourgeoisification of the former traditional workers’ parties, reduced the layer of politically conscious and active workers and threw back the general level of political and socialist consciousness. Today it is necessary to re-establish the idea of socialism as an alternative to capitalism.

The Committee for a Workers’ International has explained that the consequences of the effects of globalisation, economic crisis and social instability would begin to provoke a reaction against the ‘triumphalism of the market’ and the speculative character of the present cyclical upturn. The most advanced layer of the youth, in particular, is already prepared to draw far-reaching conclusions and is increasingly open to a socialist alternative. But as far as the broad masses are concerned, the process will probably take the form of widespread opposition to the effects of the market and global capitalism and later of seeking an alternative to capitalism and embracing socialist ideas.

The experience of neo-liberal policies has already created a reaction internationally against the effects of the market amongst sections of workers and young people. There have been the first signs of a turn towards an anti-capitalist mood as well as the search for an ideological alternative by a more politically conscious layer. This was reflected on anti-WTO [World Trade Organisation] and anti-IMF demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and Washington DC in April of this year. These movements, and others, indicate the first steps towards a political radicalisation. These have developed before the onset of global economic recession. A global economic recession will politically radicalise still further a wider layer of workers and youth.

These movements and others are the first necessary steps in re-conquering the idea of socialism as an alternative to capitalism amongst the working class. The Committee for a Workers’ International has a critical role to play in this process and in convincing that layer of the need for a revolutionary socialist programme. However, the mass, and even the politically advanced workers and youth, will not draw these conclusions immediately or automatically.

Class consciousness

The history of the workers’ movement has shown repeatedly that the consciousness of the masses lags behind objective processes. The mass of the working class only takes the most difficult road – that of revolution – after exhausting all other possibilities. This means that even advanced layers of the working class will develop illusions in reformism and centrism. These illusions will develop not only because of the existence of reformist organisations and leaders in the workers’ movement but also because of the level of consciousness amongst the working class.

The International Socialist Movement majority, however, relegates reformism to a stage in history that came about purely because of specific national and economic factors. One example of this is when they say: 

“Such ideas [reformist ideas – International Secretariat] developed in the 25 years before the First World War (earlier in Britain, see Engels’ writings on the question). They flowed from the strength and wealth of first of all British capitalism and then other imperialisms, which enabled them to grant concessions to the working class” (paragraph 141). 

Earlier the International Socialist Movement majority comment: “Reformist ideas, like any other ideas, have material roots” (paragraph 140).

This is a mechanical approach. As Engels explained, “…Now if someone distorts this by declaring the economic to be the only determining factor, he changes that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, ridiculous piece of jargon … Of these, the economic are ultimately decisive. But the political, etc., and even the traditions still lingering in people’s minds, play some, if not a decisive, role…” (Letter to Joseph Bloch, 21 September 1890).

The comrades view the development of reformist ideas in the post Second World War economic boom as purely a product of the economic boom of capitalism. “The conditions for reformist illusions existed during the post-war boom, but since the mid-1970s we are operating in a dramatically different climate which involves capitalism red in tooth and claw waging war against the working class and its organisations” (paragraph 147).

However, reformism continued to dominate the workers’ movement in Europe for a significant period after the mid-1970s and even the I 980s. This was despite the attacks launched by the ruling class. It included the emergence of powerful left reformist and centrist trends and parties in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and other countries. As the International Socialist Movement majority leadership knows, one of the high points of the battle between the Bennite left reformist wing of the British Labour Party and the right wing occurred in 1981-2.

In other words, reformist ideas remained as part of the labour movement after the end of the economic upswing after the ruling class was forced to move from reform to vicious counter-reform. This demonstrates that the existence of reformism as an organised force does not only relate to whether a material basis for its ideas exists or not.

The International Socialist Movement majority are one-sided when they state “in a context of economic crisis and big class struggles various political forces will undertake to propose reformist solutions in order to defend the system” (paragraph 148).

This gives the impression that reformist ideas will develop purely as a result of the actions of reformist leaders and parties. The reality is much more complex than this. Reformist ideas and parties do not fall from the sky. Individual leaders and workers’ organisations do not exist in isolation from the rest of society. While workers’ organisations generally consist of more conscious layers of the working class, they also reflect illusions that exist in wider society.

Reformism

At different stages in the history of the workers’ movement, reformist ideas have been consciously imposed on the workers’ movement by its ‘leaders’. 

These leaders, because of their integration with the ruling class, have abandoned the struggle for socialism and have become absorbed into capitalist society. They act as agents of capitalism (consciously or unconsciously) in the workers’ organisations. Bernstein and the majority of the leadership of the German SPD, at the beginning of the twentieth century, are one example of this. The ‘reformism’ of the leadership represents a conscious betrayal of the working class by its leadership.

. However, the reformist illusions of ordinary workers and youth represent a different process. This represents a stage in the development of working-class consciousness and a desire for change.

The depth of reformist illusions, how long they exist for and what organisational form they take will depend only partially on objective conditions. It will also be determined by subjective factors such as the recent and historical experiences of the working class and the level of political consciousness. A decisive factor is the strength, cohesion and clarity of a revolutionary party.

In their reply, the International Socialist Movement majority state “Reformism, which has many variants, can be defined as the idea that socialism can be achieved via an accumulation of reforms, usually through the conquest of a parliamentary majority” (paragraph 141). The comrades are mainly referring to how the mass Social Democratic parties developed, especially after 1914. However, this is a rather narrow definition of reformism.

Reformism has “many variants” as we have already explained. In the Russian Revolution the ideological basis of Menshevism was essentially reformist and centrist. In Western Europe, following World War II, the role of the Communist Party leaders was reformist. While they used the banner of the Russian Revolution and of the Soviet Union (prior to 1989), their role has been to hold back and betray movements of the working class.

Today, some radical young Israelis have big illusions in the ideas of setting up communes and using alternative currencies. These illusions do not have a material base in society but need to be combated politically. They represent a barrier to the future development of the consciousness of workers and youth.

One of the most contradictory paragraphs in the International Socialist Movement majority reply (paragraph 146) on reformism opens with the statement “The working class does of course pass through periods when its consciousness is reformist”. One sentence later the comrades write “We should avoid like the plague trying to impose preconceived ‘stages’ on to a living and volatile reality”

The 1990’s saw the development of the PRC (Party of Communist Refoundation – Italy). The PRC, a new working class formation, was formed by a split from the Communist Party in Italy but managed to attract new layers of workers and youth who were moving into struggle then. The PRC has left reformist and centrist ideas predominant within the party. 

Is the International Socialist Movement majority suggesting that these trends do not exist in reality? Do the comrades think they are merely a “preconceived stage” invented by the Committee for a Workers’ International or the International Socialist Movement minority? On the other hand, the International Socialist Movement majority state “The working class does of course pass through periods when its consciousness is reformist” (paragraph 146). Which is the position of the International Socialist Movement majority?

The International Socialist Movement Majority’s passing references to the future development of reformist illusions demonstrates that they regard this perspective as very limited or inconsequential, particularly in the Scottish context.

Perspectives for Reformism

The Committee for a Workers’ International has never claimed that left or right-wing reformism will re-emerge in the same relatively stable form that existed during the post-war boom. Why does the International Socialist Movement PC majority continue to emphasise this point? The boom undoubtedly strengthened and relatively stabilised the basis for reformist ideas. 

This was re-enforced by the strengthening of Stalinism at the end of World War Two. However, material conditions were not the only explanation for the existence of reformist ideas. It represented an organisational form of the way in which working class consciousness generally develops.

Although new left reformist and centrist formations may be unstable, at a certain stage they will form an important barrier to the revolution. Only a revolutionary party, with an understanding of the historic role of centrism and reformism and of how new parties will arise, can combat them.

The development of consist currents – as the example of the POUM in the Spanish Ro solution demonstrates – can play a fatal role in derailing the revolution. Historically, centrist parties lasted a relatively short period of time. However, their role during a critical period (a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situation), meant they acted as gatekeepers for the counter-revolution – despite the dedication and revolutionary aspirations of their rank and file.

The International Socialist Movement PC majority are so unconcerned by the perspective of the future development of powerful centrist trends and formations they do not even mention such a possibility. They have a blinkered vision on this issue historically. The PC’s document states: “Reformism was much weaker in the inter-war period, when capitalism was unable to grant concessions and on the contrary had to savagely attack the working class” (paragraph 142).

As a broad statement, this has a grain of truth in it. However, the comrades end their analysis where it should begin! An important subjective difficulty facing the working class in the inter-war period was the existence of powerful left-reformist and centrist illusions and parties. This was the case to varying degrees in Germany (USPD), Britain (ILP), Spain (POUM), Italy, and France (PSOP and elements of the SFIO and CP).

In the case of both the USPD and the SFIO, the majority were won to the Comintern following a determined struggle within these parties. It is significant that the International Socialist Movement PC does not see their task as conducting a similar struggle in the Scottish Socialist Party or of following the example of the Celonese (Sri Lanka) pioneers who won the LScottish Socialist Party (Lanka Sama Samaja Party) to Trotskyism.

The International Socialist Movement PC’s explanation for reformism being much weaker in the inter-war period is because of one objective process (the economic crisis of capitalism). This one-sided statement completely ignores the impact of the Russian Revolution and the development of mass Communist Parties in the inter-war period. It also ignores the development of important centrist formations in the 1930s, initially to the left of the Comintern, and following its Stalinist degeneration.

Inter-war period

In their analysis of the CPs in the inter-war period the International Socialist Movement PC majority makes no reference to the consciousness of different layers of the working class and in which direction they were developing.

The Communist Parties, in the wake of the Stalinist degeneration, increasingly played a counter-revolutionary role in the inter-war period and afterwards. Trotsky explained this in his 1940 pamphlet “The class, the party and the leadership”. This was a polemic against a publication in France that was attempting to explain the reasons for the defeat of the Spanish Revolution, basically arguing that the working class followed a false policy because of the immaturity in their consciousness.

In the International Socialist Movement PC majority reply, the comrades state:

“…because the workers saw them [the CPs] as revolutionary parties, [they] followed them as revolutionary parties and accepted their explanation that the time was not yet ripe for revolution” (paragraph 144). Reality was far more complicated than this. Trotsky explained in a reference to the make up of the working class: “..the classes themselves are comprised of different and in part antagonistic layers which will fall under different leadership” (Leon Trotsky, ‘The class, the party and the leadership’, in ‘The Spanish Revolution’ page 357)

Sections of the working class moved to support the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) whilst others clung to their previous parties and leaders. Trotsky explained that “The workers who were previously connected with specific organisations continued to cling to them while they observed and checked. The new and fresh masses naturally turned to the Comintern as the party which had accomplished the only victorious proletarian revolution and which, it was hoped, was capable of assuring arms to Spain. 

Furthermore, the Comintern was the most zealous champion of the idea of the People’s Front: this inspired confidence amongst the inexperienced layers of workers. Within the People’s Front, the Comintern was the most zealous champion of the bourgeois character of the revolution: this inspired the confidence of the petty, and in part, the middle bourgeoisie. That is why the masses ‘rallied to the banner of the Communist Party’ (same source).

Why did sections of the masses followed the Communist Party? It was mainly a question of consciousness and illusions in the reformist policies of the CP leaders amongst less developed sections of the working class.

As Trotsky explained 

“Only gradually, only on the basis of their own experience through several stages can the broad layers of the masses become convinced that a new leadership is firmer, more reliable, more loyal than the old. To be sure, during a revolutionary process, a weak party can explode into a powerful force provided it understands the course of the revolution and possesses steeled cadres. But such a party must be available prior to the revolution inasmuch as the process of educating cadres requires a considerable period of time and the revolution does not afford this time” (same source).

France 1968

The International Socialist Movement majority use the example of 1968 to try to justify the idea that reformist illusions are either not inevitable or not particularly important. They state “The working class does of course pass through periods when its consciousness is reformist. It also passes through stages when it is ready to take to the road of revolution and the passage from one to the other can take place with lightening speed, as in France in 1968” (paragraph 146).

This is exactly the point. The masses do pass through ‘stages’ in their consciousness as the comrades themselves admit. However, it is one thing for a revolutionary situation to unfold and the masses to enter the road of revolution. It is entirely a different question – as France 1968 demonstrated – for the masses to seize and maintain power. To achieve this objective the existence of a revolutionary party is necessary.

The support for the French CP in 1968 represented a stage of reformist illusions amongst sections of the working class. The International Socialist Movement majority have demagogically tried to ridicule this idea by quoting from “France 1968 – Month of Revolution” by Clare Doyle.

Alan McCombes has argued (at the all-members’ meeting in Scotland on 21st May 2000) that the position of the International Secretariat is similar to that of the CP leaders in 1968 – who argued that the French working class did not understand the tasks posed by the revolution or the ideas of socialism. However, the book explains 

“What every worker was searching for was how to forge a socialist programme, whether or not they would give if a name. The Communist Party leaders, the only ones in a position to put the pieces of the puzzle together in the form of a concrete programme, abdicated their responsibility completely. Then, true to past form, they blamed the workers themselves. 

Rene Andrieu, editor of the Communist Party paper, stated to the Morning Star (8 June 1968): ‘It is not enough that the main forces of the nation should be in movement – which was the case. It is also necessary to win them to the ideas of socialist revolution. This was not the case for all the ten million workers on strike – even less so for the middle sections particularly the peasants’. 

Here is a finished expression of the Communist Party leaders’ pedantry and bureaucratic contempt for the masses who refuse to act according to the proscriptions of these leaders” (p50-51).

If there were no illusions amongst the French working class in the CP leaders, why was their advice listened to by the workers and youth? The main lesson drawn from the book was the absence of the decisive role of a mass revolutionary party.

The Scottish Socialist Party – Reformism and Dialectics.

The International Socialist Movement minority is accused of a metaphysical approach in its analysis of the political make-up of the Scottish Socialist Party. That is to say, the minority view the Scottish Socialist Party membership in a fixed, unchanging way that sees only the part and not the whole connected process.

They say: “Dialectical analysis is a much more sophisticated method of thought which goes beyond the simple labelling of things into rigidly defined categories. Especially when it comes to analysing complex political processes, simply pigeon-holing people into crude categories is not good enough” (paragraph 130). This is supposed to appear a profound statement. However, in reality, they use the term “dialectics” to avoid adopting a clear position, and as they are not applying the real method of materialist dialectics.

Political consciousness in a new party is a complex process and it can change. However, it is possible and necessary to define it at a particular stage. After extolling the virtues of dialectics, the International Socialist Movement majority provides no analysis of the changing process of political consciousness in the Scottish Socialist Party. 

All they have to say on the subject is “People’s ideas change and develop, especially when they begin to become active in politics” (paragraph 130). In paragraph 131 they go on to suggest that these changes will, in the longer term, take place only as a result of objective factors.

Yet, characterising the political make-up of the Scottish Socialist Party membership is a vital issue. It will determine what the immediate and medium term tasks are for Committee for a Workers’ International members in the Scottish Socialist Party. It will also indicate the prospects for the growth of reformist trends in the Scottish Socialist Party. 

The PC’s document avoids giving a precise characterisation of the Scottish Socialist Party because to do so would lead to one conclusion: that there are serious reformist illusions or trends within it. This would confirm the analysis and conclusions of the situation made by the Committee for a Workers’ International during the discussion.

The PC has two techniques for characterising the ideological make-up of the membership of the Scottish Socialist Party. The first is to minimise the existence of reformist ideas amongst the Scottish Socialist Party members. The second is to undertake the road of written contortions in an attempt to evade any political characterisation of the Scottish Socialist Party membership whatsoever.

They suggest that this will be clarified by objective processes over a whole historical period. They state, “In the long term, how individuals, organisations and parties develop will be determined by events” (paragraph 131). This reduces the role of the revolutionary organisation to that of a bystander. There is in fact an inter-action between objective factors, including the development of class consciousness, and the intervention of the revolutionary party. 

The PC make one concession about the role of the International Socialist Movement, stating “But in the short-to-medium term the conscious intervention of Marxist forces in a party like the Scottish Socialist Party can be decisive in shaping people’s political outlook.” (paragraph 131)

It is unclear what the comrades actually mean by this comment. However, in practice they make no conscious, organised intervention. History demonstrates that left to objective developments alone, without the conscious intervention of a mass revolutionary party, the working class will not be able to consolidate power and begin to build socialism internationally.

The Nature of the Scottish Socialist Party Programme

The International Socialist Movement PC completely misunderstands the question of programme, and this has been clear since the discussion opened on the launch of the Scottish Socialist Party. They reject the Minority’s claim that they have “abandoned the historic programme of Marxism” and attack their statement that “the overall programme of the Scottish Socialist Party is not and cannot be a revolutionary programme” as a “dogmatic assertion”. (Paragraph 156)

Throughout their reply, the International Socialist Movement PC continually mixes up two different types of programme. They confuse a revolutionary Marxist programme (which expresses the fundamental aims of socialist transformation and strategy for the taking of power by the working class) and an immediate programme for the current conjuncture. 

During the debate in 1998, the Socialist Party EC repeatedly explained that a programme in the sense of ‘a list of policies and objectives’ is what Marxists have always termed an ‘action programme’. This is a limited programme, containing anti-capitalist, working-class demands, which can serve as the current programme of a broad formation, a united front, an election platform or a broad campaign. 

A revolutionary party also has an immediate, campaigning programme designed for the current conjuncture. This is a transitional programme. It contains important aspects of our full programme but does not contain all our programmatic aims.

The Scottish Socialist Party’s programme is clearly an action programme for today not a statement of strategic aims. The Scottish Socialist Party is not, in our view, a revolutionary party. It has never adopted a rounded-out programme of fundamental socialist aims (or even discussed the question of joining a revolutionary Marxist International, which cannot be separated from the issue of an internationalist programme). 

Therefore, the Scottish Socialist Party programme, as the programme of a politically heterogeneous party, cannot be accurately described as a transitional programme. However, in our view, International Socialist Movement, when drawing up the programme it believes that the Scottish Socialist Party should adopt, should use a transitional approach.

A transitional programme contains the policies and demands on which the party will campaign in the current stage of the class struggle. It will not, of course, contain all our strategic demands; Trotsky’s Transitional Programme of 1938, written on the eve of a new world war and anticipating pre-revolutionary situations, went further than a current transitional programme is likely to go in the advanced capitalist countries at the moment. 

A transitional programme has to take into account the present consciousness of the working class. Nevertheless, its starting point is the objective crisis and the need for socialism. A transitional programme has to act as a bridge, linking immediate demands to more far-reaching revolutionary aims, raising the consciousness of workers and pointing them in the direction of a socialist transformation.

We have never argued that the Scottish Socialist Party at this stage should adopt a Marxist revolutionary programme or formally base itself on the ideological tradition of revolutionary Marxism Like the International Socialist Movement Minority (and unlike the International Socialist Movement Majority), we recognise that the Scottish Socialist Party is a politically broad party and that it would clearly not be effective at this moment to campaign for the adoption of such a programme. 

That would be, as the International Socialist Movement Majority document says, “to run too far ahead of events’. However, we do argue that the International Socialist Movement, as a section of Committee for a Workers’ International, should base itself on the programme and ideological tradition of revolutionary Marxism. Within the Scottish Socialist Party, the International Socialist Movement in our view should fight for policies and demands, which point towards, and are consistent with, a rounded-out revolutionary programme. 

The International Socialist Movement should work to win the best Scottish Socialist Party activists to the ideas and policies of the Committee for a Workers’ International. The International Socialist Movement should also promote the Committee for a Workers’ International’s ideas and record amongst the Scottish Socialist Party membership.

This tactic (Option 2) is based on our characterisation of Scottish Socialist Party as a broad party. However, if (as the International Socialist Movement Majority argue) the Scottish Socialist Party, with a core of Marxists in the leadership, is likely to move in a revolutionary direction as events unfold, the question could be posed at a certain stage of a campaign by the Marxists to win majority support for the adoption of a Marxist revolutionary programme and acceptance of the ideological tradition of Marxism. 

Such a change, however, would require a struggle to transform the party, on the lines outlined by Trotsky in relation to the French Party in the 1920s, from a broad party into a real revolutionary party. Trotsky recommended that this Party would have to give “forthright and precise” answers to a series of questions, if the French Socialist Party’s decision in 1920 to rename itself the Communist Party and to become a full section of the Third International was to be realised in practice. 

Among other issues, he asked what the new Communist Party’s attitude was to revolution; to tolerating those within the Communist Party who were arguing the Russian Revolution was premature; to support, direct or indirect, for bourgeois governments; and to purging the trade union movement of betrayers of the working class. 

Trotsky argued it would not be enough to give the correct answers in theory. They would need to be confirmed by the actions of the different sections of the Party. In other words, it was not only the question of formal adoption of a Marxist programme. It was also a question of winning the overwhelming majority of the ranks to a rounded-out Marxist tradition and the reorganisation of the Party on the basis of democratic centralism.

Today we are living in a very different period. However, we would still use a similar method to win majority support for revolutionary ideas within a broad party. 

But why does the International Socialist Movement Majority say that any suggestion of the Scottish Socialist Party adopting a revolutionary programme in the sense of a body of ideas and the accumulated experience of Committee for a Workers’ International (paragraph 157) “…of course rules out a priori [in advance] any possibility of the Scottish Socialist Party ever developing a revolutionary programme” (paragraph 758)? 

Is it because they do not believe that the Scottish Socialist Party will ever become a revolutionary party? Alternatively, is it because they believe that the ideological tradition of the early years of the Communist International (Cl) and of the Fourth International (Fl), and the accumulated experience of the Committee for a Workers’ International are now theoretically outmoded and politically redundant? We would like to hear the International Socialist Movement Majority comrades’ view on this.

Do the comrades rule out a priori the development (by whatever route) of a mass revolutionary party based on the ideological programme and tradition of revolutionary Marxism?

We do not consider that a revolutionary programme for the next period will simply be “a regurgitation of statements drawn up a specific periods in history such as the programme of the Corn in tern or the Fourth International” [paragraph 165]. A current programme has to relate to today’s conditions and to the contemporary experience of the working class. 

Marxists today have to deal with many issues that were not on the political agenda in 1919 or 1938. Nevertheless, in our view, a contemporary programme has to be formulated on the basis of the theory and method underlying the programmatic statements of the Cl, the founding documents of the Fl and the theoretical and political contribution of the Committee for a Workers’ International. 

This does not mean a “regurgitation” of these ideas, but a skilful, principled application of the method to contemporary issues. This applies both to the fundamental programmatic aims of International Socialist Movement and to the formulation of an immediate programme for the Scottish Socialist Party.

The International Socialist Movement Majority appears to be suggesting that such programmes develop spontaneously on the basis of events. “These debates (on the task of the transition from capitalism to a workers’ state) will develop naturally as the class struggle itself intensifies” (paragraph 161). “Programme and ideology take shape over many years and are developed not just in resolutions and conferences, but in the white-hot furnace of class struggle itself” (164). “There is no objective reason why we cannot continue to make the programme of the Scottish Socialist Party evolve (174). “A programme, as Leon Trotsky once pointed out, is not formulated for discussion groups, but for the broad mass of the working class.” (159)

The crucial question is how will an adequate programme capable of meeting up to events “evolve” or “develop naturally” or “take shape”? In our view, an adequate programme will only develop through the conscious agency of a coherent Marxist organisation which has a clear, rounded-out understanding of both theoretical programmatic ideas and the character of an appropriate transitional programme.

Without spelling it out in so many words, the International Socialist Movement Majority’s document repeatedly denigrates the role of a revolutionary Marxist organisation in the development of a programme for the Scottish Socialist Party.

“The Scottish Socialist Party programme” say the International Socialist Movement Majority (paragraph 759), “has not been modified to accommodate some mythical ‘reformist tendency’ but is designed to appeal to the working class right now”. Ironically, this is precisely the classic formulation used by reformists to justify a ‘practical’, ‘realistic’ approach to the struggle of the working class. 

Without the theoretical anchor of Marxism and a coherent revolutionary organisation, even the best comrades, whatever their past record, are inevitably subject to reformist pressures. This is not a question of a “mythical reformist tendency” but of social pressure exerted through big layers of the working class itself.

In paragraphs 162-164, the International Socialist Movement Majority try to hide behind some points made by Peter Hadden in his Reply to the Politics of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). Peter (on page 20) correctly criticises the formulations of the ‘Where We Stand’ column of the SWP’s Irish paper. 

The opening ‘Reform not revolution’ section (quoted by the International Socialist Movement Majority in paragraph 162) is an ultra-concise, very simplistic version of State and Revolution. Peter is not arguing that the SWP should not have a theoretical, programmatic position on the state and socialist revolution. 

His point is that, at the present stage of development, such declarations in the Where We Stand column of a party newspaper are ultra-left, abstract propaganda. In a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation, it would be appropriate for a Marxist party to put forward demands in relation to the state and a struggle for power by the working class (as, for example, in France in May 1968, in Chile in 1973, in Portugal in 1974, etc.). In the present period, however, what is required as a public platform is a transitional programme, and it is this idea that Peter Hadden defends against the SWP.

The SWP (as Peter points out), on the one side, puts forward an abstract, general programme, while on the other, it puts forward an “action programme” which is ” ..in fact a left-reformist programme, a set of radical reforms which could be paid for within capitalism by soaking the rich with taxes” (p21). The SWP’s approach is, in reality, that of a maximum and a minimum programme – revolution in the remote future, ‘practical’, ‘realistic’ reforms now – the classic approach of the reformist social democracy in the past. In contrast to this, Peter defends the Transitional Programme.

Peter outlines the approach of the transitional programme (quoted in paragraph 163). “We agree,” say the International Socialist Movement Majority, “and that is exactly the way in which the Scottish Socialist Party programme has been formulated. That is not to suggest that the Scottish Socialist Party programme is fully rounded-out. This is a brand new party… programme and ideology take shape over many years…” (164)

However, in our view, the Scottish Socialist Party programme is not consistently based on a transitional approach. We will deal with some of the specific aspects of the Scottish Socialist Party programme later in the document.

What is a revolutionary programme?

It is unfortunately clear that the inadequacies of the Scottish Socialist Party programme do not only arise from compromises the PC have made with other forces within the Scottish Socialist Party. The PC themselves have made major, mistaken, alterations to their political opinions in the course of the last few years. This is demonstrated when they describe what they believe a revolutionary programme for the 21st century should be.

As we have already quoted the PC argue that “a genuinely revolutionary programme for the 21st century will not be a regurgitation of statements drawn up at specific periods in history such as the programme of the Comintern or the Fourth International (paragraph 165). 

This is absolutely true. We have never suggested that we should simply regurgitate these ideas, rather we have developed them to apply to the situation today. We have done this extremely successfully in the new world situation after the collapse of Stalinism. We are constantly updating and developing our programme in response to new developments and struggles. However, we still base ourselves on the fundamental ideas of Marxism and Trotskyism. There has been no change in the nature of class society of a fundamental nature that would result in a need to call these ideas into question.

The PC’s document lists eight points they see as an outline of a revolutionary programme for today. We do not think that it is possible to sum up the historic experience of Marxism in eight very short paragraphs. 

There are many very serious omissions from this list without which it cannot be said to be based on the essential tenets of Trotskyism. For example, the nature of capitalism, the need for a planned economy, the nature of Stalinism, the national question, the role of imperialism and the theory of permanent revolution. Of course, there will be workers and youth that draw revolutionary conclusions without yet having an understanding on all these issues. 

However, a revolutionary programme drawn up by inexperienced sections of workers, new to revolutionary ideas, is entirely different to one drawn up by the leadership of a section of the Committee for a Workers’ International. It is incumbent on the PC to include all of the issues that they consider necessary for a Marxist revolutionary programme.

In addition, the proposed programme is historical and general. Many on the left could claim to agree with it, even though, in reality, they would not agree with the correct application of a revolutionary programme today. There are many vital contemporary questions about which the Committee for a Workers’ International has used the methods of Marxism to work out a position. 

These include the effects of the collapse of Stalinism, the bourgeoisification of Social Democracy, the nature of the economic crisis of capitalism and our understanding of the national question. It may not be necessary to have the same position as the Committee for a Workers’ International on these issues in order to be defined in general terms as a ‘revolutionary’. 

However, in order to intervene effectively in the current situation as a revolutionary, and to gain the ear of important sections of the working class for revolutionary ideas, we consider that it is vital to have drawn the conclusions we have on these and other issues.

On parties this is all the eight points say: 

“A striving to unify the working class, to overcome divisions within it and to maintain its class independence and clear demarcation from all bourgeois parties. In the struggles of today and tomorrow, our aim is to unify the working class to defend and advance its own class interests” (paragraph 170).

“A defence of the principles of socialist democracy. We are for the self-organisation of working people, whether in the workplace or in the communities, for them to democratically take charge of their own struggles and their own lives. Within that framework we defend the right of all currents of opinion to be expressed. Based on historical experience, we seek to counteract bureaucratic tendencies by the widest possible democracy and by strict refusal of material privileges. We apply this within our own parties.” (171)

This is all true, but it is not enough. One of the most important lessons of the twentieth century was that to take and consolidate power the working class needed a mass revolutionary party. Such a party can only be built in the course of revolutionary movements if it exists, at least in embryonic form, beforehand.

On internationalism the eight points state: 

“A recognition of the importance of internationalism. We stress the international nature of the struggle and our solidarity with all workers in struggle anywhere and all peoples oppressed by imperialism. We see the highest point of internationalism as the building of a workers’ International.” (172)

It says nothing of the vital necessity of the international revolution or the impossibility of building socialism in one country. It says that the ‘highest point’ of internationalism is to build a workers’ international. Yet this effectively postpones the need for an international to sometime in the future. 

It also does not specify what kind of workers’ international. Our goal is not, for example, the recreation of the Second International. We see that it is the duty of revolutionaries, regardless of circumstances, to fight for a world party of revolution. Even when we only had members in Britain we strove to begin to build the embryo of such a party.

Multinationals

The effects of the weakening of the PC’s understanding of what constitutes a revolutionary Marxist programme are demonstrated by some aspects of the programme of the Scottish Socialist Party. An example of this is the section of the Scottish Socialist Party’s Scottish Economy document on the multinationals. The Scottish Socialist Party conference resolution on the Scottish economy, drafted by Alan McCombes, included the following statement:

“Nor would it be practical, in the short term at least, to take into public ownership those factories that are essentially branch assembly plants for products originating elsewhere (e.g. in the electronics industry), or call centres dedicated to serving external companies”

Alan agreed to remit this statement – so it was not put at the Scottish Socialist Party conference. However, this statement is defended in the PC’s document.

Why is the PC excluding any possibility of nationalising some key sections of industry? There are many ex-lefts who argue that globalisation has made socialism and nationalisation an impossibility. Our emphasis is always to explain that there is nothing to stop the working class taking power and nationalising foreign owned companies. 

After all, foreign ownership does not alter the fact that the factory and machinery are in Scotland and can be taken over. At the same time, we explain that, today more than ever, a democratic workers’ state could only survive on the basis of spreading the revolution to other countries.

The PC try to downplay the significance of this policy by saying: “The companies involved actually employ a tiny fraction of the Scottish workforce – around three percent.” This is not true. In fact, according to the Scottish Office, overseas companies employ 81,750 manufacturing workers – this is 29% of manufacturing workers in Scotland. 

This does not include those workers in Scotland who are employed by companies based in England or Wales. In 1996 (the last year for which figures are available) Net Capital Expenditure by overseas-owned manufacturing firms totalled 586 million – 45% of total capital expenditure. Again this does not include firms based in England or Wales. 

The PC may argue that they do not consider all of these factories to be “branch assembly plants”. However, even if you only consider the electronics industry to which Alan specifically refers, US-owned electronics companies alone employ 7% of manufacturing workers in Scotland.

We have never argued that, on taking power, the working class should nationalise the entire economy. Complete nationalisation would be unnecessary and even counter-productive. So long as decisive sectors are nationalised, small businesses could exist within the framework of a planned economy. 

Moreover, it is in the interests of the working class to win the support of small business people. We have always concentrated on calling for the nationalisation under workers7 control of the commanding heights of the economy as part of a socialist plan of production. On an all-Britain scale that would currently include around 150 companies. 

The list of exactly which companies would be nationalised and incorporated in a socialist plan would have to be drawn up on the basis of detailed information on the different sectors of the economy. This could only be achieved when full access to the books of the different companies was achieved as a result of the action of the working class. 

It would be a mistake to try and specify now, in advance, exactly which companies should be nationalised when the working class takes power. However, given the globalisation of the world economy today, and the particular weakness of British capitalism, it would undoubtedly include a large number of factories owned by foreign multinationals.

On what basis are the PC ruling out the nationalisation of some factories? Alan implies it depends on whether they are “branch assembly plants”. But what does this mean? If the working class take power in Malaysia, where a large section of industry is based on the production of microchips, which are certainly “branch assembly plants”, the working class will have to take those assembly plants over. 

They are key sections of the economy. An international appeal would have to be made to the workforce of the multinationals concerned. Many of the factories would then have to be converted to other production. Of course the weakness of the Malaysian economy will make it doubly urgent that the revolution spreads, but the answer would certainly not be to leave the microchip plants in the hands of Siemens and the other multinationals.

The PC says that, on taking power, they would do as we suggest and issue an international appeal for the working class across the world to take over the multinationals. They then go on to say: “But the suggestion that the working class internationally will rise up simultaneously against capitalism is to substitute naive idealism for a concrete and rigorous analysis of the class struggle and an honest perspective of how it is likely to unfold” (paragraph 189).

They then say: “To pretend that the Scottish Socialist Party could simply issue an appeal to workers in Silicon Valley, California, for example, and wait for them to seize their companies can only disorientate, miseducate and disarm the working class in Scotland” (paragraph 191).

We are pretending no such thing. But, in reality, the PC has drawn the opposite conclusion. They appear to believe it is ruled out that workers’ outside Scotland could take decisive action in support of a new workers^‘ state in Scotland. This is a major error. Incidentally, many of the Scottish call-centres’ parent companies are based far closer than California, in England and Wales. The comrades are precluding the possibility that such workers would act in support of a workers^‘ state a few miles away.

It is clear that this is the conclusion they have drawn:

“That we are fighting for in Scotland is a transitional state in which for a temporary period the economy will not be fully socialised because it is impossible to create a fully socialised economy in a small country like Scotland” (paragraph 192).

It is a major mistake, as this statement does, to set limits on what measures the working class will need to carry out when it takes power. It is not possible to lay out in advance either a blueprint for, or limitations on, the programme the working class will have to implement in order to improve living conditions and consolidate power.

We are not fighting for a transitional state in Scotland, we are fighting for the working class to take power world-wide; this is the only way of building a socialist society. Of course, we understand that revolution will not develop simultaneously internationally, but rather will develop first on a national basis. However, it is not possible to predict in advance in which country the working class will take power first. There is no reason to conclude, as the PC seems to, that it will be Scotland.

Regardless of the country the working class first takes power in, it will only survive if the revolution is spread internationally. That is why a world party of revolution is so vital. How long a country could survive if isolated will depend on several factors, primarily the development of the economy in the country. Of course, in order to hold out for revolution in other countries an isolated workers^‘ state may have to make all kinds of compromises. 

However, realising this may be necessary is an entirely different thing to proposing such a compromise in advance and advancing them as programmatic aims. Yet this is what the PC’s document is arguing. If they persist in putting this position it will lead to even more serious mistakes in the future.

The PC attempts to cloud the debate on the Scottish Socialist Party programme by attacking the What We Stand For (WWSF) programme that is featured each week on the back of The Socialist, the newspaper of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. They argue that this programme is, 

“As applied to Scotland … actually a timid, reformist, left social democratic programme” because the demand for the nationalisation of the top 150 companies would only mean four or five being nationalised in Scotland. We would like to see how this was worked out. Even if this were so it does not make the WWSF Column “timid” or “reformist”. 

It is written for England and Wales. Across the whole of Scotland, England and Wales the top 150 companies do constitute an approximation of the commanding heights of the economy. If this is not sufficient for Scotland then the comrades should work out what number would approximate the commanding heights of the economy in Scotland. In addition, given that throughout Britain we are still fighting against a single state machine and a single ruling class, the Scottish comrades should continue to raise the all-Britain demand.

The National Question

The PC also attacks the WWSF column because it does not include “the revolutionary demand for the break up of the British state and the establishment of a socialist Scotland, a socialist Wales, a socialist Ireland and a socialist England, within a wider European socialist alliance” (paragraph 199). They go on to say: “The failure of the Socialist Party of England and Wales to deal with the national question is in our opinion an astonishing omission…” (paragraph 200).

This is a misrepresentation of reality. The WWSF column is an extremely brief list of immediate and transitional demands which does not take up every important issue facing the working class. However, the Socialist Party in England and Wales has an excellent record of accurately assessing the national question and taking up relevant demands, both today and in the past.

In the 1970s the British section supported a ‘yes^‘ vote in the referendum on devolution, against the opposition at that time of many comrades in Scotland. 

More recently, when the Scottish comrades first raised the possibility of adopting the demand for an independent socialist Scotland, the Socialist Party EC argued, against the initial opposition of many of the Socialist Party National Committee, that, due to the development in support for independence in Scotland, it was correct to call for an independent socialist Scotland, as part of a wider Socialist confederation of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. 

The Socialist Party EC and the IS also proposed, before the debate on the Scottish Socialist Party, that the development of the national question meant that it would be best if the comrades in Scotland became a separate section of the Committee for a Workers’ International.

However, exactly what demands on the national question we raise, and the way in which we raise them, depends on the consciousness of the audience we are aiming at. It would be a mistake, in England, to raise the “revolutionary demand for the break up of the British state” in the way the International Socialist Movement PC poses it. If posed in this way it could appear that we support English nationalism, which is thoroughly reactionary. Instead, in England, we have to pose the issue positively in terms of the need to support the democratic rights of the people of Scotland and Wales. 

Every major article in The Socialist on the question of the Scottish Parliament has taken this approach and has raised in the course of the article the demand for an independent socialist Scotland as part of a confederation (or alliance) of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.

In Wales it would also be wrong for the comrades to call bluntly for the break up of the British state. As the vote for the Welsh Assembly demonstrated, there is a growth in national consciousness, but there is not (at the moment) the strength of support for independence that exists in Scotland. The comrades in Wales put forward the following demand: “For a socialist Wales as part of a socialist alliance of Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland.”

We should at all times also raise the need for the unity of the working class and the common class interests that exist between the workers of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The International Socialist Movement PC says that they would like to debate these issues further. We would also like to do so. Although we agree that it is now correct to raise the demand for an independent socialist Scotland (provided it is linked to a wider Socialist confederation) we are concerned that the International Socialist Movement PC has too rigid an attitude to the national question. Moreover the comrades do not stress the need for unity between the workers of Scotland, Wales and England.

We believe that, while it is correct to say that the general trend in Scotland will be for an increase in support for independence, it would be wrong to underestimate the degree to which the mood can ebb and flow. It would also be a mistake to imagine that there will be a straight road to an independent Scotland. The referendum on the Scottish parliament gave a glimpse of the way that the majority of the bourgeoisie will resist the break up of the British state. The recent dilution by the SNP of their position on independence demonstrates how sections of its leadership could capitulate to this pressure.

It would also be a mistake to underestimate, and therefore be unprepared to counter, the elements of reactionary anti-English nationalism that can be mixed up in a support for independence.

Scottish Service Tax

The Scottish Service Tax (Scottish Service Tax) is being proposed by the Scottish Socialist Party to replace the council tax. The Scottish Service Tax is a steeply graduated, progressive income tax. In the past, the demand for such a tax was raised by reformists in the Labour Party and had widespread support. 

In the future reformism will take up this demand again on a large scale. However, in the 1990s the weakness of reformism has meant that we have been virtually the only ones who have raised the idea of progressive taxation. It is a popular idea and it is correct that we should raise it and fight for it. 

The PC document persists in arguing against our supposed opposition to the Scottish Service Tax. They argue that our, and the Scottish faction’s, position is: “There’s no point in fighting for the Scottish Parliament to use its powers to challenge the wealth of the rich because they will resist it. So let’s just confine ourselves to abstract propaganda in favour of socialism” (paragraph 222).

This is simply untrue. The Committee for a Workers’ International has never opposed the Scottish Service Tax. Other sections of the Committee for a Workers’ International, including the Socialist Party, also campaign in favour of similar tax increases. But unlike the SWP/IST we do not simply demand “Tax the Rich”.

Our criticism is not over whether the Scottish Socialist Party should campaign for the Scottish Service Tax; it is a question of ensuring that it is posed as one policy within a programme which raises the broader questions of nationalisation and economic planning. It is only correct to conduct a campaign for the Scottish Service Tax if we give the working class a realistic picture of what it can achieve, and link it to the need to take over the commanding heights of the economy. It is also crucial that we explain clearly to the rank and file of the Scottish Socialist Party the reasons we are raising this demand and the importance of linking it to broader demands.

Unfortunately we think that some of the Scottish Socialist Party propaganda has exaggerated the significance of the Scottish Service Tax. Council tax currently makes up only 4% of all tax receipts (although the Scottish Service Tax would increase this percentage in Scotland). In addition it would not benefit the unemployed, or pensioners on state benefits, as they are exempt from council tax anyway (although it would make this automatic instead of, as at the moment, requiring endless paperwork). 

In reality the Scottish Service Tax would mean something like a 15 a week increase for low paid workers. In some of the Scottish Socialist Party’s material the limitations of the Scottish Service Tax is explained quite well. For example, in the introduction “A Scottish Service Tax for Local Government”‘, which was passed at the last Scottish Socialist Party conference, it says:

“Such gross disparities of wealth cannot be rectified within the existing political, economic and constitutional framework. The Scottish Parliament has no serious fiscal or economic powers. It does, however, have control over local government taxation. While fighting for radical socialist change nationally and globally, the Scottish Socialist Party will also campaign for the Scottish Parliament to use its limited powers to begin to challenge inequality.”

However, later on the same document exaggerates the potential of the Scottish Service Tax when it declares: “…(The Scottish Service Tax) would nonetheless begin to redress the balance away from the accumulation of wealth by a prosperous minority in favour of regenerating education, local amenities, social services and council housing.”

This is an exaggeration. An income tax can have no real effect on the accumulation of wealth of a rich minority. Personal income is not the primarily measure of wealth of the ruling class. The wealth of the ruling class essentially derives from the exploitation of the working class, the accumulation of capital and inherited wealth. However, this exaggeration is mild compared to statements that have appeared in the Scottish Socialist Voice. For example, in Issue 24, the Scottish Service Tax is describes as, “going to the heart of social inequality in Scotland”!

More importantly, the comrades have failed to explain the limitations of taxation. Under capitalism it is impossible for taxation to result in a fundamental redistribution of wealth. In the 1960s, when the right-wing reformist Harold Wilson proposed a wealth tax in Britain, a strike of capital was threatened by big business. Again, in 1974 a Green Paper proposed a wealth tax, and it was met with a tidal wave of outrage from big business. Of course, the governments of the day backed off under this pressure. 

The bourgeoisie will always avoid paying taxes through a thousand different fiddles. If they consider a tax to threaten them they will go further, by organising a strike of capital, moving out of the country and so on. This does not mean that we oppose progressive taxation but we have to link it to the need for nationalisation. In the many articles that have appeared in the Scottish Socialist Voice about the Scottish Service Tax this has not been done once.

The PC justifies the limitations of the Scottish Service Tax by arguing that it is “… a specific policy which we are fighting for within the Scottish Parliament which does not have the powers to impose a general wealth tax or take industry and finance into public ownership…” (205)

But this is beside the point. It is correct to argue for reforms that the Scottish Parliament has the formal powers to carry out. However, we cannot leave it there. We have to link demands like the Scottish Service Tax to the rest of our programme. If possible, we should attempt to use the parliament to do this. When we had MPs at Westminster they found all kind of means to raise our programme. For example, they moved many Early Day Motions calling for a discussion on different issues. 

This could probably be done in the Scottish Parliament on the issue of nationalisation. Even if we can’t do this through parliament we must raise these issues in International Socialist Movement and Scottish Socialist Party propaganda. If we don’t we are misinforming the working class by giving an impression that progressive taxation can achieve more than it actually can. It is especially important that Scottish Socialist Party members understand the limitations of the Scottish Service Tax, and they see it as part of a transitional programme, and link it to more far-reaching policies.

The PC argues that the faction, and ourselves, are confused on the Scottish Service Tax. They say: “The comrades are hopelessly muddled on this issue. They state in Scottish Socialist Party Conference Review that ‘in general we would not oppose such a tax reform but it would be largely ineffective in combating poverty and deprivation.’ They then say that ‘the demand will be fiercely resisted by the political establishment who will not want the ideas even of a limited wealth redistribution to become something that the parliament gets an appetite for.’ But if it was such a mild and ineffective reformist measure, why should there be resistance?” (paragraph 219, our emphasis).

We find this argumentation shocking. Taxation of big business does not come much milder than in Britain at the moment, yet Rupert Murdoch has never paid a penny of it. It is quite reasonable to predict that big business in Scotland will try to avoid paying the Scottish Service Tax if it becomes law. 

More importantly, it is correct to predict that they could threaten more extreme measures, such as capital strikes, against this, or other, reformist measures. The PC is implying that the opposition of big business to a measure means by definition that it is not reformist. Yet we have always explained that left reformism makes the mistake of trying to reform capitalism piecemeal, and therefore enrages the bourgeoisie without taking away its power, like trying to pull out the teeth of an angry tiger one by one!

It is clear from reading the Research Report by Professors Mike Danson and Geoff Whitman, who conceived the Scottish Service Tax (“Time for Redistribution of Income: The Case for a Scottish Service Tax”), that they are not socialists, but neo-Keynesians. They see the Scottish Service Tax as something which we would describe as “a mildly reformist measure”. 

For example, in defending the need for higher taxes, they are anxious to emphasise the acceptability of such policies: “The assumptions underpinning their analysis (economists at the University of Strathclyde who argue for higher taxes) are not unduly restrictive and recognise that Scotland has a very open economy… The critical conditions to achieve this range of policies are not that stringent and would not be alien to the politics of the 1960s and 1970s, nor critically to many other member states of the EU.

The PC uses the battle of Liverpool City Council to justify their position on the Scottish Service Tax. They say: “Did the Liverpool struggle pose the question of the socialist transformation of society? Of course not. In fact, it was conceded by a Tory government under pressure from a mass movement in Liverpool So was this a mildly reformist demand? Were we sowing illusions that if only Liverpool could get the 30 million the problems of the working class could be solved?” (paragraph 240).

In reality, there are a number of important differences between the struggle in Liverpool and the Scottish Service Tax. The first is that we did raise our wider programme beyond the immediate struggle for the 30 million. We didn’t do so in every single agitational speech or leaflet, but it was a constant theme running through our material in that period. To give one example, among many, in the MIR editorial of June 1984 we said: 

“Militant has pointed out many times that the catastrophic situation of British capitalism demands that the labour movement should put forward a socialist alternative. The day-to-day battle in defence of jobs and services in Liverpool has been combined with the idea of Labour carrying through the socialist reorganisation of society. This is the only way to consolidate the limited gains achieved by the Liverpool City Council.”

Most importantly, we endeavoured to ensure that our own members understood both our tactics and the longer term strategy of the party. We did this through regular internal meetings, discussions and so on.

Another difference between the Scottish Service Tax and the battle in Liverpool, or the poll tax, is that they were defensive struggles to defeat attacks on the working class. In that sense, we did not pick the terrain on which we fought. This did not alter the necessity of, as we did, raising wider demands alongside the immediate issues. Nonetheless, the Scottish Service Tax is very different. The comrades are setting the agenda themselves, and are therefore free to work out the best possible programme on the question of wealth redistribution.

However, there is another side to this issue. The poll tax and Liverpool were mass movements, involving millions, led by our party. The Scottish Service Tax is a demand that the comrades are raising. As yet there has been no significant action by working class people in support of this demand. This does not mean the comrades should stop raising it; on the contrary, it is clearly a popular demand. However, we believe that at this stage it is a somewhat abstract proposal. 

We were able to organise mass non-payment of the poll tax primarily because the tax was unbearable for millions of working class people. It is when some aspect of the existing order becomes an intolerable burden that the mass of the working class is prepared to take decisive action. It is not possible to exactly predict in advance when, or on what issue, the potential for such action will occur. When the potential does exist we can use our programme to organise it and give it direction. However, no demand we raise will, in itself, automatically lead to mass struggle.

We believe that underlying the failure of the comrades to raise our wider programme is a mistaken conception that it is unnecessary, even inadvisable, to do so at this stage. The leadership of the PC see revolutionary struggle as postponed to the dim and distant future. Therefore, they believe that we should concentrate all our energy raising general socialist propaganda and our day-to-day activity fighting on immediate demands, while the task of building a revolutionary party is left to a later stage. 

This is reflected in their attitude to programme. They do not think it matters whether we clearly explain to the working class the limitations of taxation as a means of changing society, because changing society is not on the agenda at this point in time. This is fundamentally incorrect. 

Even where it is not possible to explain our full programme to the working class, we have to ensure that the demands we raise point in the same direction as our full programme and act as a bridge towards the idea of the socialist transformation of society. If it becomes a trend that we fail to do this we are, in reality, misleading those workers who take our programme seriously.

The Question of Cuba

The political retreat of the comrades on issues pertaining to Scotland is matched by their effective abandonment of long-held Committee for a Workers’ International positions on international questions, particularly Cuba. 

The comrades state that “We believe there is a genuine discussion to be had on the character of Cuba, given that it has stood against the tide of capitalist restoration over the past ten years, despite losing the mammoth subsidies from the Soviet Union” (paragraph 251). 

They also write, “We have no definite position on the nature of the Cuban State, our exact demands etc.” (paragraph 260). Well, the Committee for a Workers’ International does have a long held position on Cuba. However, at both at the Scottish Socialist Party conference and in their document the comrades put a position that is in opposition to this.

Our position is quite distinct from that of others, such as the USFI, which believes that Cuba is a workers’ state with “deformations”. Like the Democratic Socialist Party in Australia today, they maintain that the regime of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara was comparable with that of Lenin and Trotsky in the period of 1917 to 1923. After all, didn’t Lenin describe the Bolshevik regime at that time as a “workers’ state with bureaucratic deformations”? The International Socialist Movement PC hint that this is now their position.

There were those like the Posadists and other Trotskyists’ who took a completely ultra-left position towards the Cuban regime and the leaders of the revolution. We opposed them. We implacably supported the revolution against the attempts of US imperialism to overthrow and then economically sabotage the government of Castro, and continue to do so.

There was nothing in the socialist and Marxist textbooks – of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg or even Trotsky – which fully prepared Marxists for what happened In Cuba. It is true that in his last writings, Trotsky gave some indication of the processes which later developed in the Cuban Revolution. 

He pointed out that leaders from a non-Marxist, middle-class background could, in conditions of extreme social crisis, be pushed much further than they originally intended into breaking with capitalism. We were also better prepared for events in Cuba. This was because of the analysis which had been made by the British Trotskyists of the Chinese Revolution of 1944-49 and the processes in the post-war period which developed in the neo-colonial world.

Yet even the best theory is not able to fully anticipate how a revolution will actually unfold We recognised that the Cuban Revolution, which was led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and the 26th July Movement, originated outside of the Stalinist tradition. This regime was enormously popular. In its first phase there was mass involvement and participation, including elements of workers’ control and of ‘popular power’. A planned economy had been established; and Castro proclaimed Cuba as a ‘socialist republic’ in April 1960.

In this situation many, including the USFI and other Marxists and Trotskyists, were, in our opinion, swept off their feet. They replaced a balanced Marxist appraisal – support for the revolution but linking this to proposals for establishing workers’ democracy in Cuba – with impressionism. This did involve comparing the government and the state in Cuba with that of the Bolsheviks in the first period after 1917. The Scottish comrades are making the same mistake today but with much less justification than when the revolution first triumphed.

Russia was, under the rule of the Bolsheviks, a healthy workers’ state but with certain ‘bureaucratic deformations’. These ‘deformations’ arose from the isolation of the Russian Revolution, which resulted from the betrayal of the revolutionary wave in Western Europe above all by the leaders of the social democratic organisations. 

From a Marxist standpoint a healthy workers’ state with ‘bureaucratic deformations’ is entirely different to a ‘bureaucratically deformed workers state’. A healthy workers’ state with ‘bureaucratic’ deformations and a deformed workers’ state is the difference between a wart and a monstrous ulcer, an incubus, which threatens to consume the ‘body’, the planned economy. 

Where we have a healthy workers’ state with ‘bureaucratic deformations’ (the regime of Lenin and Trotsky) it is necessary to correct this through ‘reforms’, through increased workers’ control and management, and the spread of the revolution on the international plane. In a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state, a bureaucratic caste has separated itself from the control of the masses. What is therefore required to establish a healthy workers’ state is not ‘reform’ but the establishment of workers’ democracy. 

This is only possible through a complete change of political regime which in turn requires a political revolution.

However, we never at any time adopted the ultra-left position of the Cuban ‘Trotskyists’. They characterised Castro and Guevara as ‘petit bourgeois’ opportunists and called for their overthrow. This at a time when millions of people filled Havana and other cities of Cuba in support of the regime and the revolution! 

We supported all progressive measures of the government, the agrarian reform, nationalisation of industry and the beginnings of the organisation of a plan. At the same time we accompanied this with calls for the full implementation of workers’ control and management of the state and society through committees of workers and peasants. We also put forward the demands, which Trotsky had worked out for Russia, adapted to the Cuban situation, for election of officials, right of recall, etc.

The comrades are quite wrong when they delve into the history of the Committee for a Workers’ International in order to justify their position. They write: 

“In the late 1970s we understand that Peter Taaffe described Cuba as a ‘workers’ state with bureaucratic deformations’ – a formula that was opposed by Ted Grant then withdrawn. Instead Cuba was lumped together in the same bag and under the same label as Stalin’s Russia, Ceaucescu’s Romania, Honecker’s East Germany, Jaruzelski’s Poland etc.” (paragraph 250). 

It is unbelievable that anyone with any history in our organisation could describe our position in these terms. At no time have we described the Cuban regime as a crude copy of ‘Honecker’s East Germany’, nor Fidel Castro as a ‘Cuban Stalin’.

We reply to some of these points more fully in the Committee for a Workers’ International’s recent book, ‘Cuba – Socialism and Democracy’. 

In Peter Taaffe’s original articles on Cuba there was some loose phraseology on the character of the state, it is true. A number of comrades, including Ted Grant, pointed to this, and in the subsequently produced pamphlet a few lines were changed. There was never any doubt about our concept of the character of the Cuban state. 

Our leading comrades at that time, including Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe, argued against the characterisation of Cuba defended by the USFI. This was done at the USFI World Congress in 1965. They claimed it was a “workers’ state with bureaucratic deformations”. We said in our introduction to our pamphlet on Cuba: “Some minor alterations have been added in order to render the analysis of the Cuban revolution more precise”. 

This was a question of the clarification of formulations not of a substantive political difference. We were able to reproduce the three articles with literally a few words changed. The overall content of these articles was that a revolution had taken place in Cuba and a workers’ state had been established. 

However, this was a deformed workers’ state, albeit with a much greater popular base than the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The implication in the comrades’ statements is that Peter Taaffe and Ted Grant had different positions on Cuba when in reality there was none, either in 1978 or in 1959-60. There was a fundamental agreement on our analysis of the new phenomenon of the Cuban Revolution.

The current controversy in the Scottish Socialist Party over Cuba arose because of the resolution from Pollok submitted to the Scottish Socialist Party conference. This short resolution reads in full: 

“This conference salutes the tremendous social advance achieved by the socialist republic of Cuba. Conference notes the continued aggression of the United States of America and its illegal and undemocratic campaign to try and blockade, isolate and crush socialist Cuba. 

Conference condemns the USA and commits the Scottish Socialist Party to support campaigns to break the trade blockade and build direct political, trading and cultural links with Cuba. Conference reserves the right to disagree with certain policies and practises of the socialist government in Cuba but commits itself to the defence of the ideals, advances and the rights of the Cuban people.”

To say the least this resolution represents a major retreat from the accepted position of the Committee for a Workers’ International on Cuba. To the criticism that it is wrong to describe Cuba as “the socialist republic of Cuba” the comrades in effect argue that they are just using the terminology of the Cuban regime. 

But the comrades are adding the term “socialist”, the country’s official name is “The Republic of Cuba”. However, in the second sentence they themselves use the term “socialist Cuba”, which is absolutely impermissible from a Marxist point of view. This is the language used by the friends of the Soviet Union’ about Russia and Eastern Europe in the past. Cuba remains a planned economy but it is not Socialist^‘ and it is entirely wrong to dignify it in this way. It is an essentially planned economy but it has a one-party totalitarian regime.

The developments in the last ten years have not altered the class character of the Castro regime despite the huge inroads made by the market. It is true that Cuba has managed to hold out despite the sabotage of the ex-bureaucrats turned capitalists in the former Soviet Union. An important factor in this is a huge increase in tourism as well as the maintenance of a planned economy. This has allowed Cuba to painfully crawl out of the abyss.

However, it would be wrong for us to conclude that there is no longer a danger of capitalist restoration. The concessions made by Castro are opening the door more and more to the Market’. The outcome of the struggle over the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez represented a severe defeat for the rabid Cuban Miami right-wing refugees. 

The intervention of the Clinton administration is also recognition by the decisive sections of US imperialism that the continuation of its previous policies, of boycott and isolation of Cuba, is playing into the hands of its imperialist rivals. They have moved in and bought up Cuban assets.

The central point of our analysis on Cuba in the present situation should be that only workers^‘ democracy is a guarantee that the gains of the revolution will be preserved. It is not sufficient to say, “Conference deserves the right to disagree^“ without explaining that our main Disagreement^‘ is that workers^‘ democracy does not exist in Cuba. 

The comrades also say that they defend the “ideals, advances and the rights of the Cuban people^“. What ideals, which “rights^“ are the comrades talking about? There is no democracy in Cuba in the sense of a healthy workers^‘ state. To use this language is to give entirely unwarranted support, by Trotskyists, for the Castro government and its regime.

It is entirely wrong also to imply as the comrades do, that in the “present international climate^“ we should merely call for the defence of Cuba from the embargo by US imperialism with muted implied criticisms of the Cuban regime. The analogy that they draw with 1980s miners^‘ strike is false. 

They say that to criticise Castro or the present regime will be the equivalent of criticising Arthur Scargill during the miners^‘ strike. Quite frankly we were astonished when we read these lines. We did make criticisms of Arthur Scargill during the miners^‘ strike and in 1992 but not in the manner of the ultra-lefts nor in a direct fashion. We put forward demands at each stage for the success of the strike. 

At times these were at variance with the position of Arthur Scargill. In 1992 we quite explicitly criticised the involvement of the CBI and called for Arthur Scargill to name a date for a one-day strike, which he stubbornly refused to do. However, we never engaged in ultra-left insults nor do we in the case of Cuba or towards Fidel Castro adopt this kind of position. 

We call for workers^‘ democracy, with a series of demands which is explained in our material. If Castro supports these measures, which is extremely unlikely to say the least, then all well and good. If he doesn^‘t then he will be seen as a representative of the privileged layers that dominate Cuban society.

It is a complete evasion for the comrades to say:

“Our central demand should not be for a ‘new revolution in Cuba’, but for revolution based on socialist democracy in capitalist states of Latin America, which would then have repercussions in Cuba itself”.

 On this basis Cuban Marxists would not call for ‘socialist democracy’ in Cuba. They would have no role at the present time except to wait for the revolutions in Latin America and the establishment of “socialist democracy” there first. Apart from being completely mechanical this leaves open the question of what exactly the ‘repercussions’ in Cuba itself would be. The clear implication is that all that is required is the ‘reform’ of a few ‘deformations’ in Cuba itself.

In reality, while most of the basic elements of a planned economy still exist, although severely weakened, the Cuban state and society is controlled by an undemocratic elite. A section of them are already looking for an accommodation with imperialism and a possible return back to capitalism. The complicating factor in the case of Cuba, as opposed to the USSR and Eastern Europe, is the existence of the Miami refugees. 

If they return triumphant they will unleash a bloody reign of terror against Castro, his supporters and significant sections of the Cuban bureaucracy. A proletarian revolution in Latin America, particularly in the key urbanised areas of Brazil or Argentina, Chile etc., will have a decisive effect on Cuba. What would these effects be? It would rekindle the original liberating aspirations of the Cuban revolution with mass pressure for workers’ democracy. What would this workers’ democracy constitute if not a ‘new revolution’ in Cuba?

The Committee for a Workers’ International is quite prepared to open up a “genuine discussion” on the character of Cuba. We believe this will demonstrate that our long-held view, which has been restated a number of times recently, will vindicate the analysis that we have made.

Ireland

Many of the points made by the International Socialist Movement PC on Ireland repeat those made earlier by Frances Curran in a letter to Peter Hadden. After the Scottish Socialist Party conference Peter Hadden wrote a detailed reply and asked that it be circulated to International Socialist Movement comrades in Scotland.

Not only was this not done, the same points are now being repeated without any reference to the information given in the reply. This is no way to conduct a discussion. To simply repeat points that have already been answered with no reference to the reply amounts to misinformation. If the majority comrades disagree with the points contained in the reply they should answer and not ignore them. Otherwise the debate cannot progress.

Our criticisms of the statement on Ireland adopted at the Scottish Socialist Party conference are set out in Peter Hadden’s letter. His letter answers the claim made by in the latest International Socialist Movement majority document that the Scottish Socialist Party’s position “incorporates all of our main analysis. The statement is a class analysis and a socialist programme on the very complex national question in Ireland, the Peace Process, repression, policing, the development of class politics and a united socialist alternative” (paragraph 267).

In fact the Scottish Socialist Party statement falls short of a rounded-out class position. An example is its analysis of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). There are formulations in the statement that sow illusions in this agreement. The majority refute this arguing that it is 

“sophistry and distortion to say the document ‘refers to the positive features of the GFA’ when in fact it refers to the positive features ‘arising from the GFA’. In other words if does not seek to reinforce illusions in an Agreement cobbled together by bourgeois politicians, but seeks to exploit the openings at least temporarily emerging from it” (paragraph 291).

Yes, the statement uses the words ‘arising from’ but the comrades neglect to point out that it then goes on to clarify what the ‘positive features arising from the Agreement’ are. Of the three listed, the last one refers to the openings for the class struggle. However, the first two are in a different vein. They state, “It calls for respect and equality, rights historically lacking in Northern Ireland” and “It declares Britain’s acceptance that the future of Ireland will be determined by the people of Ireland.”

These claims for the Agreement sow illusions in what it can deliver as well as in the democratic credentials of the British ruling class. This is reinforced by an earlier section which quotes verbatim whole chunks of it as evidence of “the compromises inherent in the Good Friday Agreement.”

The fact that some of the criticisms we have made of the Agreement are also included in other parts of the statement only means that it is, at best, contradictory and confused. It is not a rounded “class analysis” or a “socialist programme”.

There are other weaknesses in the statement. The bullet points at the end are unbalanced. They deal with repression and British withdrawal. However, they make no criticism of the para-militaries and fail to call for working class unity. There is no demand for a new working class party to challenge the sectarian parties. As they stand, and especially given the language used, the overall impression they give the programme is that of a left republican tinge.

The comrades argue that these broader points are contained in the statement. This is true but, given the fact that the conference statement is confused and contradictory, it is not a small matter that they are omitted from the campaigning programme at the end. Given the complexity of the national question and the sensitivities involved it is essential that the demands we raise and the language we use are precise and balanced.

The majority document goes on to argue that the position adopted by the Scottish Socialist Party is an advance on that agreed by the Scottish Socialist Alliance two years earlier. This is simply asserted with no argument or evidence to back the claim.

In fact the previous Scottish Socialist Alliance document – given the political context in which it was written – while not a fully worked out class position, was better and clearer than this year’s Scottish Socialist Party statement. In other words rather than an ‘evolution^‘ of the discussion we have seen a retreat. This is both in terms of political accommodation – and in terms of the methods used to arrive at this accommodation.

To be specific the earlier Scottish Socialist Alliance document is sharper in a number of respects. Written at the outset of the peace talks it does not hint that the governments or major parties can offer anything positive. It calls for the obstacles to all parties entering the talks to be removed. It also calls for the talks to be open to allow “trade unions, community, women’s and youth organisation, to give a direct voice to the communities in pursuit of solutions.” This is the position that was advocated by the comrades in Northern Ireland at the time. It is a consistent class position – unlike the analysis of the Good Friday Agreement contained in the later Scottish Socialist Party statement.

On the national question the majority comrades have become increasingly reluctant to put forward any formulation that advocates close links between an independent socialist Scotland and a socialist England and Wales. This is reflected in the difference between the two statements. The Scottish Socialist Alliance statement calls for a “socialist federation of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, on a free equal and voluntary basis, as part of a socialist federation of Europe.” The later Scottish Socialist Party statement amends this to “close co-operation between Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales on a free, equal, voluntary basis as part of a socialist alliance of Europe.”

There can be a legitimate discussion about whether the term “alliance” or “federation” or ‘confederation^‘ is the best term to describe the linkage between socialist states we have always advocated. However, this latest shift is more than a matter of terminological clarification. The failure to advocate any formal link between a socialist Scotland and socialist states in England, Wales and Ireland is an unjustified concession to Scottish nationalism. It is not enough to call for “close co-operation”.

The earlier Scottish Socialist Alliance statement puts a much clearer position. What the comrades have now agreed represents an ideological retreat and an unprincipled concession to nationalism.

The Scottish Socialist Alliance statement is also superior in that the final bullet points are more balanced. Unlike the Scottish Socialist Party statement this specifies that the Scottish Socialist Alliance will campaign for this programme “in the trade unions and the communities”. 

It begins with the class demand for the opening up of the talks to working class organisations. Whereas the Scottish Socialist Party statement demands an “immediate de-militarisation of Northern Ireland by the British government” the earlier version called for “a complete de-militarisation of the North of Ireland and a cease-fire by all parties to the conflict.” The comrades may well argue that the cease-fire call is now redundant since the paramilitary campaigns have ended, but why has the current issue of disarmament by the para-militaries not been included instead?

There has been a retreat not just in programme but also in method. When the Scottish Socialist Alliance statement was agreed there was no ambiguity about whether it was a broad compromise programme. In the discussion leading up to the special one-day Scottish Socialist Alliance conference on Ireland our comrades in Scottish Militant Labour produced their own material putting our ideas. This was circulated within the Alliance and was on the conference agenda.

At the Scottish Socialist Alliance conference, the comrades agreed a compromise position rather than force our full position through by weight of numbers. This was entirely correct. No one from the International or the minority has suggested that, in a party as broad as the Scottish Socialist Party, we should not be prepared to make some policy compromises in order to preserve unity. 

The condition is that we put forward our own ideas in the debate and that we fight for as much of our programme as possible to be adopted. In addition to these points, we should continue to argue for all of our ideas within the party and in public even after a compromise has been reached.

The majority comrades did none of this in the drafting of the Scottish Socialist Party programme. Rather than put forward and argue for our ideas in the public forum of the Scottish Socialist Party a compromise position – the document as eventually adopted – was drafted in advance. This was done in a private discussion between the Scottish Socialist Party secretary, Allan Green and Richard Venton. Our views were not argued publicly. Scottish Socialist Party members were unaware of the differences between our programme and the policy adopted.

The objections of the Socialist Party in Ireland were ignored. Amendments, which they drafted and submitted to the International Socialist Movement leadership, were opposed. This, they claimed was because “any attempt at this late stage to usurp the agreement we have already arrived at by introducing further amendments could only complicate the task of achieving a good class and socialist programme.” (Frances Curran letter to Peter Hadden)

These amendments were not circulated to the International Socialist Movement membership for their views. In fact the whole accommodation of ideas was arrived at without even any discussion within the International Socialist Movement. Committee for a Workers’ International members in Scotland were given no say over the abandonment of elements of the programme developed by the comrades in Ireland over a whole historical period.

The comparisons with the programme of the Labour Coalition in Northern Ireland are thrown in to confuse rather than clarify the debate. The points made in the majority document were made in Frances Curran’s earlier letter and have already been answered in Peter Hadden’s reply. Yet this response and the factual information it provides have been simply ignored.

It is therefore necessary to restate the facts that the majority seem to want to forget. The Labour Coalition was a broad formation put together for the specific purpose of fighting the election for top up places at the N.I. peace talks. A minimum programme was agreed around the basic premise that delegates to the talks would approach all issues from the “standpoint of the common interests of the working class”, a good formulation which our comrades were able to accept.

There was an agreement that the members of the Coalition could put forward their own ideas provided that they did not contradict the common platform. In the five constituencies where the comrades conducted the election they produced their own manifesto putting our ideas.

The Coalition lasted about seven months. By the end the comrades had strengthened the common programme and won agreement from all activists that one comrade and one sympathiser should be the Coalition representatives in the talks. It was during these months that the debate was conducted within the organisation on the name of our party and a decision taken to change from Militant Labour to Socialist Party.

This experience has nothing in common with the approach adopted by the majority comrades to the Scottish Socialist Party. A compromise programme has been accepted that amounts to a concession to left republican / reformist trends in the Scottish Socialist Party. This has been done alongside declarations that the Scottish Socialist Party is ‘our’ party and that, outside the Scottish Socialist Party, our comrades will argue for and defend only the common compromise programme.

When the International Socialist Movement majority accuses the minority of wanting “to have their cake and eat it”, insisting, on the one hand, that the Scottish Socialist Party is a broad, hetrogenous party, while on the other, insisting “that we railroad through a policy on Ireland with every nuance straightened out to the satisfaction of the Irish leadership” (paragraph 274) they would do better examining the contradiction of their own argument.

On the one hand, they insist that the Scottish Socialist Party is “our” party and that we do not need any other public instrument. Yet on the other, they argue that we cannot ask it to adopt our programme on Ireland because of the sharply divergent views within it!

The International Socialist Movement PC comrades accept that the Scottish Socialist Party programme is not fully our position. They say that it is “open to slightly different nuances of interpretation by difference people on some issues” and that it can “evolve and develop over time”. In that case the onus is on them to explain its ambiguities, clarify its weaknesses and show where and it what way it needs to evolve.

Yet in the document, and in all the correspondence on this issue, there is not a word of specific criticism of the Scottish Socialist Party programme. Rather it is praised as a “class analysis and a socialist programme.” Alongside this praise there is repeated implicit and sometimes explicit criticism of the programme of the Irish section and the Committee for a Workers’ International.

It argues 

“Two approaches (at least) are always available: the easier road of remaining ‘pure’ on every formulation but isolated from any real audience; or the rockier road to a far reaching socialist, class-based programme that brings bigger forces with us” (paragraph 273). 

The same idea is repeated several times. There is the clear inference that the Committee for a Workers’ International and the Irish comrades present “pure” ideas in a sectarian manner that cuts us off from any real influence.

“Surely the experience of the Northern Ireland Committee for a Workers’ International comrades themselves”, it claims, “testify to the fact that we can be a thousand times correct in our general explanations, but still be forced to remain a small relatively isolated group”.

The International Socialist Movement majority think that drawing up the Scottish Socialist Party programme 

“… is not a question of surrendering on principles, but of the presentation of ideas in a fashion that chimes with the consciousness of the best of the working class that we seek to influence and lead. The opposite choice is to remain a permanent sect, albeit ‘pure’ ” (paragraph 285).

Clearly, from their position that the Scottish Socialist Party programme is a necessary compromise which can ‘evolve’, the International Socialist Movement PC have come round to the position that this is a better programme than that of the Irish Socialist Party and of the Committee for a Workers’ International because it is welded to “living movements and real consciousness.” In making such criticisms the comrades should be specific and point to the formulations and demands of the comrades in Ireland that conflict with consciousness and suggest alternatives.

This is not done except by innuendo. There is a reference to the “identikit slogans that the International leadership seem to insist upon” but with no explanation of what slogans they have in mind. Earlier the call for “workers’ unity and socialism” is described as “age-old” and less concrete than the formulations of the Scottish Socialist Party statement.

All of this is a crude distortion of the position of the Irish comrades and of the Committee for a Workers’ International as a whole. It is in line with the overall attempt to paint the Committee for a Workers’ International as a sect out of touch with the real needs of the working class. The working class, according to the majority, are for ‘regroupment^‘ into broad organisations. The majority document is not a defence of a revolutionary programme but an argument for a broad, compromise programme.

Through the thirty years of the Troubles the comrades in Northern Ireland have developed their programme in line with the constantly shifting consciousness of the working class. They have always taken into account the differences in the outlook of Protestant and Catholic workers. A detailed programme has been worked out on the national question, on parades, on policing, on the para-militaries and on many other questions as they have arisen. Much of this has been borrowed by the majority comrades when drafting of the Scottish Socialist Party programme.

The difference is that in Ireland every important development of the programme has been debated extensively through the entire party. The most recent updating of the demands on the national question came after a lengthy internal debate and was followed by the publication of a book to explain the change outside the party ranks.

The implication that the Socialist Party in Ireland behaves like a ‘pure^‘ sect isolated from living movements is fantasy. In the South our comrades led the mass movement which defeated the government on water rates. They are currently leading similar movements against the imposition of service charges. The election of Joe Higgins to a Council seat and to the Dail and of Clare Daly to the Dublin Council shows the real social roots that have been sunk.

Northern Ireland has on many occasions been a difficult issue in the south. At times an emotive nationalism has developed with a much greater ferocity than in Scotland. Nonetheless the comrades there have been able to defend our programme without the kind of compromises made by the Scottish majority and without surrendering their mass influence.

In the north it is true that the Socialist Party remains relatively small, although it is the biggest and by far the most influential force on the left. The obstacle has been the very difficult objective situation and not, as the majority document suggests, that we have held onto a correct but “pure” programme.

Our small party has had an influence far beyond its numbers. This has come through bold and timely initiatives and because of the correctness of the ideas and slogans put forward. The comrades have been able to initiate strikes against sectarian killings, even organising regional general strikes.

The “No Going Back” campaign helped spark the huge movement that followed the Canary Wharf bomb and our slogan and banner became the symbol of the entire movement. Currently the party is in the leadership of a number of important strikes, its Low Pay Campaign is known and applauded by thousands of workers. An initiative taken last year has also placed us in the leadership of a potential mass movement against attempts to close rural hospitals.

In intervening in the class struggle every section of the Committee for a Workers’ International attempts to present our ideas in as accessible a form as possible. The difference with the Scottish majority is not over this. The case made in their document is not for a more living expression of our programme against doctrinaire purity. It is for the watering down of our ideas to accommodate more easily with broader, non-revolutionary forces.

The complaint made against the Irish section is that it has not followed the route taken by the Scottish majority. The fact that it has managed to make an electoral breakthrough akin to that of the Scottish Socialist Party, but without any ‘regroupment’, is simply ignored. Frances Curran, in the most recent International Socialist Movement debates, has gone so far as to state that the idea of us building a small mass party in Ireland is “off the agenda”.

At the English and Welsh Socialist Party National Committee meeting on 14th May 2000 she stated; “In Ireland we’ve got the Socialist Party, we’ve got our own organisation, and there is potential for the Socialist Party in Ireland to develop the position that the NSSP developed in Sri Lanka, i.e. a small mass party of a Trotskyist organisation or revolutionary organisation, in the next period. Now I think this is off the agenda as well, and the reason it is off the agenda is because it does not correspond to the objective needs of the working class at this stage; and what is taking place is alliances, formations, regroupment, not on a revolutionary basis, regroupment on the basis of the workers’ movement. That’s what’s posed”

The Irish comrades, she has asserted, will face the same choices as the Scottish comrades and will have to follow their lead. However, the choice of launching a broad party was there at the time of Joe Higgins’ election. The comrades discussed this as a possibility, but not in the manner that it was done in Scotland. There would have been no question of us surrendering our resources and our ideas. It was rejected, not on principle, but because the genuine forces to make up a broad mass party were and are still not there.

Instead, the comrades have concentrated on building our own party. Our electoral successes, won under our own banner, and the shift to the right of other political forces, leave us poised to make further gains. The declaration that it is impossible for the comrades to build a small mass party is akin to raising the white flag of surrender before the first troops have entered the field of battle.

There is no single tactic, no straight line of development, that will transform out current forces into a mass revolutionary party. Even now in Ireland our comrades are considering an Anti-Corruption Alliance in which we would run along with other lefts in the coming general election. Within this we would run as the Socialist Party, with the possibility of increasing our representation.

This tactical flexibility is in stark contrast to the current stance of the Scottish majority who have elevated the idea of ‘regroupment’, that is of an unprincipled organisational and political merger with other forces, to a point of principle.

As Marxists we begin by examining the concrete situation and from this work out our tactics. Our attitude to alliances – and to the future possibility of principled fusion as opposed to unprincipled ‘regroupment’ is first to consider whether the forces exist for this at present. The method of the Scottish majority is different. They begin with the tactic, arguing that in every European country, at the very least, the only way forward is through ‘regroupment^‘. Then they work back to the concrete to try to find the forces to allow this to take place.

The falsity of this method is apparent in relation to Ireland. With regard to the south it has not been explained who the comrades should link with to follow the Scottish Socialist Party road. However, in relation to the north they have not been so reticent. 

In debates around Scotland Frances Curran has argued that the Northern Ireland comrades should have taken the initiative to build a broad party. She thinks this should include our forces in Northern Ireland, the PUP, the Women’s Coalition, and the left in Sinn Fein. It is a case of an argument and a method taken to its absurd extreme. These three groupings agree on practically nothing. Not one of them is explicitly socialist, let alone revolutionary.

The case of Ireland exposes the direction the majority comrades are headed. It also shows that there is an alternative way of building the force of the Committee for a Workers’ International which does not involve the abandonment of ideas, methods and structures.

On the Socialist Party in England and Wales

Running throughout the material of the International Socialist Movement PC is an attempt to downgrade the work of the Committee for a Workers’ International, and in particular of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. The comrades refer to the “fighting combative traditions of our organisation in Scotland” with the clear implication that the same traditions do not exist in the other sections of the Committee for a Workers’ International. Yet this is in the same section of the document that talks about the magnificent struggles against the poll tax and of Liverpool City Council!

The document refers, without justification, to the “steep decline in the active Socialist Party membership over the past 18 months”. At the Socialist Party National Committee (13-14 May) Alan McCombes withdrew this remark. Yet, in subsequent debates in Scotland both he and Frances Curran quite dishonestly repeated similar allegations.

This is not the place to give an account of the work of the Socialist Party. However, it is necessary to give some facts in order to counter the unfounded claims of the International Socialist Movement PC. The Socialist Party membership figure in England and Wales is currently almost exactly the same as it was eighteen months ago. However, this does not reflect the increase in the active membership that has taken place, reflecting the fact that over the last two years the section has begun to recruit a layer of youth. They are throwing themselves into the work of the party. These youth have mainly come through our work in Save Free Education and Socialist Students.

The Socialist Party is also playing a leading role in several major trade unions. This was demonstrated by the intervention at the NUT conference, the election results in Unison, the election of a comrade to the NEC of USDAW, and the success of our comrades at the PCS conference. Of the six CFDU members elected to the NEC of Unison, three are members of the Committee for a Workers’ International.

The Socialist Party has also had some important electoral successes. It now has four councillors in England and Wales. We are the only party on the left that has elected councillors. The PC’s document, while praising the LSA result to the skies, does not even mention the Socialist Party success in getting a fourth councillor elected.

International Alliances?

The comrades ask for evidence that Frances Curran and Murray Smith and others only “advocate one tactic, that of developing broad formations in which we act as a loose ideological current” (paragraph 313).

There is such evidence. A statement of the International Socialist Movement majority (November 1999) clearly states that: 

“The key task, particularly in Europe, is to regroup all those who refuse to accept that there is no alternative to capitalism and are prepared to fight for the rehabilitation of socialist ideas in a mass way. This cannot be done by ideology alone, they must also be prepared to engage in the struggles of the working class. In the post-Stalinist period this is where the line should be drawn as the basis of regroupment and the creation of new parties. 

This process is already underway in a number of countries, even in an embryonic way. There will be differences, there will be debates over day-to-day issues, as well as over how to achieve socialism and more importantly on what kind of socialism we want after the experiences of Stalinism. But these differences will be hammered out as these parties fill out and engage in the class struggle. 

That is the strategy which has inspired the creation of the Scottish Socialist Party and we would argue that this experience has implications elsewhere”. (‘Discussion On the Question of New Workers’ Parties’, submitted by the EC majority of the Scottish section to the IEC November 1999).

We have quoted the whole paragraph. It is crystal clear that the comrades regard the formation of broader parties, of regroupment of Left parties, as the key task. In another paragraph (14) in the same statement they conclude that: “…the building of workers’ parties on a socialist programme is the key strategic task of revolutionaries in the present period”.

This statement (“Discussion On the Question of New Workers’ Parties”) contains in the main the same points outlined by Murray Smith in an article, ‘Towards a new anti-capitalist workers’ party’, published in the French journal Carre Rouge no 11. Murray Smith argues that in the present situation the task of revolutionaries has changed. 

He claims that, 

“the essential task is to bring together all those who refuse to consider that we can’t go beyond capitalism, who refuse the new world order, who are ready to resist the manifold attack of the government and the bosses…The exact outlines of a new party will depend on the conditions of its coming into existence, on the forces that are involved in it. But it will not be a classical revolutionary party, in the sense that Trotskyists have understood it up to now”.

Although the article mainly dealt with the situation in France, it also “deals with some of the issues involved in the debate (in Scotland)”. It was therefore included as an addendum to his statement, “Contribution to the debate for the Scottish congress, 21 September 1999. (An English version of the article “Carre Rouge” was distributed at the European School in July 1999.) This article also argued that it would be catastrophic if the revolutionary Marxists in such party act according to a “logic of faction against faction”.

Andres Nin and other leaders of the Trotskyist Spanish Left Opposition group (ICE) argued the same case. They did this when they decided to fuse with the BOC (Workers and Peasants Bloc) in Catalonia and form the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) in September 1935. 

The POUM was said to be a Marxist party, in favour of a new International, although not necessarily called the Fourth International. The reason for this was because the “new party would be based more or less upon the ICE”. The supposed similarity between this programme and that of the Trotskyists was used to justify why there was no need for them to be organised as a faction in the unified organisation. 

The criticism made by the leadership of the International Trotskyist movement was dismissed as a “lack of understanding of Spanish affairs”. It was even said that the International Secretariat wanted to manipulate the Spanish Trotskyists as if they were “puppets”.

This mistake of Nin, Andrade and other members of the Left Opposition in Spain proved to be fatal. The centrist character of the POUM acted as a brake on the Spanish revolution. The tasks of Trotskyists was to either rapidly win the POUM to Trotskyism or to win as many forces from it as possible in the shortest possible time. The rhythm of events during the Spanish revolution and civil war, plus the role of the centrist POUM, demanded that these tasks needed to be achieved extremely rapidly. This clearly is not the situation that exists in Scotland today. However, the method applied by Trotsky is applicable.

The International Socialist Movement majority merge and confuse two tasks – firstly, the need to unify the working class and build a broad formation, a new workers^‘ party, and secondly the need to build an independent revolutionary party.

The majority of the International Socialist Movement leadership has never commented on Murray Smith’s statement. The majority evidently share his view that “regroupment” and the formation of broad parties is the key task, that Marxists should not organise as a distinct revolutionary organisation inside these new parties. Instead, the Marxists should be organised as a loose current promoting socialist ideas and stimulating debate.

The comrades have also argued that the building of small mass revolutionary parties are off the agenda. The reason for this, in their view, is that it does not correspond to the objective needs of the working class at this stage. The majority have therefore recommended that our sections in Southern and Northern Ireland should enter the road of regroupment. Furthermore, according to the document and other material, the Socialist Party in England and Wales should adopt a similar tactic in Scotland.

In paragraphs 327 to 354 the comrades repeat their general criticism of the tactics adopted by the Socialist Party in England and Wales. This new document from the Scottish comrades follows in the footsteps of Frances Curran’s reply to Peter Taaffe’s article, ‘Ken Livingstone and a New Workers’ Party’, published in Socialism Today, April 2000. In that reply Frances Curran claims: 

“The article completely fails to provide any strategy for comrades in England and Wales concerning socialist unity and the question of a new workers party, and therefore fails to provide a clear orientation. The main aim of this article appears to be to justify the Socialist Party’s leadership opposition to the launch of the Scottish Socialist Party and its refusal to recognise the importance of Socialist Alliances in the process of rebuilding the workers movement”. (Committee for a Workers’ International Members Bulletin, May 2000, page 37)

Later on in the same reply the comrades write: 

“We believe that the Socialist Party in England and Wales has made a number of mistakes in relation to the LSA (London Socialist Alliance). It would be a huge error if these are repeated at a national level…The Socialist Party has to now act quickly to recoup the ground lost…”

However, the PC’s document goes even further. It claims that the “Socialist Party has been marginalised in London, with the SWP allowed to grab the leadership of the movement which is now attracting the support of a significant minority of the working class and the youth” (paragraph 330). The document, of course, does not furnish any evidence to substantiate their claim. The reason for this is simple – it is not true. All the groups involved in the LSA have been forced to admit after the election that there were hardly any new, fresh forces inside in the LSA.

The authors of the document merely repeat the mendacious misinformation of ‘Weekly Worker’, the paper of the microscopic CPGB, most of which is devoted to attacking the Socialist Party. They state that “the Socialist Party, with the exception of individuals like Dave Nellist and lan Page has played little or no part in this development (of Socialist Alliances)”. 

While the document regards the vote for the LSA as “impressive”, it totally ignores the fact that the LSA top-up vote is, by comparison, nowhere near the vote scored by Socialist Party candidates in Coventry, Liverpool or Carlisle. Moreover, we are still waiting to hear exactly what these alleged “mistakes” are and “what ground has been lost” in England and Wales.

Why is the International Socialist Movement document trying to deny what is obviously the approach of the majority, i.e. that the experience in Scotland shows the way forward for the rest of the International. That means it is correct to give up all the resources of the revolutionary party to build a broader socialist party. According to the comrades, this corresponds to the objective needs of the working class. They fail to see that while a broader formation would represent a step forward for the working class this does not mean that an independent revolutionary party and programme are no longer necessary.

Never in history has there been such a sharp contrast between the potential power of the working class and the political and ideological weakness of the proletariat.

As Trotsky explained, 

“What can a revolutionary party do in this situation? In the first place give a clear, honest picture of the objective situation, of the historic tasks which flow from the situation, irrespective of whether or not the workers are today ripe for this. 

Our tasks don’t depend on the mentality of the workers. The task is to develop the mentality of the workers. That is what the programme should formulate and present before advanced workers” (‘The Political Backwardness of the American Workers’, May 1938, published in ‘The Transitional Programme For Socialist Revolution’, Pathfinder Press)

In order to try to overcome the historical crisis of leadership, Marxists have to elaborate a series of transitional demands. These should act as a bridge from the present level of consciousness to the idea of a socialist revolution. We have to skillfully adapt our programme to the existing level of consciousness, the “mentality” of the working class. Our programme is determined by the objective needs of the working class and the same goes for our strategy.

We will be part of new formations and even initiate them, because this can advance and spread the idea of socialism and it could open new possibilities of building a revolutionary party. The demand for a new workers’ party now forms part of our programme in most countries. Where applicable our sections campaign in favour of left unity in elections. 

Many sections have been part of left alliances contesting elections. We have a long record of working together with others at the same time as maintaining an independent Marxist position and with the aim of also building our own parties. Our position and approach is therefore qualitatively different from the position put forward by the majority inside the International Socialist Movement leadership. The tactics proposed by the comrades are a recipe for undermining and seriously weakening the forces of revolutionary Marxism in Scotland.

The Committee for a Workers’ International has been able to build influential forces in countries such as Ireland, Nigeria and Sweden during the 1990s. It is correct, given the strength of the party and the potential that exists, to set as an aim the building of a small revolutionary mass party in Ireland in the coming period. 

The Swedish section has more than tripled its membership since 1993 and now publishes a weekly paper. The collective experiences of Sweden, Ireland, England and Wales, Nigeria and other sections of the Committee for a Workers’ International should be discussed in the Scottish section. 

These experiences relate to building a revolutionary party or organisation, election work, work in councils or parliament, on how to take advantage of widespread publicity and youth work. This could assist the work in Scotland. However, over the last two years the comrades have shown little interest in finding out what is happening in other sections.

The Committee for a Workers’ International in Scotland

The Committee for a Workers’ International never opposed the setting up of the Scottish Socialist Party. The resolution on Scotland, adopted at the International Executive Committee (IEC) meeting in November 1999, clearly stated: 

“In the run-up up to the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party, the leadership of the Committee for a Workers’ International proposed that our Scottish comrades should accept one of two options. Option One was for a re-launch of the Scottish Militant Labour, and the formation of a new party affiliated to the Committee for a Workers’ International. 

This proposal was not made in order to cut across or end the electoral alliances in which Scottish Militant Labour had successfully participated in the previous period… However, the Scottish comrades clearly rejected Option One, and therefore, the possibility of implementing Option Two was posed. This would have entitled the launching of a broad party within which we would have maintained a distinct revolutionary organisation, programme and membership”. 

That was our position.

The comrades, however, rejected both options. They handed over virtually all the resources (the paper, finances, full-timers, headquarters, etc.) of the Scottish Militant Labour to the Scottish Socialist Party. They began to operate as loose current with the sole aim of “influencing” the party. What has happened to the assurance given in 1998 that: “It would openly advocate Committee for a Workers’ International affiliation within the Scottish Socialist Party”? (Proposals for progress on the New Scottish Turn, 21 May 1998).

Despite opposing political ideas used by the comrades to justify dissolving our Scottish organisation, the World Congress agreed in 1998: 

“This Congress does not believe that the proposals put forward by the Scottish Militant Labour EC for the organisation of its members in Scotland are adequate for the functioning of a cohesive revolutionary organisation based upon the policy, programme and methods supported by the Committee for a Workers’ International and its sections. 

However, to allow all comrades in Scotland time to reconsider the issue posed, this Congress, with greatest possible reluctance, accepts that the Scottish Militant Labour has gone ahead and implemented its proposals, and therefore to recognises the Committee for a Workers’ International group in the Scottish Socialist Party as a full section”.

The IEC, in November 1999, after discussing the situation in Scotland urged the comrades to take some minimum steps in order to strengthening the forces of Marxism in Scotland.

No decision has been imposed on the Scottish comrades. Despite this, the comrades repeat the unjustified claim that the Committee for a Workers’ International leadership “seeks to impose strategy and tactics upon individual sections” (paragraph 325). They also claim that the Committee for a Workers’ International is “over-centralised” but as usual they do not substantiate this accusation and no example is given.

It is not the Committee for a Workers’ International that misrepresents the view of the International Socialist Movement majority, but the opposite. The majority of the leadership is misrepresenting the views of the Committee for a Workers’ International among the ranks of the International Socialist Movement and the Scottish Socialist Party. It is the International Socialist Movement leadership who have created and spread the myth that the “Committee for a Workers’ International is hostile to the Scottish Socialist Party”.

The International Socialist Movement majority are not just in the leadership of the Scottish Socialist Party. Ten out of eleven members of the Scottish Socialist Party leadership are members of the International Socialist Movement. 

The full-time staff of the Scottish Socialist Party are International Socialist Movement members. Its representative in the Scottish parliament is an International Socialist Movement member and the Scottish Socialist Voice is produced by International Socialist Movement members. 

Despite this there has been no campaign organised, or serious effort made, to establish closer links between the Scottish Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers’ International or the Scottish Socialist Party and our sections in England, Wales and Ireland. We want to ask the majority: Do you uphold the aim of the Scottish Socialist Party affiliating to the Committee for a Workers’ International?

In paragraph 341 it is stated that: 

“Some people have point blank refused to join the International Socialist Movement because they do not understand why they should join an International which they know is implacably opposed to everything they are doing”. This is incredible. Who are these people, and if is true, who is responsible for portraying the Committee for a Workers’ International as an International “implacably opposed to everything they are doing”?

Reports of the electoral successes of the Scottish Socialist Party have been distributed to the members of the Committee for a Workers’ International across the World. Sections have carried articles about the evolution of the Scottish Socialist Party, news from Scotland has been featured in our Newsletter, etc.

Compare this to the pages of Scottish Socialist Voice, which hardly ever mentions our work and successes in other countries. It never carries articles written by Committee for a Workers’ International members outside of Scotland but has carried articles written by our opponents. No reports have been given to us about the work and the state of the International Socialist Movement.

The document claims in paragraph 24 that: 

“Material which has been sent for inclusion in the Committee for a Workers’ International newsletter has been suppressed”. 

It is completely untrue to imply that the Committee for a Workers’ International Newsletter refuses to include reports of the work of the Committee for a Workers’ International in Scotland. Since the beginning of this year the International has received only one “report” from Scotland, on 10 February, and this was unsuitable for the Committee for a Workers’ International Newsletter. 

It was in fact a report of the Scottish Socialist Party and not a report of the work of the Committee for a Workers’ International section. Only two sentences were given over to the Committee for a Workers’ International, and these gave a completely unbalanced account of the Scottish Committee for a Workers’ International section’s conference held in February.

This year, the reports of the work of the section in Scotland, have been written by comrades in the International Centre. This is because no reports from Scotland have been received.

Nearly all of the international guests at the Scottish Socialist Party Conference in February this year were interviewed by the Scottish Socialist Voice. The exceptions were Peter Madden and Niall Mulholland from the Committee for a Workers’ International. 

A letter (15 March 2000) was sent from the International Centre to the Scottish comrades, asking for clarification on this and other matters arising from the Scottish Socialist Party Conference. For example: why a number of leading Scottish comrades were not present at the International Socialist Movement fringe meeting; why, unlike all the other visitors, Peter Hadden and Niall Mulholland were not invited to address the Scottish Socialist Party conference (until the intervention of Philip Stott ensured that Niall Mulholland spoke); and why Niall Mulholland and Peter Hadden were not previously informed about, or asked to attend, the whole of a meeting for visitors to the Conference that Frances Curran and Murray Smith had organised on Sunday 27 February.

Frances Curran wrote a reply on 3 April 2000. She gave her account of events but did not comment on the reason Committee for a Workers’ International comrades were not interviewed for the Scottish Socialist Voice. The comrades have yet to give an account as to why this happened.

Frances Curran’s explanation as to why the two Committee for a Workers’ International representatives were not informed of the visitors^‘ meeting, and were subsequently invited to attend only part of the meeting, is incredible.

The comrades only found out about the meeting through the Portuguese Left Bloc representative and Frances Curran only invited the comrades to the meeting once it had clearly been in session for some time.

She says in her 3 April 2000 reply to the International Centre, “don’t pretend you were excluded” because Peter Hadden and Niall Mulholland were invited to an after-conference meal with Murray Smith, Frances Curran and international visitors on the Saturday night. 

She correctly points out that the comrades declined this invitation because they had other discussions already planned. Frances Curran had described this as an informal gathering over a meal and Peter Hadden and Niall Mulholland understood from this that it was not crucial they should attend. In her 3 April letter Frances Curran goes on to say : “In fact this is where most of the discussion developed over the question of an international socialist alliance…” and “The next day we met merely to tie up organisational details and the setting was pretty informal. You were both (Niall Mulholland and Peter Hadden) invited to the discussion as it broadened out into more general issues…”

What is Frances Curran saying here? It seems to be that important discussions took place on possible international socialist alliances on the Saturday night. The “organisational details” relating to them were discussed at the meeting of international visitors the next day, without the involvement of Niall Mulholland and Peter Hadden from the Committee for a Workers’ International. 

Why did Frances Curran and Murray Smith, as Committee for a Workers’ International members (and an IEC member in Frances Curran’s case), not inform the Committee for a Workers’ International representatives about the Saturday evening discussion? Why were Peter Hadden and Niall Mulholland not also asked to come along and discuss the “organisational details” during the Sunday meeting? Why were they only asked to come to the meeting when it “broadened into more general issues?

Francis Curran and Murray Smith wrote an article for the May 2000 edition of ‘Inprecor’ the international journal of the USFI. Part of this article was published in ‘Socialist Outlook’ (the paper of the USFI group in Britain, ISG) Issue 35, June 2000. They write: 

“The Scottish Socialist Party tries to act within the concrete conditions of Scotland, but we do not neglect the international dimension. We see the Scottish Socialist Party as part of the re-composition of the workers’ movement internationally. We therefore see it as very important to reinforce links between the new anti-capitalist formations which are being created, especially in Europe”.

The Murray Smith of 1993 argued very well against the Murray Smith of 2000. He correctly stated against the USFI leadership that “in the coming period there will be fight for the working class vanguard between Trotskyism and left reformist currents. That is why the line of ‘refounding the Left’ as defended by the French LCR is so criminal and must be fought against. We do not contribute to the creation of such currents or encourage illusions in their leaderships. But if they come into existence, we develop a tactical orientation towards them” (Resolution on Europe, reprinted in Committee for a Workers’ International “International Information Bulletin”, number 19, 27th October 1993)

It is obvious that the comrades’ main objective is to make sure that the Scottish Socialist Party is part of what could become an international network including left formations formed in the 1990s. This, they hope, would include such groups as the Left Bloc in Portugal, the Norwegian Red Alliance, the Danish Red Green Alliance / the Unity List and others.

The other groupings have unilaterally tried to exclude the Committee for a Workers’ International and its sections from this project. This is because all of these organisations oppose linking up with an International that is still committed to build revolutionary parties and a new mass workers’ International – a world party of socialism. 

In reality they are opposed to including anybody in their alliances who continuing to fight to build a revolutionary international with a Marxist programme. That is why they have little interest in a genuine fusion or alliance on a principled basis of the revolutionary left groups moving towards revolutionary Marxism. This is the reason behind the avalanche of slanders – that the Committee for a Workers’ International is collapsing – against us from groups like the DSP (Australia), sections of the USFI and other groups on the left.

Most of these left formations – new or old – are under the dominance of ex-left or left groupings that are moving away from revolutionary Marxism. Nevertheless, these broad formations have been able to take advantage of the political vacuum that exists, which in turn has made it possible to make electoral gains. 

The Committee for a Workers’ International is quite prepared to establish links, work together and engage in a discussion with these formations and their members. Our comrades in Portugal are working inside the Left Bloc. The work of our section in the Dutch Socialist Party has been very successful; the Swedish section has attended conferences arranged by the Red Election Alliance in Norway and vice versa. However, we do not hide our criticism of the policy and methods adopted by the leadership of these formations.

In Lieu of a Conclusion

This debate has now been continuing for nearly two and a half years. Unfortunately the differences have remained unresolved and become wider. A factor in this is that the Scottish Socialist Party’s undoubted electoral successes and membership growth have encouraged the International Socialist Movement majority to continue with their course. We welcome the Scottish Socialist Party’s rapid development and recognise that this also posed more sharper the tasks for the Scottish Committee for a Workers’ International comrades.

Welcome as the Scottish Socialist Party’s current success is, it does not mean that a straight road ahead has opened up. Historically there have been countless examples of left parties, even revolutionary parties, enjoying periods of success. But, tragically for the workers’ movement, different combinations of objective developments, the results of the class struggle and, vitally, political mistakes have undermined these parties. Some, like the Spanish POUM in 1930s or the Italian PSIUP in the 1960s, enjoyed rapid growth only to completely disappear within a short period of time.

It is necessary to recognise the reasons for the Scottish Socialist Party’s initial success. A key factor boosting the Scottish Socialist Party was Tommy Sheridan’s election to the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. This however was not simply the result of the Scottish Socialist Party’s launch a few months earlier, rather it was rooted in Militant and Scottish Militant Labour’s long record of struggle, particularly since the Poll Tax campaign. 

There was every possibility that Tommy would also have been elected if he had stood as a candidate of an organisation affiliated to the Committee for a Workers’ International. Once Tommy was elected the Scottish Socialist Party’s credibility jumped, as was shown in the Euro elections shortly afterwards. However the Scottish Socialist Party’s growth has not strengthened the Committee for a Workers’ International Scotland because during 1998 the Scottish majority not only rejected Option 1, they also brushed aside Option 2.

As we have argued in this document the Scottish Socialist Party’s future is not assured, not just because of vagaries of coming events, but also because of its lack of political clarity. The responsibility for this political weakness lies firmly on the shoulders of the International Socialist Movement PC majority. 

Unfortunately they still seem determined to continue on a course which will lead into the “marsh” of centrism and left-reformism. We appeal to the comrades of the International Socialist Movement majority to reconsider their position. It is time to stop dissolving the section into the broad Scottish Socialist Party and strive to utilise the Scottish Socialist Party’s present progress to strengthen and expand the committed revolutionary forces in the International Socialist Movement.

International Secretariat, August 2000