SWP debates “Leninism”

Submitted by Matthew on 16 July, 2013 - 9:52

In the February edition of Socialist Review Alex Callinicos took on the internal and external criticism which followed the SWP’s mishandling of a complaint of rape within their organisation.

It was the only such public political statement to be made; a mainly weary defence of the SWP’s model of democratic centralism, tying it to Lenin’s political legacy. The SWP’s organsational regime was, Callinicos claimed, fully democratic and still relevant. We published a critique of Callinicos’s piece at the time.

Members of the SWP’s new internal opposition have since responsed to Callinicos. In Socialist Review Ian Birchall argued definitions of Leninism could not be taken for granted. And Pat Stack has critically discussed the evolution of the SWP’s democratic centralism. Callinicos replied to Birchall defending Central Committee domination of the SWP. There have been other related articles on the opposition blog.

It has all been too polite — to my reading a debate where there are obscure subtexts and unexpressed criticisms. That makes the debate difficult to unpick. Nonetheless it is interesting and important.

Birchall wants the SWP to be more aware of the Stalinist distortions of Lenin’s legacy. Other myths (some Stalinist in origin, some created by right wing historians) have be usefully corrected by Lars Lih (in Lenin Rediscovered and elsewhere). When it comes to democratic centralism Lenin was no great innovator. It was something the whole of Russian Social Democracy, including the Mensheviks, took for granted.

But for Birchall, “It is unlikely that any of the models of party organisation adopted by the Bolsheviks would fit the very different needs of the world today.” Unfortunately Birchall does what he accuses Callinicos of doing — fails to explain himself. Perhaps there is some subtext here about the nature of the working-class in the 21st century? Watch this space, I guess...

Birchall’s particular criticism of the SWP’s internal regime is that it relies too much on unthinking discipline. The Central Committee no longer tries to win political arguments — it should restore a respectful attitude to the views of the members. We might argue that it is highly doubtful that the SWP leadership has ever, or will ever, respect its members!

In his reply, Callinicos insists that he too has read Lars Lih (and other books which give a balanced picture of Lenin, such as Neil Harding’s Lenin’s Political Thought). Okay, he’s read the books but what has he learnt?

Apparently that he is right! That centralism is necessary, because it enables the party to “move quickly”. He invokes (in a not overly respectful way) Cliff’s ghost on this point.

It is true, at times of heightened class struggle a revolutionary group may have to move quickly and time-limit debate on particular actions. But Callinicos is making a demagogic point. The SWP Central Committee has a standing licence to always “move quickly”, to make as many twists and turns that it likes, whenever it likes, without meaningful reference to any wider constituency in the SWP.

Pat Stack discusses the origins of the current regime in the early 70s up to 1975, when a series of factions were formed and expelled.

Stack’s argument is that the post-1975 regime (rule by a Central Committee directly elected by the SWP conference but under a “winner takes all” slate system, and with factions allowed for only three-month pre-conference periods) was necessary to stop political “mischief making”, but is no longer appropriate. Stack favourably reviews the functioning of the SWP in the 1970s but fails to describe its overall context — Cliff had made a turn to “party building” in reaction to and partially modelled on the Healyites. The expulsions were ultimately high-handed and instrumental to Cliff’s own political vision.

Stack believes that the “tight” regime helped the SWP stay together through the long years of the downturn; a cadre was built as it fed off the political experience of the leadership. An unfortunate downside was a habitual lack of democratic interplay between members and leadership. It is time to correct that, Stack says.

This is progress but only up to a point. The overall narrative of the opposition is faulty. They seem to be saying that the overall level of democratic liveliness in a democratic centralist organisation should vary according to conditions. The idea comes from Cliff, who sharply contrasts the Lenin of 1902 and What is to Be Done with the Lenin of 1905 when the Bolshevik faction was “opened up” to new members, working-class members and local initiative.

But this is not the lesson of Lenin’s political career. Democratic liveliness (i.e. political debate) was always a given for Lenin and just about everyone else in Russian Social Democracy (even, with big qualifications, under the pressures which followed the 1917 revolution).

In 1905 Lenin (and, as Lih argues, most of the Bolsheviks) were in favour of “opening up” the faction because it was possible to do that under the more relaxed conditions following the 1905 revolution. It was not a lesson Lenin learned about the working-class or political organisation from the 1905 revolution. To repeat, full political debate was always a given for Lenin and it should be for us.

Stack’s commitment (and apparently Birchall’s too) to the notion that permanent (or longer than three month long) factions are necessarily irksome is equally nothing to do with the Marxist organisation of Lenin’s time. The presence of factions, groupings and tendencies could be counter-productive to rational discussion but not necessarily so. In the AWL we give factions full freedom to organise, the better to get serious, clear and coherent debate.

What no one in the SWP quite yet gets is that for revolutionary Marxists organisational forms are there to service political clarity and the constant evaluation of political strategy.

It is noticeable that the opposition has so far had very little to say about the disastrous political zig zags of the SWP, the attempts to re-create the “glory years” of the Anti-Nazi League with one politically-debased front organisation after another.

Maybe that will come out in time, maybe these reassessments of Leninism point to a future “liberalisation” of the SWP’s regime. Or maybe (as the report above hints) there will be little left of the SWP to “liberalise” in a few months’ time.

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