How we are Different (1/4)

Some critics of the Socialist Party find its position on having an political organisation leader-free naive and Utopian. Some accuse the Socialist Party of being deliberately mendacious by denying that it has an Executive Committee as well as “leading” members such as those who have in-depth understanding and good communication skills who acquire more influence within our organisation with individual qualities such as political insight and who possess more forceful personalities and stronger commitment than its “ordinary” members.

To begin with, policy decisions are made by conference and then by a party referendum of the entire memberhip and not the Executive Committee whose remit is to put into action the decisions of the members. An EC that is not even permitted to submit resolutions to conference. All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. Our General Secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member being simply a dogsbody. There is a crucial difference between electing delegates and representatives. Delegates only have as much power as is mandated to them and can be recalled. Representatives have power abdicated to them wholesale. Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership polls are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organisation control that organisation – and as such key procedures in any organisation genuinely seeking socialism.

Critics of the Socialist Party misunderstand our position.

Writers or speakers are NOT leaders. Their function is to spread knowledge and understanding, as teachers. Quite different from that we must have leaders (great men) to direct their followers (blind supporters) into a socialist society. Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguard parties. Despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no personality has held undue influence over the SPGB. Simply check the two published histories of the Party to see on just how many occasions and on how many issues those so-called leaders have not gained a majority at conferences or in referendums. 

We actually have a test for membership. This does not mean that the SPGB has set itself up as an intellectual elite into which only those well-versed in Marxist scholarship may enter. One purpose of it is to place all members on an even basis. The SPGB’s reason is to ensure that only conscious socialists enter its ranks, for, once admitted, all members are equal and it would clearly not be in the interest of the Party to offer equality of power to those who are not able to demonstrate equality of basic socialist understanding. Once a member, he or she have the same rights as the oldest member to sit on any committee, vote, speak, and have access to all information. Thanks to this test all members are conscious socialists and there is genuine internal democracy, and of that we are fiercely proud.

Consider what happens when people join other groups which don’t have this test.The new applicant has to be approved as being “acceptable”. The individual is therefore judged by the group according to a range of what might be called “credential indicators”. Hard work (often, paper-selling) and obedience by new members is the main criterion of trustworthiness in the organisation. In these hierarchical, “top-down” groups the leaders strive at all costs to remain as the leadership , and reward only those with proven commitment to the “party line” with preferential treatment, more responsibility and more say. New members who present the wrong indicators remain peripheral to the party structure, and finding themselves unable to influence decision-making at any level, eventually give up and leave, often embittered by the hard work they put in and the hollowness of the party’s claims of equality and democracy.

Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organised democratically – without leaders, but with mandated delegates – to achieve it. In rejecting these procedures what is being declared is that the working class should not organise itself democratically. Indeed we are critical of trade unions but we are also supportive of them.

The SPGB has always insisted that the structures and tactics of organisations that the working class create to combat the class war will be there own decision and will necessarily be dependent on particular situations. Again a read of our actual history would reveal that unlike other organisations such as the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) or Communist Party(CPGB) we have never promoted the idea of forming separate trade unions. The SPGB avoided the mistake of the SLP – and of the CPGB during the “Third Period” after 1929 – of “dual unionism”, i.e. of trying to form “revolutionary” unions to rival the existing “reformist” unions (though some SPGBers have been involved, as individuals, in breakaway unions.

The working class get the unions, and the leadership, it deserves. Just as a king is only a king because he is obeyed, so too are union leaders only union leaders because they are followed. To imagine they lead is to imbue them with mystical powers within themselves, and set up a phantasm of leadership that exactly mirror images the same phantasm as our masters believe. So long as the workers themselves are content to deal with such a union system, and its leaders, then such a union system and its leaders will remain, and will have to react to the expectations of the members. The way to industrial unions, or socialist unions, or whatever, is not through the leadership of the unions. The unions will always reflect the nature of their memberships, and until their membership change, they will not change. Unions are neither inherently reactionary, nor inherently revolutionary. The only way to change unions is not through seizing or pressurising the leadership, but through making sure that they have a committed membership, a socialist membership. We countered the syndicalist case “The Mines to the Miners!” or “The Railways to the Railwaymen!” by pointing out the socialists want to abolish the sectional ownership of the means of life, no matter who compose the sections, and not reinforce it.

The Socialist Party is not antagonistic to the trade unions under present conditions, even though they have not a revolutionary basis but we are most hostile to the mis-leading by the trade union leaders and against the ignorance of the rank and file which make such mis-leading possible. Workers must come to see through the illusion that all that is needed in the class war are good generals. Sloganising leaders making militant noises are powerless in the face of a system which still has majority support – or at least the acquiescence – of the working class. It would be wrong to write off the unions as anti-working-class organisations. The union has indeed tended to become an institution apart from its members; but the policy of a union is still influenced by the views of its members. It may be a truism but a union is only as strong as its members.

Most unions have formal democratic constitutions which provide for a wide degree of membership participation and democratic control. In practice however, these provisions are sometimes ineffective and actual control of many unions is in the hands of a well-entrenched full-time leadership. It is these leaders who frequently collaborate with the State and employers in the administration of capitalism; who get involved in supporting political parties and governments which act against the interest of the working class.

Socialists from the SPGB take part in every struggle in the economic field to improve conditions. We are as militant as anybody else. The SPGBer is involved in the economic struggle by the fact that we are members of the working class which naturally resists capital. But this is not the same thing as stating that the Socialist Party engages in activity for higher wages and better conditions. This is not the function of a socialist party. We recognise the necessity of workers’ solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class, and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. But to struggle for higher wages and better conditions is not revolutionary in any true sense of the word; and the essential weapons in this struggle are not inherently revolutionary either. It demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. If there were more revolutionary workers in the unions—and in society generally—then the unions and the host of other community organisations would have a more revolutionary outlook.

This does not mean that we say workers should sit back and do nothing, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. But it becomes clear that this is a secondary, defensive activity. Participation in the class struggle does not automatically make workers class-conscious. Militancy on the industrial field is just that and does not necessarily lead to political militancy, but ebbs and flows as labour market conditions change. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution into the common ownership.

We don’t support reformists, either when they genuinely but mistakenly believe that a minimum wage can be tripled, pensions doubled and a massive public works programme for paid from increased taxes on profits implemented under capitalism. Or because they are practising the Machiavellian Trotskyist tactic of “transitional demands”, of trying to lead workers in reformist struggles which they (but not the workers) know are unachievable in the hope that when these reforms are not achieved the workers will turn to them who as a vanguard will lead them in an assault on the state, overthrow it and set up state capitalism.

We convey the truth: that capitalism can never be made to work in their interest and that the only way out is the establishment of socialism as a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, production solely and directly for use and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.