From LSHG Newsletter # 54 (January 2015)
Class
Struggle and Socialism
A reply to Sheila Cohen by Ian Birchall
I am most grateful to Sheila Cohen for the extended
review she has written of my biography[i]
of Tony Cliff. That she has devoted so
much space to the topic[ii]
is a clear indication that she recognises the significance of Cliff’s life and
work, and the influence it has had on one of the main currents of the British
far left. She has focussed in particular on certain themes in Cliff’s work
confronting the relationship between political organisation and working-class
struggle. Though she expresses major criticisms of Cliff’s thinking and
organisational practice, her articles are an important contribution to an
ongoing debate about strategy for the left. My reply, I hope, will not be
couched in defensive terms, but will try to contribute constructively to that
debate.
I
must say that I was therefore a little disappointed at the tone of some her
remarks, notably the rather sneering manner in which she refers to Cliff as
“our hero” and myself as “the faithful Birchall”. Irony is like salt; a little enhances
flavour, but too much can make a dish inedible. I shall try (perhaps not always
successfully) to avoid imitating this tone, and to respond positively to the
arguments put forward. And whereas I am referred to in distant/academic style
as “Birchall”, I shall call her Sheila, since I know her.
I
should add as a preliminary that I believe most people read biographies because
they are interested in the subject matter, not in the author. I saw my job as
being to establish the facts about Cliff’s life and work, and to draw out the
main substance of his political arguments. I don’t think readers would expect me
to make constant obtrusive interventions to express my own opinions.
Nonetheless various reviewers have commented on the fact
that my account is at times quite critical – Nigel Harris, for example calls it
an “unflinching exposure”.[iii]
I might add that when I submitted a first draft I confidently expected to be
asked to tone down some of the more critical remarks. It is entirely to the
credit of the SWP Central Committee (and of Alex Callinicos in particular) that
they did not ask me to withdraw any of my criticisms.
Sheila’s
main theme is that Cliff and the SWP became increasingly obsessed with
“party-building”, and that as a result the organisation “began to depart from
its relatively healthy, non-sectarian and workplace-oriented approach”. This
point, repeated several times, takes us to the very heart of the question; as
she quite rightly observes, “for some of us at least the issue of how
socialists relate to the working-class vanguard remains as central as ever”.
The
question is clearly posed, and it is one which remains of central relevance for
all socialist activists. However, I am less than convinced that Sheila provides
an adequate answer to the question.
Socialists welcome and encourage self-organisation and
resistance by all oppressed groups in society – ethnic minorities,
nationalities, women, gays etc., etc. But socialists, and especially those in
the Marxist tradition, have always attributed a particularly important role to
the working class. It is the value created by workers’ labour which enables capitalism to exist as a
system; workers engaged in collective production offer the potential for an
alternative organisation of society. Hence, for example, Lenin argued that
“Every strike brings thoughts of socialism very forcibly to the worker’s mind.”[iv]
I don’t think Sheila disagrees with this. But having read
her review and various of her other writings, I am still genuinely confused as
to how she perceives the question of socialist organisation. There are at least
four possible answers:
i.
There is no need for socialist organisation. Working
people will carry through the transition to a socialist society through their
own spontaneous self-activity.
ii.
Trade-union organisation will carry through the
transition to socialism as well as engaging in the day-to-day
defence of workers’ conditions. This is of course the classic syndicalist
position whose weaknesses were revealed by the First World
War, but which still survives.
iii.
A socialist organisation will be necessary at some point
in the future, but we’ve a long way to go before we get there, so we don’t need
to discuss it at present.
iv.
We do need a socialist organisation, but it needs to be
radically different from the model offered by the SWP.
Sheila repeatedly accuses the SWP of “sectarianism” and
suggests that this flows from Cliff’s preoccupation with party-building. Now I
would certainly not want to claim that there are no examples of SWP members
acting in a stupid or sectarian fashion – I am sure there are plenty. But I would
not accept that such sectarianism was systematic. I think the SWP’s relative
success (relative within the context of the far left) in recruitment in the
1970s and 1980s could not be explained if the SWP was consistently sectarian.
When I used to travel around the country speaking to SWP branches I would
frequently ask members I met when and why they had joined. Frequently the
answer was a reference to a major campaign – ANL, miners’ strike, poll tax etc.
People had become involved in struggles against racism and war, and for
workers’ rights – and had been attracted to the SWP because they were perceived
as among the best fighters in the campaign. People do not join an organisation
whose only concern is to build itself.
I should add that my argument here refers to the period
covered in my book, up to Cliff’s death in 2000. I am no longer a member of the SWP and I do
not want to comment here on the post-Cliff SWP. I have written another piece on
this question, which anyone interested can consult at http://grimanddim.org/political-writings/2014-so-sad/
In similar vein Sheila writes: “In 1995, again at
Marxism, Cliff backflipped once more; lecturing on Engels, he ‘drew out’ what
Birchall describes as a ‘fundamental point’, viz that ‘the whole history of
Marxism was about learning from the working class.’ Even more bizarrely, he
ended his speech by fulminating against what had in effect been his own
long-term practice: ‘I can never understand the idea…that the party teaches the
class. What the hell is the party?...The dialectic means there is a two-way
street…’
Here
I think she is plain wrong. The idea that the revolutionary party must learn
from the class and generalise from the experience of workers is a constant
theme in Cliff’s work, from the early essay on Substitutionism through the
biography of Lenin up to the last articles in Marxism at the Millennium.[v] I could illustrate with quotations, but it
might be wearisome. A careful reading of my book would prove the point.
Likewise
Sheila repeatedly mocks Cliff’s “obsession with numbers”. But she fails to
notice or comment on the explanation I give. (pp.84, 413) Cliff’s experience in
the 1930s and the whole experience of the left in this period illustrates the
simple fact that the best political programme in the world is useless if it
does not have the social forces to fight for its implementation. To take the
most obvious and tragic example: Trotsky
was absolutely correct to argue that a united front could have prevented Hitler’s
accession to power. But the tiny forces of the Trotskyists were quite unable to
do more than to put this forward as a propaganda point. The consequences we all
know.
Cliff’s “obsessions” were no more than a recognition that
in order to achieve their goals socialists need to be organised. That imperative runs through all his writing, speaking and
political activity, and explains why he inspired so many to commit themselves
to the socialist cause. Of course his judgments may have been mistaken and they
deserve to be subjected to rigorous criticism.
But I remain unconvinced that Sheila offers any viable alternative.
Thus
she tells us that “Cliff appears to have lost, or at least severely damaged,
his antennae regarding the significance of workplace struggle: ‘When a German
comrade told how they had set up a regular informal meeting for contacts from a
factory, Cliff…shouted that most people were attracted by revolutionary ideas,
not by discussion about the workplace’ (p. 407). Hmmm – no dialectical relationship
between the two, then?”
Sheila’s indignation here seems unnecessary. Most
workplaces are not in a state of permanent confrontation. Workers have
grievances, and often they will elect militants to represent them because they
want someone who will stand up to management. But when a strike is not
imminent, discussion of these issues can easily become tedious. All Cliff was
saying is that to maintain a workplace discussion group, exciting and
interesting ideas are necessary, and generally these will not be generated
inside the workplace. As far the “dialectical relationship” between the
workplace and general politics, I think Cliff understood it far better than
Sheila, for whom the latter seems to remain something extremely vague.
Likewise
Sheila points to what she calls “the central paradox typifying so many
‘revolutionaries’; that the class, and the society, closest (at least
potentially) to their own daily experience appears as the least significant.
Like the US SWP member disseminating pro-Cuban propaganda in the aisles of an
assembly plant, the more exotic and less relevant the more worthy of
concentrated ‘revolutionary’ effort.”
Now
I have no particular sympathy for the US
SWP (no connection to the British SWP) and I don’t share their enthusiasm for
the Cuban regime. But if it were indeed true that a socialist society were
being built in a neighbouring country, might that not be very “relevant” to US
workers as showing an alternative to the alienation and exploitation they
suffered? Does Sheila think British (or French, German, Italian, American,
etc.) workers in the early 1920s who were fired with enthusiasm for the Russian
Revolution should have disregarded such an “exotic” topic in favour of an
exclusive preoccupation with their own wages and conditions? Was Eugene Debs
capitulating to “exoticism” when he declared ““From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I
am Bolshevik, and proud of it”? Should he have forgotten Russia and
concentrated on workers’ “daily experience”? I think it is Sheila who is in
danger of forgetting the “dialectical relationship” between workplace struggle
and general politics.
Sheila
refers to the major dispute inside the International Socialists in 1975, where
“The issue was the refusal of IS engineering union members
to put forward an IS candidate for a union post, instead supporting the
existing Broad Left (aka CP) candidate. Rather than understanding and
commending these activists’ informed choice, IS expelled the dissident
engineering workers.”
Now as I make clear in my book, I think there is reason
to believe that this affair was handled badly and that the losses could have
been minimised. Nonetheless it is clear that Sheila has not read my account
carefully enough. (pp. 403-4) This was not simply a dispute between the
“leadership” and “IS engineering union members”. It was a disagreement between
different groups of engineering workers in IS, some of whom supported the Broad
Left candidate, and some of whom (in fact the majority at a fraction meeting)
backed an independent candidate. Perhaps if she thinks about it a little,
instead of trying to score instant points, Sheila will realise there is a real
problem here. Different activists were making different choices, presumably
“informed” in all cases.
So what should happen? Should different members have been
allowed to go their own way, arguing different positions? In which case it
would have been very difficult for other people to work with IS, since they
would never know what the organisation’s policy was. Or should comrades have
agreed to accept a majority position, so that IS could have a consistent stance
in the eyes of the world? I’m quite
happy to accept the argument that much greater efforts should have been made to
achieve a compromise, but there was a real problem, and I don’t think Sheila
enhances her credibility by refusing to recognise this.
And
when Sheila refers to “the SWP’s rapid progression to a form of Leninist
Stalinism” it is hard to take her seriously. The phrase “Leninist Stalinism”
seems to imply a continuity between Lenin and Stalin, but that is another
argument. It is certainly possible to argue that internal democracy in the
IS/SWP has sometimes been deficient, with the organisation prioritising
intervention in the external world over adequate internal discussion. But the
term “Stalinism” takes us into a different universe. It trivialises the very
real historical crimes of Stalinism, and suggests that Sheila has very little
understanding of how Stalinist parties used to operate. That the
“demonstration” of this was a debate (in public) at Marxism, in which Cliff
spoke against the allegedly
“Stalinist” position (pp. 493-4) merely underlines the fragility of Sheila’s
argument.
Sheila tells us that “the mid-1970s were the beginning of
the end, if not of workplace struggle then of IS’s primary orientation towards
that dynamic”. It was hardly the fault of the growing
numbers of unemployed that they no longer had a workplace to orient to. Young
jobless, potentially the most militant, had often never been employed and
therefore were not eligible for union membership. Yet Sheila deplores the
setting up of the “Right to Work Campaign – addressed at unemployed workers
rather than employed activists - complete with a Right to Work march, mass rallies
and all.”
In fact Sheila doesn’t seem to have read my account of
the Right to Work Campaign. It was not addressed solely at unemployed workers,
but aimed to achieve unity between employed and unemployed. The first Right to
Work march in spring 1976 was sponsored by over four hundred trade-union
bodies, including seventy shop stewards’ committees. Marchers joined
picket lines and even entered factories where sackings were being threatened in
order to encourage workers to fight. This was very different from the “hunger
marches” of the twenties and thirties, which had great difficulty in making
contact with employed trade unionists, and scarcely ever entered workplaces.
(p. 409)
Likewise Sheila dismisses the Anti-Nazi League: “Worse
was to come – or at least more moves away from any primary class orientation.”
Presumably Sheila recognises that racism is a class issue, and that racism is a
fearsome obstacle to united action by workers. The ANL was not a move away from
class; indeed, a lot of the ANL’s activity was aimed at winning support in
labour movement organisations. But it also involved a recognition of something
that Sheila, with her relentless focus on the workplace, seems to forget:
workers (happily) do not spend their entire lives in the workplace, they also
watch sport and listen to music, among many other activities. Hence an
imaginative use of cultural struggle could be more effective than handing out
dreary anti-racist leaflets at the factory gate.
Sheila describes both the ANL and Rock Against Racism as
“popular fronts”. I was a little
surprised by this, as this particular criticism generally emanates from the
more dogmatic groupings of orthodox Trotskyists, and whatever else Sheila may
be, I had never thought of her as an orthodox Trotskyist. In any case she seems
to have missed my footnote (p. 421), where I make the historical point that
“The Popular Fronts of the 1930s involved alliances with the political organisations of the
bourgeoisie. The ANL contained people from a range of political positions,
including some who were undoubtedly wealthy, but not the direct political
representatives of the ruling class.”
Sheila also notes the involvement of Neil Kinnock in the
ANL. She simply comments “!?!”. I’m not quite sure what the political
significance of these punctuation marks is, but it seems to indicate
disapproval. In 1978 Kinnock was a young MP on the left of the Labour Party; he
was also a fluent and well-liked speaker. His many betrayals were still far in
the future, as was his oratorical incoherence, which grew ever more disastrous
as the responsibility of imagined future office weighed more heavily on his
shoulders.
On
what possible grounds could he have been excluded from the ANL? And if he had
been, what message would it have sent to the thousands of left-wing Labour
supporters who could be potentially involved in the ANL? Once again Sheila has allowed the temptation
of point-scoring to prevent her from thinking through the logic of her
arguments.
Sheila’s
other main complaint against the SWP, and Cliff in particular, concerns the
“downturn” in struggle which Cliff started to analyse in 1978-79. She does not,
apparently, disagree that there has been a downturn – indeed the decline in the
level of industrial struggle since the 1970s is self-evident, and the
“downturn” has lasted very much longer than Cliff ever expected. Her
disagreement is more specific, and concerns mainly the analysis of the late
seventies.
Thus she tells us that Cliff’s analysis is contradicted by
“the biggest strike revolt (in terms of working days lost) of British history –
the Winter of Discontent”, and even refers to “the quasi-revolutionary
potential of the Winter”.
Now I am not an expert in industrial relations, but I
have always understood that crude figures for days lost (or as Cliff always
insisted “gained”) in strike action are not the most reliable indicator of the
level of struggle. A quick victory involves far fewer strike-days than a long
drawn-out defeat. (Miners were on strike for far more days in 1984-85 than in
1972 or 1974 – but they lost.)
In fact Cliff’s analysis of the downturn was set out in
his article “The Balance of Class Forces in Recent Years”. Sheila does not
appear to have consulted this, although it is available online.[vi]
As I summarise in my book, Cliff did not confine himself to mere statistical
arguments:
“…he allowed workers to speak for themselves. The article contained lengthy
extracts from accounts written by militants and activists in the SWP …. Though
…. he used statistics and graphs to support his argument, he also made a
devastating critique of the inadequacy of official statistics. For example,
these did not record occupations and political strikes, and did not distinguish
between strikes and lockouts. He noted that there was ‘often an inverse relation between growth of union
membership and the strength of shop organisation’. He drew on research by Dave
Beecham on over 1,000 disputes in the period from 1977 to 1979. But his use of
accounts by individual workers enabled him to give a picture of the total experience of workers.” (pp.
443-4)
A debate is always most informative and useful if one
takes on one’s opponents at their strongest point rather than their weakest. If
Sheila has taken on Cliff’s arguments in “The Balance of Class Forces in Recent
Years” it would have been much more illuminating than the simple scoring of
some rather flippant points.
Thus Sheila claims that the SWP “leadership seemed to be
blind to” the potential of the Winter of Discontent. Again she fails to justify this claim. She
might well have done a little research, examining the issues of Socialist Worker for early 1979. Failing
that she might at least have read my account of the period, which, like so much
else in the book she is supposedly reviewing, she seems to have skipped:
“During the “winter of discontent” Socialist
Worker had hailed the revival of struggle. A front-page headline proclaimed
that “1979 is the year to win”,[vii]
and an editorial stated that “we are witnessing the beginning of a new period
of confrontation between workers and government, and between pickets and the
law, of the sort that took place between 1969 and 1974,” though recognising
that “there are important limitations to the present movement”.[viii] (p. 441, see also pp. 435-6)
When Sheila
refers to “the ‘dual power’ nature of some sections of this
nationwide strike wave” I think she is living in a fantasy world, but there
were certainly elements of workers’ control which emerged in the strikes. I
quote Paul Foot’s comments on this. (p. 436)
(Interestingly Sheila is derisive about my claim that “unofficial
strikes were symptoms of an aspiration for workers’ control” in an earlier
period. (p. 261) )
However it is hard to endorse
Sheila’s claim that “trade unionism was at a historic high in 1979-80”. The contrast with the events of 1972-1974 is
visible. In 1972 over ten thousand engineering workers joined miners at the Saltley
picket and the government was left with no alternative but to surrender. Later
that year mass action in support of the five jailed dockers forced a head-on
confrontation with the law courts and the government, and again the state had
to back off. (I remember seeing the release of the dockers on the television in
a pub in Hull – never in my entire life before or since have I had quite that
sense that “our side” had won a victory.) And in 1974 strike action by miners
led to the fall of Heath’s Tory government. Unfortunately nothing in 1979 revealed
a similar level of struggle.
Sheila quotes Rosa Luxemburg
as arguing that working-class consciousness “does not proceed in a beautiful
straight line but in a lightning-like zigzag”.
Absolutely. But if our aim is, as Sheila correctly recommends, “noting
and building on existing working-class struggles”, then we cannot sit back and
watch the lightning; we have to attempt to estimate how consciousness will
develop, so that we can relate to it. And that means attempting to predict.
Sheila repeatedly mocks Cliff’s predictions, but unfortunately any form of
action requires prediction. The important thing is to be flexible, so that when
predictions prove inaccurate, we are able to correct our tactics as quickly as
possible.
So Sheila notes sardonically that
in 1975 “IS insisted on ‘pessimism of the will’; a 1975 conference document
argued gloomily, ‘We underestimated the speed with which the economic crisis
would drive workers to draw political conclusions’.” (Actually the document
stated “overestimated”, not “underestimated” – otherwise Sheila’s observation
would not make sense. (p.376) ) But clearly this was an adjustment of
perspective based on a recognition of the uneven development of consciousness.
Why Sheila finds this so lamentable, and what her alternative (short of always
being right in the first place) would have been are not at all clear to me.
And Sheila does a serious
injustice to Steve Jefferys. She alleges that he “resigned as industrial
organiser, not in protest against the strategic confusion but because ‘The
decay of working-class organisation and the shift to the right in the trade
union movement has gone so far that all we can do in this period is to make
socialist propaganda as actively as possible’.” In her haste to score a point
she has skipped a line; this was emphatically not Jefferys’s view, but rather
the position he (somewhat polemically) attributed to Cliff, and with which he
disagreed sharply. (p. 437)
Finally, what is the
alternative? What is the better path that Cliff and the SWP should have
followed? With true proselytising zeal Sheila leaves us in no doubt –
repeatedly she invokes the American publication and organisation Labor Notes. Now I know relatively
little about Labor Notes. As Sheila
points out, it is not in the index of my book –
because I saw my subject as being what Cliff said and did, not what he ought to have done.
I have tried to remedy my
culpable ignorance by consulting the Labor
Notes website.[ix]
I have also read a fascinating interview with Kim Moody[x]
(this was published in International
Socialism, the journal of the SWP, perhaps suggesting that the SWP is not
quite so sectarian as Sheila claims). Kim gives a wide-ranging account of
industrial and political struggles in the United States. I get the impression that Kim is rather less
of an “unrepentant workerist” than Sheila. Thus he tells how Labor Notes supported the Nader
presidential campaign in 2000, and attempted to relate to the effort in the
1990s to set up a “Labor Party”. He explains how environmentalism, abortion and gay marriage have become
important issues for trade unionists.
Obviously the work being done
by Labor Notes is valuable and is to
be commended. But I am left with a problem. The Labor Notes website gives us this account of the organisation’s
activities:
“Labor Notes is a media and organizing project that has been the voice
of union activists who want to put the movement back in the Labor
movement since 1979.
“Through our magazine,
website, books, conferences and workshops, we promote organizing, aggressive
strategies to fight concessions, alliances with workers’ centers, and unions
that are run by their members.
“Labor Notes is also a network
of rank-and-file members, local union leaders, and Labor activists who know the
Labor movement is worth fighting for. We encourage connections between workers
in different unions, workers centers, communities, industries, and countries to
strengthen the movement—from the bottom up.
“That movement is needed
because workers are being hit hard by their employers. We have lower real wages, less job security, and smaller, weaker unions than our mothers and
fathers did.
…
“With more than 30 years of movement building
behind us, Labor Notes exists as a resource for leaders and union members who want
to combat these trends and chart a new course for the Labor movement.”
Now these are thoroughly commendable activities,
and any socialist should be happy to support them. But there is a substantial
gap in this statement of aims. While it unambiguously sides with workers
against employers, it does not actually challenge the property relations which
lie behind the conflict. It would be quite possible to support Labor Notes while having no objection to
the existing ownership of the means of production, but simply thinking workers
should have a bigger share of the cake. In short the word socialism is
conspicuous by its absence.
Kim confirms this in the interview: “Most of us
started with the International Socialists at that time, but the idea was that
it would not be controlled by the organisation and that it would be
independent, which is what by and large has happened, although the staff tend
to be socialist for the most part.”
Now I am not trying to score points here. Because
of the cold war experience communism, Marxism and socialism have been
completely marginalised in the United States, and I appreciate that using the
term might be seen as a barrier in some circumstances. And I am sure the Labor Notes staff are totally honest; if
they get into discussion with trade-union activists they don’t conceal their
personal commitment to socialism. (Failure to “come out” stores up trouble,
leaving the possibility of a witch-hunt at a later date.) But it still leaves
the question of whether an explicitly socialist organisation is needed. If
socialism is ever to take root in the United States again, then surely
explicitly socialist propaganda is required. In this connection I would mention
the excellent work being done by Haymarket Books. And of course the applicability
of the Labor Notes model to Britain, where the socialist
tradition has been rather more tenacious, is questionable.
One
of the rare points at which Sheila commends Cliff is for his advocacy, in 1972,
of “a rank and file strategy” (p. 333). Cliff defined this in terms of a “cog wheel” between revolutionaries and the
working class, proposing “the organisation of militants in different unions and
industries who work together around specific issues…wider than those affecting
a small group of workers in one place of work [but] not going as far as to aim
at a complete emancipation of the working class…”
And
Sheila comments: “Common sense at last”. But Cliff’s cog-wheel metaphor
(borrowed from Trotsky) requires three cogs – the working class, the
rank-and-file movement, and the socialist organisation. (p. 334). If we adopt
the Labor Notes model, where is the
third wheel?
For
Tony Cliff socialism was paramount. Strategies and forms of organisation might
vary according to objective circumstances, the state of the movement and the
balance of class forces. But everything was subordinated to the struggle for
socialism. Perhaps he made seriousmisjudgements
at various points in his life. In my book I attempted to set out his changing
positions so that they can be subjected to serious criticism and so we can
learn from our mistakes.
I would add another consideration relating to our present
situation. In a period where the level of struggle is lamentably low, I don’t
think it is the case, as Lenin believed at one time, that workers first develop
“trade-union consciousness”, and then have to move beyond that to an acceptance
of socialism. On the contrary, often the only people willing to do the
generally tedious and unglamorous work of keeping trade-union organisation
alive are those who are already motivated by a socialist commitment. This is,
by the way, clearly the case with Labor
Notes, where Kim Moody was an active socialist over two decades before
becoming involved in the establishment of Labor
Notes. As a result I would argue, following Cliff (and William Morris) that
our priority at the present time is to make socialists.
Despite my
belief that many of her criticisms are seriously misguided, I welcome Sheila’s
critique. I very much agree with Cliff’s formulation that “ideas are like a
river and a river is formed from lots of streams”. (p. 529). When – if – the working class reawakens, then
I’m sure both the SWP and Labor Notes, as well as many other tendencies, will
have made their contribution to the new movement that emerges..
Until then,
perhaps a little modesty is called for. None of us have made the revolution,
none of us have even managed to block the continuing onslaught against
working-class organisation and living standards. We should aim for fraternal
exchange of views and experience rather than the defence of entrenched
positions. I’m sure I have much to learn from Labor Notes; I hope Sheila is prepared to return the compliment and
study Cliff’s work a little more carefully.
Ian Birchall
[i] I Birchall, Tony Cliff: A Marxist for his Tine, London, 2011. All page
references given in brackets in the text.
[vii] Socialist Worker, 6 January 1979.
[viii] Socialist Worker, 3 February 1979.
