The continued evolution of the Labour Government to the right has destroyed in most thinking people's minds the illusion that the Labour Party can be an instrument of social reform, let alone of socialism. The complete failure of the left wing of the Labour Party to prevent this evolution or even put up a serious fight against it has dealt a severe blow to the idea, held at one time by thousands of activists, that a mass left wing inside the Labour Party would emerge to become a focus for an anti-capitalist struggle. The trade union leaders have, by and large, become either accomplices in Wilson's endeavours to cut the standards of the British workers or have, at best, offered only partial and sectional opposition to the Government's right wing policies.
In a period when it should have made great gains, the Communist Party has declined and is racked by internal dissension. The maoist groups which left in response to its rightward evolution have - in the main - proven to be completely sterile. The largest non-social democratic, non-stalinist organisation on the left, the Socialist Labour League, has gone off, drunk with self-righteous sectarianism, into the wilderness. It seems to have set itself the target of becoming the W.H. Smith of the left. Thus, in a few years, all the major and traditional workers' organisations in Britain have become discredited in the eyes of most militants and activists.
This situation has demoralised and disoriented thousands of rank and file socialists and would have engendered a historic defeat for the British working class but for one factor: it coincided with an upsurge of youth militancy and the growth of a large anti-imperialist solidarity movement. This, in turn, can be said to be the reflection of the world revolutionary process within the boundaries of Britain.
This new movement is as yet unstructured, largely because it has developed outside the framework of the traditional workers' organisations, but it has certain very healthy features: it is profoundly anti-reformist (because of the experience of the Labour Government); it is anti-stalinist (because of the general crisis of stalinism and the failure of the CP to take the solidarity position and organise meaningful opposition to the Government's policies); and anti-sectarian (because it has been repelled by the antics of the SLL, maoists and certain other small groups). Large numbers of this new youth vanguard consider themselves revolutionaries - apart from a strong anarchist wing, nearly all the revolutionary minded youth are adherents of one or other school of marxism. There is a growing thirst for organisation, which in the first instance has been met mostly by people joining VSC. However, the limitations of VSC's single-issue nature soon becomes apparent.
The conjuncture of the discrediting of the traditional workers' organisations with the rise of this new youth vanguard presents those who see the building of a revolutionary party as an urgent task with both huge possibilities and difficult problems.
It can be said that the objective conditions exist now for the building of such a party and that new forces needed for such a party are coming on the scene. On the other hand, there does not exist a marxist organisation with the authority for all these young revolutionaries to join. The question of marxist unity must be seen in this light.
TWO ASPECTS OF UNITY
There are two distinct sides to this question of unity which, whilst they are intrinsically linked in the totality of the process of building a revolutionary party, have features of their own and are best separated for purpose of discussion. They are the building of united action committees (to ensure unity in action before unity of organisation has been achieved) and the actual problem of building a united marxist revolutionary movement, the vanguard party.
The question of elaborating ways in which marxists can work together in united action committees is one imposed upon us by events. Ideally, the job of, say, defending the Vietnamese revolution in a country like Britain should be done through a workers' united front, consisting basically of the mass organisations of the working class. However, none of the mass organisations or, for that matter, the relatively large left organisations has lived up to its responsibilities. Thus the task has to be undertaken by small marxist groups. This duty cannot be dodged, nor can it wait until full unity is achieved.
Under these circumstances, it is imperative for marxists to fight sectarianism and to create united front type organs of struggle. After having worked out a set of demands, which should be a simple as possible without giving an inch on principle, they should bring together all those who will work for this set of demands, regardless of other differences. Having assembled enough forces to ensure sufficient people for meaningful activity they are then in a position to move on to the next stage of putting pressure on the larger and traditional workers organisations by mass mobilisations. In this way whole organisations can be forced to change their political position.
The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign is a model for this type of activity. First grouping together a number of small groups, then concentrating on mass mobilisations and, incidentally, on the way forcing many organisations to change their position) it now has the possibility of winning large sections of the Labour movement to the solidarity position. Needless to say, it could not have even begun this process had the marxists who initiated it demanded full programmatic agreement before united action. The very simplicity of its demands enabled VSC to embrace very diverse trends. This non-sectarian approach [illegible] possible to appeal to [illegible] of unorganised young people who were alienated from existing organisations.
"UNPRINCIPLED COMBINATIONS"
But, says a very learned expert on dialectics, this is an unprincipled combination; the VSC does not agree on the class nature of the Soviet Union; it even appeals to Liberals and left-wing Catholics. Doctor Slaughter who, despite his vast knowledge of dialectical reasoning (see his writings on Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks in LABOUR REVIEW) approaches all questions, like most sectarians, from the point of view of formal logic. He applies simple formulas regardless of time and circumstance. For him any agreement to work together by people with political differences is unprincipled.
It is to be wondered what Dr. Slaughter would have made of Marx's collaboration with Weston (an eccentric Owenite industrialist) and Ogden (in essence a mouthpiece for Liberal influences on the British workers' movement) had he been around in the days of the First International. Marx sat with these gentlemen on the General Council of that body for a long period. (See Documents of the First International, published by Lawrence and Wishart in five volumes). Or what our dialectical Cliff would have thought of Lenin's insistence upon working with closely with Father Gapon in the early months of 1905. This collaboration went as far as trying to arrange the shipment of arms to Russian workers and peasants in revolt. Father Gapon was known to be responsible for leaving the workers to be massacred on "Bloody Sunday", when he took them to present a petition to the Tsar.* Or to take a more recent example, what about Trotsky's collaboration with the bourgeois members of the Dewey Commission. We think that the history of the marxist movement is full of examples of Dr. Slaughter's "unprincipled combinations".
However, in 1922, under completely different circumstances, Lenin, in a note to Molotov about proposals for new conditions of membership of the party, argued for a probationary period of 18 months for workers unless they had worked in a large industrial enterprise for at least 10 years! His ideas about admitting peasants and Red Army men were even stricter - he suggested two years in their case. All others, he said should have a probation period of 4 years. (see Lenin's Selected Works, volume 9.)
lenin insisted upon the necessity of splitting the international workers movement into two camps when the third international was formed, he waged war upon those who wanted to retain unity of the 2nd and 3rd internationals, such as the gentlemen of the so-called 2½ international. But this did not stop him from supporting the line of Trotsky's "Thesis on the United Front" written for the February, 1922, plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which argued for united action.
The theories that the SLL put forward to justify their non-participation in the VSC and the mass mobilisations are terribly similar to those put forward by the stalinist communist parties in the "third period". Trotsky wrote a whole book, GERMANY WHAT NEXT, polemicising against the theory of the "united front from below". The refusal of the German Communist Party to work for a united front with the German Social Democratic Party against Nazism materially helped the rise to power of Hitler - wrong ideas and theories can have a terrible consequence.
PROBLEMS OF BUILDING THE PARTY
[illegible] aspect which I wish to [illegible] the actual regrouping of marxists and [illegible] transfer the methods and the successes of the VSC in building a single-issue campaign, with a minimum programme, into the field of building the vanguard party.
Most marxists in Britain accept the need and urgency of building such a party. Most of them, indeed, are disciples of lenin, who made the greatest contribution to the theory of building the vanguard party. We should study what Lenin wrote on this subject and see to what extent it can be applied to present conditions in Britain.
The most common myth on the left about Lenin's approach to building the vanguard party is that he put forward a standard set of formulas to be applied in all situations. The truth is very different. The main characteristic of Lenin's approach was his flexibility and concrete application of basic ideas.
It was the same Lenin who was prepared to split the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 over a few words in the conditions of membership (see Lenin's Collected Works, volume 2) who in November of 1905 called for hundreds and thousands of workers to join the party. (See "The Reorganisation of the Party" Selected Works, volume 3.) He polemicised [illegible] that time. He argued for the dissolving of the Bolshevik faction and pointed out that workers were [illegible]
This very brief and incomplete survey of some of the positions held by Lenin at various times give an indication of the richness of his theory and practice of the vanguard party.
However, there is one thread of thought which is common to everything Lenin wrote, said and did in relation to the vanguard party: the need for well-defined party principles, namely, programme, tactical resolutions, organisational firmness and experience, and discipline. Even when, in 1905, he called for hundreds and thousands of workers to be brought into the party he did so on the basis that these party principles had been hammered out and provided a framework around which the huge number of new members could be structured. His strictures about [illegible] motivated by a fear that now the CPSU Government [illegible] thousands of [illegible] enter and undermine these party principles,
to our present situation. Those who wish to build the vanguard party in Britain today have the special problem of defending the theory of the Leninist party. This is because of the special features of the situation which I have outlined before. The revolutionary youth have many fine features: their hatred of social democracy and stalinism, their rejection of reformism and the parliamentary road to socialism, their internationalism and anti-sectarianism, to name but a few. However, a very high proportion of them have acquired one very mistaken idea: the equation of organisation and discipline with bureaucracy. There is mistrust of the very notion of any formal organisation at all, let alone the concept of a disciplined democratic centralist party.
This is very easy to understand: the revolutionary youth have through their own experience come to identify organisation and the call for discipline with the bureaucracy of stalinism and social democracy and the antics of the sectarian groups. This feeling must be understood and sympathised with. Any tendency for older marxists to merely lecture the young revolutionaries on this question will be counter-productive. In the last analysis only practice will finally deal a death blow to this theory.
One aspect of the democratic centralist party which must be explained time and time again is the right of tendencies to organise for the propagation of their views. This feature alone should go a long way to re-establish the authority and prestige of Bolshevik norms of organisation.
However, the very last thing we should do is to go along with these ideas or ignore them. That would be a perversion of the whole function of marxists who are endeavouring to lay the basis for building the revolutionary party.
The role of the vanguard party is to act as the memory of the class; to generalise from previous class experiences - defeats and victories - and to formulate these generalisations into a living body of theory to guide the class in new struggles. In the absence of a revolutionary party this duty, of necessity, falls to the marxist groups, despite their limitations. This duty is of extreme importance exactly when new and inexperienced forces are coming on the scene. Unless there is an instrument for this the class will be doomed to repeat the same old mistakes time and time again. That is why today the Marxist groups must defend the theory of the vanguard party above all else in this mileu.
CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP
We need to explain time and time again the basic character of the epoch we live in: that it is a period when the world is rotten ripe for socialism, when the alternative to socialism is nuclear disaster; that because of this it is an epoch of continuous crisis with revolutionary situations bursting upon us one after the other; and that the missing factor which has prevented these many revolutionary situations from being consummated is the absence of leadership, i.e., the revolutionary party.
We live in the era of a generalised crisis of leadership of the working class movement - France is the clearest possible example of this. All the conditions were present for a successful workers' revolt in that country earlier this year except one: the existence of leadership which could have given the French workers a revolutionary strategy for the seizure of power.
But we need to define all this in more precise terms. Many will agree that we need a revolutionary party but do not necessarily mean a vanguard party.
It is not just a question of having an organisation to coordinate activities or to initiate large-scale campaigns. It is one of having a party, flexible in tactics but absolutely firm in organisation, which can, when a revolutionary situation occurs make a bid for power. The discussion-club type organisation would be paralysed in this situation. A vanguard party must be especially disciplined in a revolutionary situation; it must be remembered that it is exactly in such situations that the greatest differences about tactics will occur. A party unable to ensure united action despite these differences will not be able to lead a movement which will take power from the capitalist class.
A revolutionary party must have a sense of timing so that it acts as one man. It must have a sensitivity to the moods of the masses and have a delicate understanding of the relationship of class forces at any given time. Otherwise it will fall prey to errors both "right" and "left".
YEARS OF TRAINING
But these characteristics do not fall from the skies - nor do they come from reading books. They can only be achieved by a long process of training in methods and approach. They can only come with a continuous struggle against subjectivism and impressionism. That is why it is necessary for the small groups right from the very moment of their inception to struggle for these methods and incorporate them into their body of experience and tradition.
It is with all this in mind that we must view the actualities of the process of building the revolutionary movement in Britain today and the related problem of marxist unity in its fullest sense. Every move and proposal for unity must be measured by the yardstick: does it further the building of this type of organisation or would it hinder it? Attempts to sidestep this question are harmful. Endeavours to build very quickly by ignoring these questions will rebound upon those carrying out the experiment. Any proposal to take advantage of the existence of the large number of revolutionary youth by throwing aside the concept of having a clearly defined programme, firm organisational principles and a commitment to discipline is a step back and will prove a hindrance to the job of building a vanguard party. It might seem that temporary advantages will be gained but the inevitable outcome will be a period of splits and ideological disarray.
The time to open the party to hundreds and thousands is when large numbers of workers are being revolutionised and an organisation already exists in which these party principles are firmly established. That was the situation which existed when lenin made his call in 1905. This is not the situation in Britain today.
The large numbers of revolutionary youth will come together in united action committees immediately. A good number of them will join one or other of the revolutionary groups. But those who counterpose the immediate fusion of existing organisations to the creation of instruments of unity in action are damaging both the prospects for united action and the possibilities of fusion in future.
The VSC has served (and will serve) an important but limited function in all this. The RSSF can serve a bigger one. Revolutionary marxists should work to create a liaison committee which could initiate further united action committees as need and opportunity arises. They should argue the case for the revolutionary party and thrash out a complete ideological basis for fusion which ensured the building of party principles. All this requires patience as well as a sense of urgency. One thing is very clear - it would be criminal if the modest gains made for united action via the Vietnam work, etc., were wiped out by sectarianism of any kind.
Thousands of new revolutionaries have come on to the scene; there is tremendous interest in theory and organisation, there is a will to fight and win, and there is a general international situation which favours further radicalisation. If we stick to party principles the prospects of unity are very good.
* See Krupskaya's "Memories of Lenin" (the early edition, before the stalinists rewrote it) for a very [illegible]