what sort of left party do we need? by ben wray

8/12/2019 What Sort of Left Party Do We Need? by Ben Wray

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1 Ben Wray


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Contents

Introduction

1. The case for an electoral party

2. The case for training and expertise

3. The case for tolerant democratic discipline

4. The case for politics, not just beliefs

5. Rethinking the relationship between party andmovements

6. The case for revolutionary reforms

7. A new party for a new Scotland

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Introduction

The Scottish left is a contradiction.

On the one hand, if we do win the referendum, a new Scottish nation-state willbe built on the back of a movement that was, at minimum, influenced andaffected by the left. The remarkable Radical Independence Conferences of 2012and 2013 have shown a degree of political maturity and unity that has rarelyever been seen on the Scottish left. The anti-neoliberal Common Weal Projectled by the Jimmy Reid Foundation has had a major influence on the mainstreamdebate over what an independent Scotland would look like, including beingsupported in principle at the SNP conference last year and unanimously backedby SNP councillors. The overall independence movement is driven forward onthe basis of being to the left of Westminster austerity politics, as reflected by

voting patterns which show the rich voting no and the most deprived votingyes. The left is a serious part of a movement that could break the British stateon the premise of wanting a more socially just and equal society free ofmilitarism and Thatcherism.

On the other hand, whilst the broad left in Scotland may never have been moreinfluential than it is today, the radical left in party-form may never have been sodivided and dysfunctional. When the radical left has stood in elections as TUSC,the SSP or Solidarity over the past half-decade, it has achieved minusculevotes. Since the Sheridan split of the SSP in 2006, the radical left has not been

able to recover itself electorally or organisationally, if anything becoming moresplit on a party level since then. Whilst initiatives like RIC have been shapedand to a large extent led by the radical left, this doesnt get round the fact thatwe have failed to recover in any way in a party-form in Scotland.

Does this matter? Do we need a left party at all? It may not seem a key issuenow in the context of the referendum campaign entering its final six months.However, post-referendum, regardless of the result, a question mark whichmay seem marginal now will quickly rise to the fore: Where now?. Whilst,hopefully, the broad left that has built itself up through RIC and Common Wealwill maintain itself in the post-referendum climate, there will be forks in the

road which will require new answers pretty quickly. The 2016 elections will be amajor challenge as to the sustainability of a left challenge post-referendum. Weshould also be aware that it is easier for us all to get on when the debate overwhat sort of Scotland we want is theoretical in the cold light of day political

realism will quickly emerge; we should not be so naive as to expect that atleast some of those who speak warm words now wont buckle when it comes tothe crunch. The radical left will lack teeth if all it can rely on to pressure themainstream after the referendum is broad-based campaigns.

If we did enter the post-referendum scenario with the left in its current form,

what would we look like? The left is currently broken into, very roughly, fourparts:


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those of no party, who believe it is sufficient to work purely throughmovements and campaigns or who dont think any of the existing partiescan achieve what they are after

far-left parties and groups mainstream parties who have a consistent left element within themthe

SNP and Scottish Labour would both fall into this category, we wontbother arguing over which falls more into it than the other

the majority of the Green PartyNone of these options provide, in my view, an effective force the left can relyon to carry us into a new Scotland, certainly not in their present form. Not thatthey cannot play an important role as part of a wider left challenge, but thesum of the four parts does not and can not strike any sense of dread into the

vultures of global capitalism that will swarm over Holyrood the day after a yesvote. Indeed, if we dont win the referendum the situation is all the more inneed of reconstructionthe movements that have taken us this far will need anew direction to galvanise a renewed challenge to the British state in a differentform. The 2016 elections would surely be the only feasible option in thatscenario.

So, one way or another, we need something better than what we have now. Mycontention is not that if we create the perfect left party then capitalisms daysare numbered. The left has always and will always be reliant on the

determination of the working class to challenge the system. But waiting for aworking class revolt to wash away all our problems is not a plausible option even if it did arrive in a flood like in Paris May 68 it will fall short if the left arenot well organised, well rooted and dynamic in their leadership. The only wayyou can tackle this with any efficiency and effectiveness is through a partyform. Some will not like that word, will consider it to have too many badconnotations and will seek to address the problem in different terms. However,the problem itself must be addressed. At the end of the day politics involves theorganisational combination of individuals the options are either to embracethat fact and deal with it consciously or ignore it and experience it

unconsciously.After the SSP split in 2006, the radical left in Scotland still have a long way togo to regain credibility and purpose. The independence movement has got usto a position where we are campaigning together again and with many newpeople in common cause. Now we need to work out how we are going to takethe next step and become a serious force again, with lessons learned from pastmistakes but with renewed vigour grounded in the understanding that Scotlandis on the cusp of historic changes and we can play a major role in shapingthem.

I am going to express my case for what sort of Left party we need across sevencases, one each week:


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1. The case for an electoral party2. The case for training and expertise3. The case for tolerant democratic discipline4. The case for politics, not just beliefs5. The case for a more effective relationship between party and movements6. The case for revolutionary reforms7.A new party for a new Scotland

Lots of readers will have already decided they want nothing to do with myvision for a left party merely by observing the titles of the nine articles. That is

fine, I dont expect to convince everybody. But I challenge those people toprove that Im wrong by building a successful left another way. Explain to meand show me how to do it better, and if you do Ill be more than happy toadmit that Im wrong. There has to be an increased intellectual rigour from theScottish left. Its not enough to know what you dont like you have to be ableto provide a way forward for what you want to see happen and provide anevidence-based case for that strategy. Thats what I aim to do here.

Finally, this doesnt necessarily mean we need a new party it could comeabout from the reinvigoration and renewal of an existing party. My contentionhere is that what we currently have isnt adequate and what follows are

proposals for the sort of left party I believe we need. Hopefully it will helpencourage debate on this subject amongst those on the left of all parties andnone.

NOTE: A lot of what follows is contextualised by my experience on the radicalleft. I realise that for (hopefully) most readers this is a vantage point that mayseem peculiar or maybe even off-putting if you havent yourself been part ofthe radical left (lucky you) with its fairly narrow intellectual influences. I canonly say that one can only write from experience, and that if any terms,references or emphasis are confusing Im happy to clarify in the comments

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1. The case for an electoral party

The only reliable and sustainable basis on which to build a left party is toorientate it towards the only democratic institutions that everyone can engagein and the only institutions that have democratic authority over society parliamentary elections. In Scotland that means, most importantly, Holyrood.

Some leftists will recoil immediately, arguing that parliament isnt democratic, itdoesnt serve the people and the working class increasingly dont trust it anddont vote. This is all true but it isnt a convincing argument against engagingin parliamentary elections because there are no alternative democraticinstitutions which possess anywhere near the same democratic legitimacy insociety as parliament does. Those who dont vote arent setting up co-operatives to run communities or workers councils to run workplaces. Theirprocess of re-engagement and democratic renewal will likely pass through

parliamentary elections on their way to participatory democratic control ofsociety, if we are to ever get there.

Millions of people vote and even those that dont vote accept the democraticauthority of parliament to make decisions over society. The quicker we wake upand realise that this is the only mass democracy we have and that we thereforebetter try to engage with it, the more likely we are to start winning people overon a mass scale. And when they are won over to the idea that change ispossible, they are on a path which leads them to more revolutionary change,including going beyond parliamentary elections.

Yet what of the declining faith that the public have in the political parties andpolitical process? This only raises the stakes for the left, as the parliament isvulnerable to a credible left challenge. Syriza is the optimal example of thisasthe centre ground disappeared Greeks did not turn on mass away fromparliament, but turned instead to the radical left in the form of Syriza becausethey were the only people putting forward an anti-austerity agenda through thecall for a left government against austerity.

Elections provide a barometer against which to test our ideas on a societalscale. I have tried to build non-parliamentary political parties and because they

have no society-wide barometer by which they can judge their activities, theyquickly lose sight of who they are trying to win over. Yes, they can pick up pacewhen one movement or another gathers momentum or if a major strike actiontakes place, but not enough people want to participate in a non-parliamentaryparty on a consistent basis. Activism around strikes and movements is tiringwhen you lack the power or potential power to actually make decisions. Theonly way to be able to make decisions or even threaten to make decisions is ifyou have the democratic authority to do so through winning elections. Indeed,funnily enough, the left could do much more to help strikes and movements if itcould be a voice for them in parliament, challenging the dull neoliberal

consensus by using a platform by which the media and the general public canhear what we have to say. Most people on strikes dont need to be told how


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right they are to do what they are doing they need effective solidarity andthat means political support.

What happens outwith parliamentary competition is the left judges itself on itsown merits, and quickly descends into an echo-chamber: with no wider basis

for assessing effectiveness, we judge our performance in meeting turnouts,facebook shares or, worse, plain self-aggrandising. The result is we begin totake much more seriously the minority concerns of activists than the majorityconcerns of the people we are suppose to be trying to convince/mobilise. Thisprocess culminates in faction fights and splits over issues most people wouldnthave the first clue about.

Whilst we bicker over the finer details of the internal democracy of tiny groups,the big picture is that UKIP are winning working class support because theresno anti-establishment alternative from the left to challenge them. The

neoliberalisation of mainstream politics has created space to the left and right,but its only those on the right who are taking advantage of it. Surveys of UKIPvoters show that whilst they often hold reactionary positions on immigrants andthe unemployed, they hold left-wing positions on redistribution of wealth,taxing the rich, public services and opposing foreign wars. We should befighting against UKIP for working class support, instead were fighting over thescraps of the far-left comfort zone.

Dont get me wrong, I am not for becoming like the politicians. I believerepresentatives should take a workers wage; I believe they should beaccountable to the community they are elected from and the party in that

community; I believe they should take a stand on issues which may beunpopular with the majority of voters, in support for example of welfareclaimants and asylum seekers; I believe they should try to highlight the plightof the most oppressed in their community and try to give them a platform tospeak for themselves. We need all this and morea real peoples politics butwe cant get close to this unless we realise where the starting line is. And thatsa left party orientated on parliamentary elections.

Put it this way what do you think the capitalist elite want us to do? Leaveparliament to their mates and focus on extra-parliamentary activism, or

challenge for democratic control over society? The question should answeritself.

In part 7 The case for revolutionary reforms I further develop this idea ofchallenging the system at its point of greatest weakness: the governmentallevel.


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2. The case for training and expertise

Most left-wingers become politically engaged on account of learning somethingof the world and having the curiosity to further expand and develop thisknowledge. It is surprising therefore how little emphasis the organised left

places on developing the skills we require to change the world we seek toknow. Everyone involved in the left should embrace training to learn skills inorder to effectively engage in trying to change society, while we shouldnt beafraid to embrace listening to those who have expertise in particular areaseither.

The left has a very limited conception of the skills and expertise it takes to beeffective. Being an activist commonly means you set-up stalls, you organisemeetings and demonstrations, you speak at these meetings and you mightphone people to motivate them to do the same stuff too (this isnt exactly true

of trade-union activists, but well leave discussion of that to one side for now).If you are a theorist you read Marxist literature, read Marxist webs ites andwrite for said websites about issues relevant to said literature. You can be anactivist and theorist on the left while hardly engaging with anyone outside theleft. This is another way in which the left becomes self-referential, the leadersbeing the people that are best at doing these things, but these thingsthemselves being extremely limited and representing only a small part of theskill-set we all should be developing.

Ive been actively involved in the left for seven years and there are someessential skills that I am only just finding out about. Take, for example,canvassing and data collection. The SNP have built up a sophisticated databasesystem which allows any activist at a click of a button to know which waypeople in their community vote, what issues they are concerned about, howlikely they are to get out and vote and what leaflets and information theyshould be targeted with to convince them of the SNPs case. When I used tosell socialist newspapers I got peoples address and email on a petition beforeselling them the paper, but I didnt care about the data that was just a tacticto sell the paper. We didnt store the data anywhere, we didnt put it into aspreadsheet, never mind a sophisticated data technology system. How could aleft party plausibly compete if it doesnt know who or where its supporters are?

Another example is media strategy. One of the last things I used to think aboutwhen organising protests, stunts or events was a media strategy. Sometimeswe didnt even bother to put a press release out. It was all about (a)pressurising the Vice-Chancellor or boss the action was against (b) buildingcohesion and confidence amongst activists and (c) getting the support of thepeople who saw our action. When we didnt get results wed blame the mediafor not taking it seriously when we done nothing to encourage them to do so.In an age when professional journalism is in decline and the journalists thatremain operate under time-pressure, there are opportunities to create stories

for them if you think about how to appeal to their readers. Thinking through amedia strategy also focuses mindsrather than thinking about what messages


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work for the activists on the protest, we think about what messages areactually going to resonate with the public. Theres a whole skill-set required todo media strategy effectively. If we cant use the media to our advantage, howdo we expect to win any arguments beyond our own ranks?

All training should be carefully co-ordinated strategically: a communityengagement strategy requires a specific set of skills that need to be trainedsystematically, the same for an internal education strategy and the same for anational political strategy.

Its about professionalism: in any discipline there are specific skills that need tobe learned and strategies followed to have a chance of success. Those skillsshould be taught by people who have experience in them and have learnt theright ways to do it and the wrongs ways to do it. The left too easily conflatesbeing anti-establishment with being anti-professional the reality is that if we

actually want to convince people of anti-establishment ideas we need to bemore professional than other political organisations.

Training is the only way to effectively undermine the male, pale and staleproblem of prominent leftists being predominantly white men. If there is aculture of improving the skills of everyone, members of oppressed groups havemuch more chance of genuinely taking leadership roles rather than being theobject merely of tokenistic efforts.

Theres an incredible amount of arrogance on the left about training andexpertisetheres so much we dont know and we spend so little time trying to

learn it. A party must be committed to teaching core skills and ideas to itsmembers if its ever got a hope of achieving anything serious. Of course it is notnecessary for everybody to know everything people should be able to getinvolved in the left with minimal knowledge or skills and shouldnt feelpressured to do more than their circumstances allow for. But there should be aculture of endeavouring to learn knowledge and skills as best we can, from themost experienced member to the newest.

As the neoliberalisation of education advances apace, we have to create ourown spaces for learning about how to change society that are informed by

sound ideas and expertise. A left party should be a school of radical thinkersand activists.


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3. The case for tolerant democratic discipline

Jokes relating to the lefts tendency to split are repeated so often as to becometedious in the extreme. The reason we split is because we have so little power,

without which theres little to hold together people who have to live in the realworld of neoliberal capitalism. You dont seethe Tories splitting although theyhave as much in-fighting and as many principled disagreements as we dothisis because they have power to hold their organisation together. If the left wasin the position of making serious decisions affecting the lives of millions ofpeople, we wouldnt split, or such splits which did occur would be much morelikely to express divisions within genuine social forces, as with the UKIP splitfrom the Tories in 1993 over Maastricht. But until we get there we need aformula that maintains unity whilst warding off tendencies towards stagnancyand immobilisation, which keeps us looking and engaging outwards whilst

keeping a lively culture of debate inwards. Such a formula is difficult and isimpossible to work out exactly in the abstract, yet I would roughly describe it interms of tolerant democratic discipline, each word being important in itself andin combination with the others.

Thetolerantpart means we have to be willing to respect difference ofopinion. This is something the left struggles with different views are oftenseen as a problem and a threat. They shouldnt be. You have to let yourmembers breathe politically and that means you let debates work themselvesout at their own pace. Is everything really going to come crashing down if somemembers take a stance that is different from the majority position? Over timethere is normally a convergence anyway, while those who consistently findthemselves in a small minority dont usually hang around for long. After all, itsnot much fun being involved in something where everyone disagrees with you.

One could argue that this emphasis on tolerance represents a break with thetraditional Leninist model of democratic centralism, but that concept has beenso distorted by now that it bears little relation to reality or history: Leninproposed a particular model of organisation for the Bolsheviks specifically tomake their operation in feudal, Tsarist, police state Russia more effective. Many

Leninists see their organisational methods as time and context resistant, but

this couldnt be further from Lenins own intentions. Even in the context ofTsarist Russia, there was no precedent for expelling members and silencingminority views in the pre-stalinist Bolsheviks like there is in most of todays

actually existing micro-Leninist groups. Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed theOctober revolution in a rival newspaper, but were still elected to the CentralCommittee after the Soviets took power.

However, we should not reserve criticism for lack of tolerance solely for the far-left. If you are in Labour or the SNP and you elect someone in your local branchto be your candidate and the party leadership dont like it, they may simplychange the candidate. The decisions made at party conferences are rarely


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binding on the party leadership if they decide they dont want to pursue them thats a real top-down and authoritarian approach.

Tolerance and respecting difference is also far better than fossilising difference,which is what the platform and faction approach tends to lead to. Why is it

that whenever parties have permanent platforms or factions the people in themnever seem to disagree with others in their platform or faction and never seemto move between platforms or factions? The tendency is for historicdisagreements that have little bearing on political decisions today to becomefossilised in factions and platforms, making it very difficult for views to changewithin the different sections of the organisation. People become set against oneanother and artificial differences emerge which have more to do with loyaltythan anything else.

Tolerance, however, can become ponderous if it is not combined

with democracy, which entails actually making decisions and having majoritypositions. Tolerance without democratic decision-making is what is often calledconsensus decision-making where nothing is decided unless everyone agreesto it. The main problem with this is time and scale: the world doesnt move atthe pace of your own organisation and we cant all be in one place at one timeif we want to organise on a national (and, hopefully, international) scale.Consensus decision-making can help build trust in the context of a studentoccupation, but when one has to live in a world where people work 45-hourweeks while trying to bring up children, the model becomes positively anti-democratic.

A more common argument is a watered down version of consensus decision-making whereby the internet and social-media is used to get around theproblem of scale. The idea goes that we can all contribute to every decisionbecause messages can be posted online and everyone can have the chance toparticipate. Ive experienced a vague form of this type of democraticorganisation, and it quickly reveals itself to be neither very democratic nor verytolerant. A tyranny of the hyper-activist inevitably develops; everyone elsequickly switches off to 50 comment discussion threads. Furthermore, whilstsocial-media is great for speedy communication of information, it doesntencourage such vital elements of a democratic culture as empathy,

understanding and compromise: debates often become confused andunnecesarily polarised (users of facebook will know what I mean). Large-scale

horizontal democracy via theinternet or other means is impossible, and it hasnever been practiced for any length of time in any sizeable organisation thathas intentions to actually do things as a collective.

The fact is theres no short-cut around the need for delegation, and withdelegation come committees and with committees come leaderships. You eitherhave an official leadership that everyone in the party is aware of and is held toaccount on the basis of their decisions, or you have an unofficial leadershipwhich is shrouded in mystery and unaccountability.


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This doesnt mean participatory democracy cant be utilised at a local level:branches should use democratic techniques which encourage debate and newideas. Neither does it mean that the leadership shouldnt be democratical lydecided: there should be a national assembly or conference with electionsbased on one person one vote, a national council that is made up of branch

delegates and whose decisions are binding on the leadership, and the ability tocall an emergency conference if two-thirds of branches want one. There arenumerous ways to realise this type of model, but the key should be to try torealise a mixed democracy approach, whereby elements of participativedemocracy and representative democracy are productively combined.

But this is nothing new: ultimately attempts to introduce all sorts of newmechanisms into parties to make them much more democratic usually failbecause they try to do too much and quickly prove to be unsustainable in thereal world. When it comes to discussing and making decisions theres no

substitute to meeting up in person. In truth, none of this is rocket science, norare contemporary circumstances so exceptional as to necessitate re-inventingthe wheel. What is in my view required is a clear, simple democratic systemwhich is properly implemented and is carried out in the context of engagementwith real social forces and is subjected to a culture of constant renewal. I wouldadd to this, however, that the left should embrace things like codes of conductand safer spaces policies to provide a framework in which everyoneunderstands what sort of behaviour is expected of them. I also think womensonly groups should be embraced if women consider it will help them play abigger role in the party.

The final element alongside tolerance and democracy isdiscipline. This isthe point at which many leftists usually object, the concept offending manypeoples anti-authoritarian sensibilities. Yet an outright rejection of discipline isessentially a rejection of democracy in practice if majority decisions cant beenforced, then theres little point in making these decisions. There should be aculture of doing what was agreed, which sadly doesnt exist on the left at themoment. People do what was agreed if they want to and dont bother if theydont. 95% of discipline should come from within: its not about being told bysomeone what to do and obeying authority, its about having conviction in thepower of the collective and following through in the method and in the

principles that you yourself have helped to democratically decide upon.

There has been certainly much wrong with the British left organisations of thetwentieth century, not least among which are the under-representation ofwomen and ethnic minorities. But if such critiques are to be expressed in thepredominance of logics of individual autonomy over those of democracy inpractice, the result will be complete organisational dysfunction, if notcollapse. Indeed, such a trajectory is entirely compatible with neoliberalism,inasmuch as the latter works to concentrate and consolidate capitalist powerand wealth whilst dismantling working class corporate organisation and

atomising society at large. David Harvey, inA Short History of


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Neoliberalismmakes precisely this point when discussing the recent history ofthe American left:

neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasisupon individual freedoms, has the power to split off

libertarianism, identity politics, multi-culturalism, andeventually narcissistic consumerism from the socialforces ranged in pursuit of social justice through theconquest of state power

Formal discipline is mostly important for two sections of a left party: theleadership and the elected politicians. They should have to hold the sameposition as the party on every issue because they have been chosen by theparty to be their representatives. This is the only way to be able to holdrepresentatives to account; if they break with this discipline there should be

penalties and potentially a vote on their re-call.

A tolerant democratic discipline is an acceptance that you cant have your cakeand eat it: you cant have the perfect democracy as it would suffocate minorityviews and you wouldnt be able to get anything done; you cant be perfectlytolerant as it would mean you could never make a decision and never showleadership; and you cant be completely disciplined because you need to haveroom for difference and you need to accept that people live in the real worldand arent an army. Maybe, just maybe, if we accept we need a proportion ofall three tolerance, democracy and discipline in combination with oneanother, we might succeed in building a stable yet dynamic organisation.


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4. The case for politics, not just beliefs

What is politics? The definition, as it is found on Wikipediaisthe practice and

theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level. Thereforepolitics is something more than a set of individually held beliefs, even whenpublicly expressed. It is about influencing other people.

Many leftists and left parties either dont believe in politics or misunderstand itas just expressing your views and beliefs. In observing the Left UnityConference in England which established the Left Unity Party, it was interestingto note the facebook arguments of the socialist platform as against the leftplatform. The former accused the latter of selling-out their true beliefs, notsaying what they really think and even not telling the truth because theywanted Left Unity to be an anti-neoliberal, left party rather than a strictlyMarxist, socialist party. The socialist platform appeared to have little interest inpolitics, the practice and theory of influencing other people, and only in re-stating their beliefs about the world.

Propagandism

The problem with the socialist platform approach, which Ill call propagandism,is that it has no hope of success. Let me use just one example the avowedcommitment of a great number of far left groups today to smashing the state.The message was taken from LeninsState and Revolution in 1917 and has

hardly been altered since. Relevant here of course are theoretical debatesconcerning the character of the capitalist state in advanced capitalist economiesas against the early-twentieth century Tsarist state in Russia. However,bracketing these for now, the call to smash the state, issued in abstractionfrom the balance of political forces and the consciousness of working people,sounds bizarre. For most people of a progressive inclination who live in the realworld and hear this message, it sounds like it comes from the tea partymovement in America or from libertarians like Douglas Carswell MP in Britain.Opposition to the state is dominated by the radical right in the present contextbecause of the dominance of free-market ideology. You might alternatively say

you want a democratic state rather than one run by corporate lobbyists, civilservants and millionaire politicians, but thats a different political messageentirely.

We live in a world of uneven consciousness and the only way to bring peoplecloser to your ideas is to understand why they think the way they do, identifykey aspects of what they think which are most likely to be compatible with yourvalues and put your message across in a way which will appeal to them, suchthat it becomes much more likely that they will listen to, vote for, support or

join your party. Of course, this does not mean that a left party should eitherpander to ignorance or accept the orthodoxy of the elites, but rather that we

must begin from the existing ideas of working people and the particular ways inwhich our own values are (contradictorily) expressed therein. Politics involves


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compromise and it involves a willingness to be flexible about the message youput across and the policies you pursue.

Of course you can go too far with this; politics can become an end in itself andthe beliefs a distant memory. This is what often happens, for example, to

young members of the Labour Party and the SNP: they join because theybelieve in a socialist society, then they get caught up in the political game, thewinning of which becomes an end in itself. Therefore your politics have to bebased on a real commitment to principles, yet you must engage in politics

nonetheless.

The other problem is when politicsis reduced to simply an expressionof the issues that affect you as anindividual. This is often (if a little

unhelpfully) called identity politics.It is of course imperative thatpeople express anger anddiscontent about the manifold waysin which they are oppressed undercapitalism that should beencouraged at every opportunity.But politics is more than just theexpression of your own individual

experience of oppression. Politics is when you mobilise that experience andcrystallise it into a systematic critique of the society in which we live,formulating a message that can influence wider people and bring about change.For example, someone who receives racist abuse can quite rightly say I sufferfrom racism and that is wrong but their message becomes a political one whenthey say I suffer from racism and that is wrong, further, this is how myexperience of racism relates to broader problems in society and this is what weshould do to change it as a collective of people. Raising ones oppression to thelevel of society and collective struggle is when ones identity is utilised to bringabout wider political change.

Identity politics and propagandism have the same root problemneither begin

from a consideration of how to influence the mass of society with your ideas.Lenins legacy, missed by most leninists today, was to leave usa methodologyfor socialist politics. He said of politics:

Politics begins where the masses are, not where thereare thousands, but where there are millions, that iswhere serious politics begin.

What was the correct political message yesterday can be downright reactionarytomorrow, it all depends on the effect it will have in the given political context.Socialist politics therefore necessarily involves a prioritisation of ideas: there aremany ways to present arguments, and there are many possible arguments topresent, the challenge of politics entailing the selection of the arguments which

Beliefs a distant memory Labour partymembers prefer socialism at 2013 annualconference


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will be most likely to have the desired impact and bring you closer to achievingyour goals.

On compasses and swamps

In the Stephen Spielberg film Lincoln,the eponymous president is depictedtrying to convince the more radical Republican, Thaddeus Stephens, to tonedown his comments in order to get the bill through to abolish slavery. He says:

The compass I had when I was serving, it will point you true North from whereyoure standing. But its got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasmsthat youll encounter along the way. If you proceed to your destination (by)plunging ahead needless of obstacles and achieve nothing more than to sink ina swamp, whats the use of knowing true North?

The left has sunk into a fair few swamps in its time. For an effective leftistpolitics we need to build our own compass to avoid Lincolns swamps, desertsand chasms. The starting point needs to be a clear understanding of ourprinciples; then we need an analysis of the objective political climate; a strategybased on a clear prioritisation of political objectives given this political climate;the use of the most effective possible tactics to carry out that strategy and,finally; a plan for activity to carry out those tactics.

This is obviously highly abstract, yet everyone who is politically active makeschoices like these everyday on any given evening there may be a choicebetween canvassing for Scottish independence, participating in a Marxist

reading group or attending a trade union branch meeting. We have to makedecisions about what to do and what not to do based on some set of criteria. Itis much better for those criteria to be premised on a conscious assessment ofwhats most likely to achieve our goals than through an abritrary selectionprocess.

The point of a left party is that as a collective we are more likely to be able tomake the right political decisions and to carry them out in an effective way, asopposed to simply expressing our beliefs as individuals.


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5. Rethinking the relationship between party andmovements

What are movements? In lieu of a commonly held definition, Ill venture toprovide my own: citizens standing up against exploitation and oppression andfor political change by combining together on the street, in communities and inworkplaces in a distinct, consciouscontinuum of action. Distinct in the sensethat it is identifiable in its own right from more formal political formations likeparties and NGOs, and conscious in that those involved are aware that theyare part of something bigger than the sum of its parts. Given this definition,movements will always be essential to any process of systemic change becausethey provide the energy which creates the possibility of a rupture with thestatus quo. Unfortunately, sometimes this knowledge can be a curse for leftistsbecause its raised to a level of sublime faith in the power of movements tochange the world.

The history of movements should have taught us by now that whilst they openup great possibilities for transformation, they all at some stage in their cyclefracture and dissipate on account of the very contradictions which make themso powerful in the first place. The contradictions are obvious: people combinetogether in large numbers usually because they have a shared aim, but theycontinue to have different ideological and political perspectives about the world.

As far as any organisation exists in movements, it is by its very nature looseand temporary, having incorporated a large number of people in a short spaceof time. The movement is held together as long as there is a clear trajectory

towards achievement of those shared aims, but when that trajectory becomesunclear or when some limited concessions are achieved, movements can quicklyrun out of steam. The energy with which movements rise cannot be sustainedindefinitely and only through the achievement of regular successes on our sideand regular mistakes on their side can it continue to renew itself for anyprolonged period of time.

The student movement of 2010/11

An obvious example of this is the student movement that kicked off against thecoalition governments move to raise the cap on tuition fees from 3,000 to

9,000 in November 2010. Despite achieving a number of minor reverses, themovement was unable to prevent the governments bill passing largely intact bya small minority of 21 amidst a significant parliamentary rebellion. The energycreated by hundreds of thousands of young people taking action against themeasures was deflated and the movement quickly fractured. The nextsignificant action after the major 9 December demonstration against the billwas on 30 January 2011. Whilst the stated purpose was to reverse the decision,it was quite clear that the leadership of the movement had already turned theirattention elsewhere, such that the protests were marked by the left of themovement shouting at National Union of Students (NUS) leadership, and NUS

calling the left of the movement splitters.


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The residue of this movement has taken on a variety of forms, some activistshaving joined the Greens, others becoming active in Palestine solidarity groups,

joining feminist networks, signing up to Labour or the SNP, continuing workthrough official student union structures or joining the ISG in Scotland. Manymore remain between such organisations or have fallen out of political activity

altogether. Yet nothing that came out of the student movement in Scotland orin the rest of UK could claim to have been able to have bottled the energy ofthe student movement and directed it towards an effective, long-term challengeto capitalism. I may be biased, but in my view the most effective initiative thatcould be said to have emerged out of the student movement is the RadicalIndependence Campaign, which is not student-led at all, but was initiated andis to an extent led by activists who cut their teeth on the student movement of2010/11.

On 10 November students occupied 30 Millbank, campaign headquarters of the

Conservative Party

The point is this a left party needs movements and movements need a leftparty but we havent got the relationship between the two correct as of yet. Onthe one hand we place too much emphasis on the transformative potential ofmovements when we should be aware from experience of their in-builtcontradictions. On the other hand we do little to provide effective frameworksof organisation that can both supportmovements on the up and accommodatethe movements activists on the way back down. The tendency is to scramblefor leadership on the up and when the movement fragments bring as manypeople with your part of the leadership on the down, which leaves most

activists disorientated and demoralised.
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Supporting movements

What do I mean by supportingmovements? First, it should be understood indistinction to a scramble for leadership. That is not to say members of a partyshouldnt try to exercise leadership within a movement where strategic or

tactical re-orientation is necessary, but that any party which attempts primarilyand by default to seize control of any given movement will jeopardise thatmovements success as well as inevitably weakening its own credibility.

The role of a party should be to support a movements development first bytrying to win political support for its cause in wider society. This is importantand is often ignored. Movements can quickly believe they are the centre of theuniverse when most of society doesnt know what theyre arguing for and howit relates to their lives. This is why there is often a tendency for ultra-leftism toemerge in movementsthe energy of the movement radicalises those involved

more and more, but this energy has little relation to how effective themovement is in winning broader political support. Generally the most importantaspect of winning support in wider society will be orienting activity towardparliament: whilst most elected members will inevitably condemn movementsfor their radicalism, socialists can use parliament as a platform to highlight thereal aims and goals of the movement to wider society. The tendency is for leftparties to obsess about convincing those involved in movements of their case,rather than trying to influence and shape the broader societal debate about themovement. We should emphasise the latter over the former because it is whatwill actually help the movement achieve its aims.

The second part of supporting the movement is to provide practical solidarity.This can come in many forms such as connecting students with trade-unionists,raising funds and organising rallies, but the point is that the party should use itsresources and networks to help the movement achieve a victory. In this the lefthas a better record.

The final aspect is that the party should have an honest political analysis ofwhat needs to be done for the movement to achieve its objectives over thelong-term. This shouldnt be presented in a preachy, partisan manner whichpresumes the necessity of membership of a given organisation. It should be

done rather in a practical and political way most people involved inmovements are aiming for systemic changes to society and therefore explaininga broader strategy for achieving that is not an insult as long as it comes acrossas a genuine effort to achieve political goals not just a partisan attempt topromote ones party interests.

When he visited Scotland for the first RIC conference, Benoit Renaud of QuebecSolidaire the Quebec left party that has representatives in parliament described in similar terms to those developed above the way in which theirparty supported the huge Qubcois student movement. This support was bothpolitical and practical while many of the student leaders were members ofQuebec Solidaire, the party itself focused on its role in spreading the messagebeyond students, providing practical solidarity and explaining the political


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implications of the movement.Quebec Solidaire membershanded out tens of thousands ofbroadsheets and newspapers andwhen the movement dissipated

after the government wasdefeated, they were respected fortheir role in supporting it.

Engaging with movements ontheir own terms

There is an important distinction Iam making here between a partythat tries to be the movement

and ties all of its purpose to the success of the movement, and one thataccepts it has separate end goals to the movement but tries to support itpolitically to achieve success on its own terms. The pace of politics for anelectoral party and a movement are entirely different; if you try to crudely buildthe former through the latter its likely the trajectory of both will take the samepath. But if you maintain the wider aims and policies of the party and try tohelp the movement achieve success on its own terms then the party can berespected for its role and be genuinely useful in building a movement that canachieve its stated objective. If a serious electoral party of the left had existed inScotland when the student movement was at its height, it would be a naturalhome for many of the activists afterwards. A clear distinction betweenmovement and party and the different pace of politics and stated objectivesof bothcan make it much more likely for both to grow strong.

Qubec Solidaire played a key role in the success of the

Qubcois student movement


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6. The case for revolutionary reforms

We need revolutionary change. Theres no two ways about it if the

exploitation of labour by capital continues to be the central dynamic drivingeconomic development, we are headed for human and environmentalcatastrophe.

But as Ive discussed in the previous five parts of this series, getting fromwhere we are to a revolutionary transformation that overthrows the dominantproperty relations of the capitalist economy and replaces them with socialrelations based on democratic control of the worlds resources is not as simpleas declaring our desire for it to be so. I saw a petition on change.orgthe otherday proposing the overthrow of capitalism. If one million people signed that

petition and one million people signed a further petition to introduce fullcollective bargaining rights for trade-unions in the UK, which one would moveus closer to the overthrow of capitalism? I wager the latter.

Whilst having an end goal in sight is important, most people don t change theirthinking about the world based on bold visions of what could be done at somepoint in the future: they change their ideas based on evidence from theirmaterial lives which points to the inadequacy or irrationality of the status quo.In other words, we need to have ideas that build upon peoples lived experienceof capitalism, and since that it is within the framework of a representativedemocracy system, we need ideas based around proposals for reforms. At the

same time those reforms have to help rather than hinder a move to morerevolutionary transformation that challenges the very core of the capitalistsystem.

The dialectic of reform and revolution

What we need, therefore, is a strategy of revolutionary reforms. Such a notionwould appear as a contradiction in terms to many who identify as reformists orrevolutionaries and see the two as dichotomous, but there is no reason why thisshould be the case. Indeed, history has shown that revolutionarytransformations have always happened as a dialectical interaction betweenrapid, revolutionary movements and more institutional, reform-basedchallenges. Even the revolutionary part of that dialectic has always beenmotivated by the immediate needs of the participants involved land, breadand peace being the first half of the slogan of the Russian Revolution.

What does a strategy of revolutionary reforms entail? Ed Rooksby explains thatit is a political strategy that builds towards revolutionary change by usingreforms to push up against the limits of the logic of capitalism in practice:

At first these feasible objectives will be limited to

reforms within capitalismor at least to measureswhich, from the standpoint of a more or less reformist


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working class consciousness, appear to be legitimateand achievable within the system, but which mayactually run counter to the logic of capitalism and startto push up against its limits. As the working classengages in struggle, however, the anti-capitalist

implications of its needs and aspirations are graduallyrevealed. At the same time, through its experience ofstruggle for reform, the working class learns about itscapacity for self-management, initiative and collectivedecision and can have a foretaste of whatemancipation means. In this way struggle for reformhelps prepare the class psychologically, ideologicallyand materially for revolution.

The late Daniel Bensaid expressed this argument through the lens of the history

of the socialist movement:

In reality all sides in the controversy agree on thefundamental points inspired by The Coming Catastrophe(Lenins pamphlet of the summer of 1917) and theTransitional Programme of the Fourth International(inspired by Trotsky in 1937): the need for transitionaldemands, the politics of alliances (the united front), thelogic of hegemony and on the dialectic (not antinomy)between reform and revolution. We are thereforeagainst the idea of separating an (anti-neoliberal)minimum programme and an (anti-capitalist)maximum programme. We remain convinced that aconsistent anti-neoliberalism leads to anti-capitalismand that the two are interlinked by the dynamic ofstruggle.

So revolutionary reforms means a policy agenda that, as Alberto Toscano hasput it, at one and the same time make concrete gains within capitalism whichpermits further movement against capitalism. The Italian marxist AntonioGramsci described this approach as a war of positon.

The neoliberal context

To understand what all of this means in practical terms for a left party inScotland today we need to understand the economic and political context welive in. The last forty years of neoliberal capitalism has seen a rolling back ofthe gains of the post-war era, as the rate of exploitation has increasedenormously, the strength of trade-unions has decreased significantly, and majorchunks of the welfare state and public-sector have been shrunk or sold-off. Theoutcome is a massive redistribution of wealth and power to a narrowingcapitalist elite, who increasingly use money to make money throughfinancialisation, bypassing the productive aspects of the capitalist economyentirely. Britain is part of the vanguard of this neoliberal offensive. The political


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consequence of this is that mainstream parties, whether they be centre-left orcentre-right, are unwilling to challenge the supremacy of neoliberalism in theBritish economy. The economic crisis if anything has seen a furtherradicalisation of neoliberalism.

Therefore a left party that challenges neoliberalism is also challengingcapitalism. What may have been a reform the capitalist system could easilyhave absorbed or even desired forty years ago is now a fatal threat to its order.Indeed, the word reforms today is used to justify all manner of counter -reforms which further dismantle the safety-net of public services and thewelfare state. Global capital is trying to go further than ever in stripping awaythe rights of states and judicial systems that dont work in their favour.

One particularly terrifying example of this is the Trans-Atlantic Trade andInvestment Partnership which is a single-market agreement between the EU

and the US. What is in the fine print is an investor-state dispute settlementmechanism whereby in the situation that a particular nation-state doesnt wantcompanies to, say, mine in particular areas or sell goods produced unethically,the decision can be overturned by a secret arbitration panel of corporatelawyers which has the power to bypass domestic courts and ignore the will ofparliaments.

Given this context of hyper-capitalist authoritarianism, the reform-revolutiondialectic is intensified today compared to forty years ago. As the CandianMarxist Leo Panitch puts it:

Perhaps the greatest illusion of 20th-century socialdemocrats was their belief that once reforms were wonthey would be won for good. In fact, we can now seehow far the old reforms were subject to erosion byexpanding capitalist competition on a global scale. Theyhave been so undermined by the logic ofcompetitiveness that it now seems very difficult to seehow state protections against markets could be securedin our time without additional measures that would beseen as revolutionary.

Genuine reforms, such as democratic public control of the money supply, wouldcause panic amongst credit agencies and the markets, potentially leading to arun on the banks of the nation-state in which such a proposal was made. This isglobal capitalisms way of threatening the state to tow the line, and usuallystates and their political parties are responsive to its needs.

Pressure points

But modern capitalist states are not one dimensional whilst they serve thebasic function of wielding a monopoly of violence in defence of private

property, modern capitalist economies also requirea civil and political societyincluding a range of regulations and universal services (skilled labour, schooling


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and regularly renewed political leadership through democratic elections wouldbe three of these) to ensure the optimal circumstances for (re)production of thesystem. The state, therefore, creates its own points of weakness: the parts ofthe state that require mass participation to further capitalist accumulation canbe used to undermine capitalist state power itself.

If, through a strategy of revolutionary reforms from a left government, one candivide the state between on the one hand those undemocratic elements likecivil servants, MI5 and the heads of the police which will always protect thecapitalist elite no matter what and on the other hand the parts of the statewhich contain democratic elements, like parliament, it can create a situationwhereby a left government encourages and needs greater impulses from belowto defend its policies and its government against the reactionary elements ofthe state who want to return to normal capitalist state relations. A leftgovernment can help foster and provide direction for new forms of democratic

organisation from below; workers, community and student control, which can inturn provide support and pressure upon a left government in a synthesis ofworking class power.

A rough agenda

What would an agenda for revolutionary reforms by a left government look likein a country like Scotland today? It would have to constantly change to meetthe evolving requirements of politics, but as it stands some of the followingpoints would be fundamental:

Democratic state-control of the banking and monetary system to controlfinance and the money supply

A range of taxation measures to redistribute wealth and ensure thesuper-rich cant take their wealth elsewhere or hold it in possessions

A range of capital controls and state seizures of natural assets to preventthe rich taking social wealth out of the country

Maximum wage ratios, reductions in the length of the working week andthe public ownership of those aspects of the economy especially

necessary for social reproduction (e.g. transport, energy and housing)

Radical decentralisation of democratic power including employee right tobuy, co-operativisation, industrial democracy, participatory budgetingand citizens juries as well as the re-organisation of local governmentbased on community participation

This last point is important: I am not proposing centralised state control ofeverything. The Scottish socialist Andy Cumbers bookRenewing PublicOwnershipexplains how public ownership must also mean bottom-up,

genuinely democratic control if it is to not become bureaucratised and scleroticlike many state-owned institutions did in the post-war era.


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A left party would obviously propose a whole range of other policies pertainingto international and social issues, including policies that dont neccessarilychallenge the logic of capital but are redistributive and generally positive for themass of society. The SSPs policies on free school meals and free publictransport would be examples of this, as would much of the Common Weal

agenda. A distinction has to be made between rupture policies, that attempt tobuild an alternative balance of power to capitalist society, and general policydemands, which attempt to improve the lot of people within the framework ofthe existing society. The emphasis upon rupture policies and general policydemands is entirely dependent upon the context.


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100,000 children in Scotland have been pushed into poverty by coalition austerity

With the SNP continuing to be the governing party until at least 2016, what istheir strategy, with the referendum lost, to pull Scotland out of the mire? TheSNP could implement new taxation policies to raise more money in Scotland,

like a land value tax, and they could raise the council tax or replace it with amore progressive income-related tax, but they have so far resisted such anapproach and its unlikely they would change course. Scottish Labour, afterconvincing Scots to stick with the union, have to have a compelling argumentfor how Labour-Labour rule at Westminster and Holyrood will see the lives ofworking class Scots improved. Since theyve provided little evidence of this outof power, theres little reason to believe that a new dynamic and radicalScottish Labour in the union is just round the corner. An explicitly anti-cutsparty in the new Scotland will be a must.

SNP: the devo-max party?

Perpetual austerity will of course interweave with the new constitutionaldebate in the post-NO political climate. Its widely touted that the SNP have aplan, in the short-term, to redefine themselves as the devo-max party,shunning full independence for a future day. There will certainly be intensivepressure on the SNP from the ranks of Better Together and the unionist mediato commit to ruling out a second referendum if they win the 2016 elections.Salmond and Sturgeon will likely take this path they have long sought topresent themselves as more than a single-issue party and they will want toavoid that tag with the 2016 elections on the horizon. Additionally, there is aprize for the SNP in commiting to devo-max as their constitutional priority they can outflank Labour in the renewed devolution debate, who are not going
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to get much more radical than an increase in income tax powers. An SNP 2016election majority could then raise the spectre of a devo-max referendum.

There is an obvious problem for the SNP with this strategy: they are supposedto be the party of independence, abandoning their primary aim will not be

achieved without a backlash. They have also helped unleash a historic grass-roots movement that has a life of its own outside of the SNP machine. Thatmovement is unlikely to accept conclusive defeat for the foreseeable future. Iwould also wager that in the context of major cuts to Scottish budgets comingin the years after the referendum, opinion polls will show a majority for yes. Inthis context, a party committing to a referendum on independence after the2016 elections would receive a lot of support within the independencemovement and the public at large.

Hypothesis 2: a yes victory

Negotiations, constitution and soveriegnty

In this scenario, Scotland immediately enters the negotiation phase. Salmondhas already said that the negotiating team will include people from the No side.Theres likely to be back-sliding with regard to some SNP white papercommitments and although the specifics cant reasonably be predicted, its safeto assume the independence movement will be in some respects disappointed.

Any backsliding on Trident, for example, would have an explosive impact withinthe SNP and in the wider independence movement. The partial solution of anegotiating team democratically elected by a citizens assembly, proposed by

both Robin McAlpine and Colin Fox, is likely to fall on deaf ears.


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finance, its still too much like old Scotland: taking its lead from Westminstersneoliberal economic orthodoxy. Some argue that the SNP have been cautious toget all of Scotland on board, and that radical Salmond will emerge post -yesvote on this I am sceptical. Sensible Salmond is more likely, desperate toshow the Scottish elite of their ability to manage an independent Scotland in a

prudent fashion, just like any other Western country. The SNP will need to meetmuch of their social justice obligations, but they will continue to attempt toseperate this from economic justice, when in the long-run the two cannot bepulled apart. A party of economic and social justice willing to challenge theBritish economic model head on will be required, if for no other reason than toprovide a counter-pressure on the SNP to Scottish capital in the new Scotland.

Could Scottish Labour be that party? Whilst I have no willingness to dampenthe enthusiasm of Labour supporting independence campaigners who envisagethat Labour will finally rediscover its roots in the new Scotland, I fear that it

amounts to so much wishful thinking. Labours visceral hatred of the SNP willultimately drive policy, and they will find as much room to try to outflank themon the right as on the left. Its quite easy to see the narrative already, as it hasa continuity with Lamonts message now: See they promised the world butthey cant deliver, we are the party of realism, we know that Scotland cantafford universal services, so were going to put those at the bottom first bymeans-testing. This is, surely, at least as likely as Nye Bevan emerging fromwithin the bowels of Scottish Labour. Down-trodden pessimism has becomewoven into the fabric of LabourI dont see it disappearing overnight.

Third Scotland and the new Party

New Scotland opens up new fissures in Scottish politics that only a new partycan address to the benefit of working class Scots. But is there a force that canactually generate a serious electoral challenge to Scotlands establishments oldand new? The independence movement has thrown up new alliances thatwould not have been possible without the common purpose of the referendum

many of us who have been part of this process have been surprised by thedegree of consensus we have found. Gerry Hassan has called this newcommunity third Scotland:

Sceptics pour scorn on what this third Scotland stands for, but its politicalagenda is clear. It is for self-government and independence as not an end initself, but as a means of bringing about social change. It is suspicious of theSNPs rather timid version of independence, always being described as beingabout the full powers of the parliament which is hardly a language oroutlook for transformational change. And they see the old mechanisms of socialchange such as the Labour party, labour movement and British state as havingconsistently failed and colluded with inequality, power and privilege.

Common characteristics of Third Scotland can be identified in Jim Sillars Inplace of fear II, Lesley RiddochsBlossom, Green Yes, the RadicalIndependence Conferences, Colin Foxs pamphlet for an independent socialistScotland, James Foley and Pete RamandsYes: the radical case for Scottish


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independence, the Common Weal Project and much of the cultural inspirationbehind National Collective. There is certainly much more politically that unitesthan divides. It broadly represents a red-green alliance based on a commitmentto bottom-up democracy and an economy that puts people and planet beforeprofit.

Could at least some of the eclectic forces that comprise so-called ThirdScotland be bound together in a new party? It would require great sacrifice andhumility from existing parties like the SSP and the Greens, but the prize ofbeing a new force in the new Scotland is far beyond the limits of its individualparts. It would also have to be aware that it needs to reach out and buildbroader alliances: some of the old mechanisms Hassan refers to like thelabour movement are still the biggest and most effective mechanisms workingpeople have to challenge inequality, power and priviledge, but they need newpolitical leadership at the ballot box. Building a sustainable Third Scotland that

becomes embedded in the fabric of Scottish society means being aware of thelimits of the new and renewing the old.

Third Scotland has a choice in the new Scotland: are we happy to be adisparate voice of dissent, or worse a group of warring left factions, or do wetake responsibility for Scotlands future, put aside apprehensions, and combine?Im for the latter.

what sort of left party do we need? by ben wray

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