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What We Are and What We Must Become

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What We Are and What We Must Become What We Are And What We Must Become A critique of the politics and perspectives of the Militant Tendency by Rachel Lever, Phil Semp and Sean Matgamna First published July 1966 INTRODUCTION Early this year, Rachel Lever and Sean Matgamna developed apparently minor criticisms of the leadership's treatment of the issue of trade union legislation [the then Labour government's plans for laws to restrict union rights and restrain strikes]. We made a number of points and practical proposals to Peter Taaffe and later the Secretariat. It would probably have got no further, but for the strange behaviour of the leadership (see Section 1). The responses, actions and reactions of the centre, the answers, comments and arguments they used in discussion, increasingly made us doubt if the differences were indeed so minor, or that they were isolated and accidental. This had the effect of allowing us an insight on the real nature of the Group's theory and practice. We have found the corrosion of Bolshevism/Trotskyism to be such that a change in quality has taken place. This is why we have dealt with basic questions like the Theory of the Party. Ted Grant may claim to have known this for decades. Maybe... but our case is that in the practice of the RSL [Revolutionary Socialist League, then the name of the group behind Militant] such 'knowledge' of the old hands has no meaning. In order to establish this we have brought in a restatement of some basic Marxist positions as we see them, to act as a fixed measure for the RSL, thus escaping the usual shifting quicksands we get into with talk of 'ultra-left', Healyite, etc. [The "Healyites" were the SLL, the Socialist Labour League, later WRP, then by far the most active Trotskyist group in Britain - already very sectarian in 1966, the SLL-WRP went mad in the mid-70s and disintegrated in 1985]. Peter Taaffe accused us of trying to pick out incidental points to build a system: on the contrary what we have done is to attempt to restate aspects of some basic questions we feel have been forgotten, pigeon-holed, and slowly eroded. We have spent much time rereading some of the basic writings of the movement, and in the course of this a clearer picture of the RSL emerged. Questions we had raised, and which Peter Taaffe, Ted Grant, et al. had tried to keep segregated in airtight boxes, merged with each other. Concrete, practical details merged with basic theory, and could be clearly seen as originating in false political and ideological conceptions. Contents and layout Section 1 grew up unplanned and somewhat haphazard. It tells of organisational experiences, concrete events, conversations, political positions concerning these. Section 2 is on the relation of the Marxist vanguard to the working class and its spontaneously arisen movement; both in the 'abstract' and in connection with the British labour movement. Section 3 deals with 'Perspectives' - the leadership's conception of the thing itself, i.e. what is a perspective. We attempt with quotations to show what were the views of Lenin, Trotsky and Gramsci on this question. Finally, we attempt to present a positive alternative. A picture is drawn of the necessary democratic centralist party, and concrete proposals made on this. We never set out to write anything as long as this. We constantly cut it down and keep only what we felt was essential. Similarly, we tried to avoid repetition, but in some places some may have crept in, as we dealt with the case from as many different angles as possible. We have in places used the sharpest language, as we feel a need to impress on the comrades that the issues are not marginal, not unimportant, not, as the leadership has tried to contend, secondary issues artificially blown up. The theories and practice of the leadership are, we think, alien to revolutionary communism: to fight these revisions is a thus a life or death question for the group - ultimately for the class. There can be no neutrality on these questions - they must be tackled sharply and clearly. Trotskyism must be today's Bolshevism: it arose as the defence of Leninism. Trotsky held that his most important work was his fight to preserve and develop Leninism against the epigones. Those who deny in words and ignore in deeds the role and significance of the vanguard party in history are Trotskyism's opportunists, attempting to cut away the Lenin side from Trotskyism, and reduce it to a matter of abstract phrases and detached prophecies. The politics of Trotskyism must still be defended. Therefore we declare for Bolshevik-Trotskyism. 1 RM, PS, SM. July 1966 SECTION 1 THE GROUP AS WE FOUND IT (AN EMPIRICAL REVIEW) ANTI-UNION LEGISLATION AND POLITICAL QUIETISM In the December/January [1965-6] issue of Militant there appeared an article on the front page headed: "No to Legislation." Unfortunately, the substance of that article placed in question the very point of bothering to print such a headline. It was an ultra-optimistic forecast that anti-union legislation probably would not be put on the Statute books, and even if it was it would anyway be irrelevant because of the strength of the workers. "They dare not lift a finger," said Comrade D. Or maybe it wasn't D, as we shall see. Reading the article Rachel Lever and Sean Matgamna came to the conclusion that the article was wrong in substance and also that its tone raised questions about our general approach. We decided to write a short document for internal circulation on this issue. In the New Year Peter Taaffe visited Manchester and we put the following position to him: That the paper's task was not to speculate on what the capitalists and the bureaucrats might or might not do, and least of all arbitrarily to dismiss the anti-union agitation as irrelevant. While it was necessary to make a clear objective assessment of what was likely to happen, this should not be blatantly blurted out but should be 'subsumed' within the general agitation material. The task of this agitation material, of the paper, was to seize on passing events to illustrate our basic conceptions; agitation leading to limited struggles which would group forces around our programme, i.e. build the organisation. It was necessary to be 'militant' in order to regroup the militants. The ultra-mechanical 'everything is pre-ordained' approach would have the opposite effect. If the class was strong our task was to help arouse awareness of that strength in anger against the bureaucratic pygmies: it was necessary to see ourselves not as 'Deutscherites' commenting on the passing show, but as Marxist revolutionaries, striving to organise the fight. Even if there was no danger the very proposals from the Labour leaders allowed us to lead a limited propaganda campaign which could educate certain sections - not least in relation to the Incomes Policy, of which the legislation is the only likely outcome. Considering the illusions in broad 'left' circles (including, it now seems, Walton Constituency Labour Party [in Liverpool, then one of Militant's strongholds]) that it is only necessary to include profits and prices in this for it to be socialist, this became more important. Agitation against Incomes Policy and its implications would be a main content of our work in the next period and it was necessary to conduct it in a campaign spirit, co-ordinated nationally and led by Militant. It was necessary to step ahead a bit, even if there was no immediate mass opposition, because otherwise we would not be able to group sufficient of the really advanced elements around us to be able to give a revolutionary lead to the broader ferment which would inevitably arise. To sum it up, the article confined itself to computer-type, mechanical 'Marxist' commentary on events, i.e. an undialectical, dead, therefore unMarxist approach. Whereas our task was to establish a dynamic interaction between the full Marxist programme and concrete developing struggles, by leading limited struggles ourselves. We disagreed with the estimation that there was little or no danger of the legislation going through. It was not necessarily a matter of an all-out attack on the working class, but a limited attack aimed more than anything at strengthening the union bureaucracy and aiding it to discipline the working class. Since sections of the capitalist class saw a 'containment' of wages within a low rate of annual increase as the only alternative to serious deflation, it was premature to say that it would not materialise. Concretely we made the following suggestions: that the paper should attempt to lead a national campaign on the lines suggested above, and that the best way to attempt to conduct this campaign was through the organising of rank and file committees (the sort of idea outlined for example in "Perspectives of Entryism" [a document by Ted Grant]). Taaffe while disagreeing that there was a serious danger of legislation being passed, agreed with the criticisms of the Militant article. He said that the article was the product of a number of pens and consequently was uneven in quality and was, in fact, wrong in approach. He not only agreed with the idea of Labour Rank and File Committees against Anti-Union Legislation, but chided us with not having informed the centre of this before: how could they be expected to lead if people didn't provide suggestions and ideas? He suggested that instead of a short discussion document we write a critical letter/article for Militant which would also outline the concrete suggestions, and help undo any damage done by the article.
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