Weekly Worker’ Lists, There Is, of Course, a Complex and the Inability of the Left to Challenge Pp299-300)

SWP and ‘Marxism’ - pp2,8 weekly AWL sub-reformism - p3 The Spartacist tradition - pp4-5 Nellist and Oddy - p6 SPEW: a dissident writes - p8 € lmost without exception the own and finance propaganda around left enthusiastically called for it. Sad to say, what we actually have Aa Labour vote on May 1 1997 - is another zigzag, not a conversion the SWP being a stock example. The to Bolshevism. habitual reasoning was eminently sim- Theoretically the SWP’s ‘Action ple. But profoundly wrong. After programme’ is backed up with refer- nearly two decades of Tory govern- ence to Trotsky’s 1934 ‘Action pro- ment the election of New Labour would gramme for France’ (see Alex trigger a crisis of expectations. Callinicos International Socialism Nothing of the kind materialised. No81, and John Rees Socialist Re- Three main factors explain the predict- view January 1999). But the boldest able outcome. claim is that it is premised on broadly Firstly, at this historic juncture, the the same conditions which prompted working class no longer asserts itself for Scargill’s red-brown Socialist La- Etzioni inspires. Perry Anderson theo- new consensus. That is what his pro- Trotsky’s ‘Transitional programme’. politically. The class that found an bour Party in London (half his candi- rises. Rupert Murdoch sympathises. gramme is designed to achieve. The In our opinion Trotsky was badly mis- expression in Labourism for 80 years dates were Stalin Society members), Anthony Giddens evangelises. From political foundations, and thus the taken in 1938. He maintained that capi- at present exists sociologically, as Dave Nellist’s Socialist Alliance list the beginning all the portents and political architecture of the UK, are talism could no longer develop the wage slaves and voting fodder. But in in West Midlands and Tommy signs indicated a far-reaching resolve. being transformed. The liberalisation productive forces or grant meaning- no sense as a subject - ie, maker - of Sheridan’s Scottish Socialist Party. Blair was not content with tinkering. of Labour, devolution for Scotland ful reforms. Therefore, he declared, history. On a world scale both ‘offi- When it came to the bulk of the coun- He is remaking the constitution and, and Wales, peace for Northern Ire- defence of economic gains would cial communism’ and social democ- try, SWP members were left guess- if he can, the popular sense of land, elected mayors in London and spontaneously produce a final and racy have suffered devastating ing. No guidance. No leadership. No Britishness. other big cities, reform of the House apocalyptic collision with capitalism. ideological defeats at the hands of support, even critical, for the ‘Weekly What does it mean? Certainly not of Lords, a slim-line monarchy, Euro- No matter how we excuse Trotsky and neo-liberal capitalism. Worker’ lists (ie, what remained from the beginning of the end of Britain’s pean integration, PR elections - all are his tiny band of followers in terms of Secondly, in Britain Margaret the Socialist Alliance election blocs supposedly incomplete bourgeois component parts of an overarching how things appeared on the eve of Thatcher shifted the balance of class in London and the North West). revolution. Blair’s remaking of the UK constitutional revolution. World War II, there is no escaping that forces to a degree never witnessed The Socialist Party in England and constitution is in fact both the con- The auto-Labourite left responds he was wrong in fact and method. before in this century. Over the last 10 Wales mirrored the SWP’s bank- tinuation and the complement of the piecemeal rather than comprehen- Comrade Cliff wrote - only six years years strike days have been ratcheted ruptcy. Workers Power - a sect which Thatcherite counter-reformation. Blair sively to the whole. Using the defeat- ago - that Trotsky’s ‘Transitional pro- down to an all-time low. since its foundation as an SWP split has no intention whatsoever of res- ist logic that something must be better gramme’ was only relevant when there Thirdly, in opposition Tony Blair did has religiously preached auto-La- urrecting or re-creating the 1945-1979 than nothing, virtually the whole spec- was “a situation of general crisis, of everything to reduce expectations to bourism - recoiled from the prospect social democratic settlement. His trum lined up behind New Labour and capitalism in deep slump”, and that zero. Hence the mass of voters rightly of voting for bomber Blair. As if communitarianism is a reinvention of urged a ‘yes’ in Blair’s referendums in many of the programme’s proposals - believed that little of significance Nato’s air war against rump Yugosla- Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism. The Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It is es- eg, workers’ defence squads - “did separated the two main parties vis-à- via was not a continuation of the New ‘greatest good for the greatest sentially the same story when it comes not fit a non-revolutionary situation” vis working class rights and living Labour politics of May 1 1997 which number’ is to be ensured by the mar- to the London mayor, the House of (T Cliff Trotsky: The darker the night, conditions. they voted for. But likewise, instead ket and the endless drive for profit. Lords and the monarchy. the brighter the star London 1993, Only the sects invested high of backing the ‘Weekly Worker’ lists, There is, of course, a complex and The inability of the left to challenge pp299-300). hopes. Not surprisingly then it is not Workers Power anarchistically pre- dynamic interrelationship between Blairism in the sphere of high politics Yet now, with workers’ confidence New Labour which is in the midst of a ferred moralistic boycottism. reform from above and discontent - how we are ruled - stems from a pro- at a nadir and revolutionary con- crisis of expectations. It is the left. In Not surprisingly the auto-Labour- below. What is particularly striking grammatic nullity epitomised by the sciousness almost non-existent, the point of fact the old left stares extinc- ite left is in an advanced stage of or- about Blair’s constitutional revolu- SWP. SWP has decided that pursuit of even tion in the face. Whatever the par- ganisational decay. The fragments of tion, however, is the absence of any The Cliffites have steadfastly re- the most minimal demands is all that ticular antique shibboleth - the USSR Stalinism and Trotskyism continue to working class input or alternative. fused to present their main politics is required to fell a supposedly totter- as workers’ state, as state capitalist, shed limbs and overall weight. The Indeed it is the atomisation, the (tem- and overall strategy in the form of a ing capitalism. In his most recent work as bureaucratic collectivist, etc - the Morning Star’s so-called Communist porary) disappearance of the work- testable and democratically sanc- comrade Cliff insists that we live not old left has been defined by one, un- Party of Britain, cleaved by the Hicks- ing class from the political stage, that tioned programme (as we all know, in a period of reaction (albeit of a spe- derlying, characteristic. Auto-La- Rosser rebellion, now limps on as a creates the conditions whereby Blair such a stance is contrary to the spirit cial type), but of imminent revolution: bourism. Far from representing support group for Serbia, China and can propose and carry through his and example of the Bolsheviks, whom “Capitalism in the advanced coun- independent working class politics - North Korea. The tiny New Commu- programme. There is neither pressure they claim to emulate). Socialist Work- tries,” he claims, “is no longer expand- albeit in embryonic form - historically nist Party is equally prostituted and nor threat from those below. Never- er’s thumbnail ‘What we stand for’ ing and so the words of the 1938 the left acts as a Labourite tail. politically deranged. To all intents and theless the main factor behind Blair’s column is all very well for introduc- ‘Transitional programme’ that ‘there The crisis of auto-Labourism is purposes the Democratic Left is a fetid programme has been the fact that tory purposes. But its pinched abstrac- can be no discussion of systematic manifested in moralism, organisational corpse. Like a maggot Nina Temple popular identification with the UK tions bear little relationship to daily social reforms and raising the masses’ decay and programmatic nullity. Take crawls away. state has been gradually slipping practice or any discernible vision of living standards’ fits reality again” (T the June 10 EU elections. The sects As for Trotskyism, SPEW is not un- away since at least the late 1960s. how the working class is to make it- Cliff Trotskyism after Trotsky London proved to be more part of the problem typical. Having lost its jewels - Scot- During the long Thatcher years slip- self into a ruling class. That, when it 1999, pp81-2). than part of the solution. Here was land and Liverpool - further schisms page became a slide. comes to the SWP, is a mystery. Herein lies the root of the SWP’s the first general - ie, all-UK - elections are in the offing. The fate of the Work- The Iron Lady unleashed a neo-lib- Indeed comrade Cliff and other crisis. It is not simply that Cliffism since 1997. Moreover, in what should ers Revolutionary Party beckons. Or- eral tornado against the post-World SWP intellectuals have made a virtue cannot grasp the period - the overall have been a window of opportunity, ganisationally the SWP appears to be War II social settlement. Millions of anti-programmism. They have writ- productive forces continue to expand they were conducted for the first time an exception. However, politically the were thoroughly alienated.

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