For what it’s worth: my thoughts on Left Unity and the “platform debate”
Left Party Platform supporter Mike Marqusee adds his thoughts on the debate about the kind of party Left Unity needs to build.This platform is largely formulaic and reads like a catechism. It aims to encapsulate a revealed truth. It deals in abstractions, many of which beg more questions than they answer. For me, it embodies an approach to LU and what it needs to be that is sketchily schematic and decidedly undialectical. It’s a closed book, a set of fixed conclusions. LU needs something different. Not a “platform”, if you like, but a collective springboard.
The argument has been distorted by claims that others in LU (supporters of what’s called the “Left Party Platform”) are trying to “hide” their socialism. First of all, factually, it’s a bogus claim. The LPP defines the new party as “socialist”, among other things, including “democratic”, “internationalist” and “feminist”. The Socialist Platform contains no commitment to feminism, and I’d suggest that’s not an insignificant or acceptable omission. In any case, I hope people are not swayed by the flagrant guilt-tripping in the accusation. What’s needed is not abstract or verbal declarations of fealty to socialism – and treating them as some kind of vital line in the political sand – but a collective effort to give socialism meaning and efficacy in contemporary conditions.
I’ve supported the Left Party Platform precisely because it is an entirely different type of document. It does not claim to be complete and does not ask people to subscribe to a pre-packaged set of formulations. It does try to explain and contextualise “socialism” and on this basis begins to conceptualise a new and different kind of party. It opens rather than close what has to be a serious, multi-faceted debate.
Of course, the current argument around the various platforms has already given people cause to write off LU as a another futile left wing adventure, cursed from the outset by factionalism and dogmatism.
The raison d’etre of LU lies in the movement of Labour (in my view, decisively and permanently) to the right and its consequent inability to fight austerity or offer a substantive political alternative on just about any front. This has resulted in what Tony Benn long ago identified as a “crisis of representation” and it’s this crisis that makes LU possible and necessary. That is not to say LU should in any way seek to replicate “old Labour”, but it should aim to reach and offer representation to the wide spectrum of people who now find themselves to Labour’s left.
If that could have been achieved by the Socialist Platform approach, it would have happened long before now.
LU can only offer representation to the unrepresented if it opens its ranks to them and provides means for them (us) to define and develop their (our) needs, priorities and politics.
There’s a school of thought that views pluralism as some kind of liberal or post-modern concession to the agnostic, the confused or the incompletely enlightened. But I’d suggest the real premise and promise of pluralism is founded on the demonstrable reality that at the moment no one is in exclusive possession of anything even approximating the ultimate strategic truths of the struggle for socialism. These can only be reached, created, through a process of open, multi-dimensional discussion and shared, reality-based activity.
LU will get nowhere if it is not vehicle of wide ranging, open-ended discussion to which a variety of perspectives contribute. Some supporters of the Socialist Platform seem to conceive of this diversity in static terms: really, as a competitive field of ideological struggle, which translates in practise into struggle between factions or currents. The idea is always to “win over” the rest of us to their arguments, as opposed to listening and learning from the rest of us, from the whole.
Many activists are fed up with this approach and for good reason. Not because they seek some cosy, evasive consensus but because they find the terms of the debate, the poles of the argument, unreal and simplistic.
Supporters of the Socialist Platform say that it’s important for LU to get it right at the start, to be clear about what it stands for, what kind of party it will be. It’s precisely for those reasons that their approach needs to be rejected.
Mike Marqusee
11 comments
11 responses to “For what it’s worth: my thoughts on Left Unity and the “platform debate””
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`What’s needed is not abstract or verbal declarations of fealty to socialism – and treating them as some kind of vital line in the political sand – but a collective effort to give socialism meaning and efficacy in contemporary conditions.’
Excellent but rather than signing the Left Party Platform you should have called for it and the Socialist Platform (and the class struggle platform) to be withdrawn as being divisive. And declared this whole platform business is a distraction from the core task of giving `socialism meaning and efficacy in contemporary conditions’. That is elucidating a programme for principled left unity and the transition to working class power and socialism.
The Manifesto Group rejects all the platform documents as either divisive, sectarian or opportunist. What it seeks to do is put forward a programme as described above in opposition to the policy forum methodology that hands over responsibility for elucidating a programme to a small group of `professional’ activists who will no doubt cobble together some eclectic mess that the leadership can take or leave and horse trade as they see fit with little in terms of democratic control to stop them. Not a collective effort at all. Might as well have stayed in Labour or the SWP. Yes we wish to put forward a short holistic internally logical manifesto with 6 or 7 key demands that reflect the most immediate and transitional needs and demands of the working class for wide-scale discussion in the branches so that they can propose amendments, additions, changes before it goes to conference for voting on in November.
“The Socialist Platform contains no commitment to feminism, and I’d suggest that’s not an insignificant or acceptable omission.”
Except that in point 4 of the statement of principles, we express ourselves pretty clearly: “The [Left Unity] Party opposes all oppression and discrimination, whether on the basis of gender, nationality, ethnicity, disability, religion or sexual orientation and aims to create a society in which such oppression and discrimination no longer exist.”
But you’re right, I’m sure omitting to use the word “feminism” itself has some dark and sinister implication, so dark and sinister in fact that you can but hint at it…
I want Left Unity to become a mass broad party that is pluralist *and* socialist with vibrant internal debate and democracy. That is why I support the Socialist Platform.
Debate is important and I welcome contributions to that debate from all quarters. Collectively we learn from debate, it helps clarify the issues and give us all a deeper understanding of the tasks ahead.
It is a shame that the tone of this article goes against its main tenets; it strikes me as a polarising contribution attributing malign motives and characteristics of those who support the Socialist Platform. It seems to be saying we need to learn to listen to each other except for *them*.
I have advocated a new party since I left the Labour party in 1989. I’m enthusiastic about the left Unity project as I think it at last gives a real chance of a serious breakthrough for the Left with the formation of a broad party. Maybe I’m “old fashioned” but I think the party should be *explicitly* socialist and I feel the Left Party Platform (the statement on its own) falls short on that. I feel the distance between my politics and a significant chunk of those who support the Left Party Platform is not actually that great. A lot of people have signed up to both platforms and there is a broad spread of people who support both.
Real debate can and should be interesting and exciting, we are engaged in an exciting venture! One of the most refreshing aspects of Left Unity is that the outcome has not been predetermined in “smoke filled” rooms by others. Us ordinary members genuinely have a real say and from that genuine differences emerge. If there were no differences I would be concerned – it would reflect a lack of diversity within the organisation. Anyway, there is no need for debate to become hostile – that is off putting!
So yes let’s genuinely listen to each other and encourage an environment where healthy respectful debate is the norm. Let’s not assume the worse of those we disagree with and that includes supporters of all platforms and none – we all have the right to put forward our views and to be listened to with respect. Let the debate continue!
Mike, I think you point on feminism is misplaced. As I wrote in my response to Tom Walker: “This is unfortunately the kind of dog whistle politics that can distract from the real debate. We did not use the word feminism, but the kind of feminism I support would mean opposing “all oppression and discrimination … on the basis of gender”. Which is exactly what we wrote. In the supporting article ‘Resistance and Socialist Change’ that was put together by the drafting group we also wrote that “the Left Unity project will be committed to the emancipation of women”. But if the argument is to be like finding all the right words within a crossword or be damned, then where is the Left Party Platform’s explicit mention of opposing oppression based on “disability, religion or sexual orientation”? They are not mentioned. This is not because the signatories are ablist, homophobic or Islamophobes but because political platforms deal with general principles. That means we test platforms on whether they oppose oppression and fight for liberation, not on the exact formulation of words used to express those struggles.” http://leftunity.org/what-are-we-struggling-towards-a-response-to-tom-walker/
What is also intersting is that you say that you’re “one of those thousands who signed up to Ken Loach’s Left Unity appeal a few months back” but then Ken Loach said exactly what the Socialist Platform advocates. At the first meeting he said “The way things are run now, this system will never provide a dignified life for us, never provide a safe future for our kids and will never take care of the environment. I could call this economic structure capitalism. We’ve talked about language earlier on and it’s a word that some of us might shrink from. But there have been two centuries of people fighting to refine our language so that we can talk precisely about the world we live in. So I hope you find that the word capitalism is acceptable in order to talk about the tasks ahead of us.
The core idea that I hope that sits of the heart of this party is the fact that we need a planned economy to get out of this mess. Of course, you can’t plan what you don’t control, so it needs to be an economy held in common, a democratically controlled economy. And we call that socialism.” http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/?p=2138
Well I agree with Ken. Do you?
For what it’s worth? To me, a very great deal! Excellent piece. This, alongside Tom Walker’s piece, seem to me to be decisive arguments in favour of the Left Party platform and against the others. Since the publication of the platforms, the website, previously the home of inspirational pieces by disabled activists and reports from campaigns and so on, has turned into a series of boring dogmatic propaganda, followed by arguments in the comments about who’s betraying who and what was the nature of the Soviet Union. If the other platforms pass, expect more of the same. As Salman put it so wittily recently, I’d much rather we focused on defending the NHS than the Soviet Union.
First, I have to disagree with Baton Rouge when he or she argues that the LPP (of which I am a signatory) and the Socialist Platform are divisive. Political debate – and the platforms are nothing more than organised political debate – is not only not divisive per se, it is the very lifeblood of a healthy political movement.
However, I would urge comrades to remember at all times that we are all on the same side and all committed to the same project. We must leave behind the sectarian culture of always defining ourselves by what divides us from our comrades rathers than what unites us.
I’m afraid I’m not as optimistic a Sean: this discussion has become very polarised, around an issue – the “historic” programme of LU – that it doesn’t really need to discuss now and is not immutable either.
What we need to discuss is what LU does to fight the current attacks against the working class and the oppressed.
I also think that the various platforms should be withdrawn, but the originators of them need to discuss amongst themselves how they are going to constructively re-orient the discussion between now and November 30th in a way that ensures the LU retains in its membership the 9,000 people who have signed the appeal.
For those who might argue that “programme is everything”, perhaps I can offer below a quote on the way the Left Bloc (BE) in Portugal was established. Their emphasis was from that start on campaigning, particularly – in the late 1990s – on the abortion referendum and it was their success in that which helped to propel BE onto the national stage.
“The Left Bloc was deliberately not a homogeneous political force with a defined ideological profile. Besides being a pluralist organization, its definition stemmed more from the concrete needs of intervention, the political confrontations that were bound to shape our activity than from an a priori ideological cohesion. So, the appeal that brought together the founding members of the Left Bloc was at the same time vague and very ambitious.”
(The ambitious bit related to a statement about the aim of “redefining socialism”).
For the full article see: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2560
I agree with Sean that this debate is not necessarily divisive and one we have to go through to ensure as Dave Parks puts it that the outcome of the November conference is not fixed up in ‘smoke-filled rooms’ (the original sin of Respect by the way thanks to the unholy alliance of the SWP and George Galloway rather than, as some seem to think a ‘disavowal of socialism)
But as Mike Marqusee suggests the problem with the Socialist Platform is that it assumes we already have the answer, a ‘catechism’ or, as some of its supporters prefer, the ‘programme’, and all we have to do is to shout it out on street corners long enough and the masses will come flocking around.
Except that a whole variety of Trot groups have been doing that for some time and, despite the persistence of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, hardly anyone seems to be listening. Certainly we can provide a Marxist analysis of the crisis and the hopeless failure of the social democratic left to respond effectively across Europe and North America. But the state of so-called vanguard organisations in Britain and elsewhere should make us rethink much more radically what many of us have been doing for the last few decades. Creating a ‘socialist party mark 2’ (and the platform bears all the hallmarks of the old Militant group’s dismissive attitude to both environmentalism and feminism even if its spokesmen claim otherwise) will just be competing in the same space as SPEW and the SWP – and I seriously doubt if it would do any better.
Mike is absolutely right to insist that ‘no one is in exclusive possession of anything even approximating the ultimate strategic truths of the struggle for socialism’. Given the history of those claiming to be ‘socialist’ from Ramsey Macdonald to Eric Honecker of East Germany and Kim Il Jong of North Korea, workers have every reason to be sceptical of those offering to ‘lead them to the promised land’.
Agreement with Mike on that doesn’t entail an uncritical attitude to the left party platform which is a bit too vague and disconnected from the immediate struggles of workers for my taste. But rather that than a document which as Mike says demands ‘verbal declarations of fealty to socialism’ (and as Tom Walker noted there are many libertarian communists – as I have described myself on facebook – anarchists, mutualists etc who would reject the label ‘socialist’ but we still want on our side).
I comment as someone who has only just got back to Britain after almost a month away in Berlin and haven’t signed any of the three platforms which have appeared in my absence. I need to spend a few days catching up but Mike’s vigorous prose, which belies his serious illness, resonated with me so I’ve responded immediately. I had sketched out a longer piece on ‘left unity and the s word’ before I left but it looks like I have to rewrite that now….
Following my first look at the postings on the Left Unity website I wrote on Left Futures,
“I ought to support projects like Left Unity. As a newcomer to the Left, with all the zeal of the convert, I am desperate for a credible political, broad organization that is genuinely socialist. There’ve been a number of attempts to create such a thing in the last few years but I look at the Left Unity website, and once again recoil in despair.
Once again the hard Left lets down the people it should be defending. Once again the cliched iconography of the 1930s. Once again the utterly pointless faction fighting dressed up in ideology – as if anyone outside the bewildering variety of tiny Marxist sects gave a damn. Once again futile, self-indulgent discussion reduced to argument as to whether the USSR was a good thing or not.
And those participating in this farce, many I’m sure with good intentions, appear to have little idea how irrelevant (at best) this sterile navel-gazing is to the vast majority of those who need a party of the Left.”
I subsequently noted that perhaps I was premature and accept that I was being unfair. I really, really hope so, because the current Labour stance also makes me recoil in despair. In LU there seems to be an ‘alliance’, or perhaps tension, between people who think it must be possible to have a genuinely socialist party based on broad principles, and Communist activists accustomed to thinking ideological purity is everything. It is completely crucial that the first of these groups forms the dominant strain within LU.
Thare is much to agree with in all of the platforms and comments posted but fundamentally the core of the argument comes down to reform or revolution, like it or not.For most of my working life I was a full time trade union official and as someone with a revolutionary perspective I tried to encourage members to make demands which increased their control over their daily working lives. Obviously much of the time was spent in trying to achieve the maximum amount of wages accompanied by the conditions in which these wages were earned e.g. safety, health, pace of work (in the case of the car industry this was often to do with the speed of the track and who controlled this), good holidays entitlement, adequate sick pay etc. but essentially ensuring work took place in the best possible environment. Needless to say there were many contradictions not least the level of competition between different manufacturers, the level of investment which in the British companies was far below that of the foreign competition. Always at the back of my mind was the notion that the stronger the workere were in achieving better pay conditions and control of the labour process the more this would convince them of their power to run and control their lives and in contradiction of the oppression of working class people which seeks to enforce the notion that they are not capable of doing this for themselves.
Essentially in a sensible economy in which there was a cooperation rather than competition plans could be made to ensure that what was produced matched human needs as determined by a genuine system of democracy. As it is everything is determined by the level of profit.
So far so good but it boils down in essence to a battle between labour in all its forms and capital.Right now we are seeing that many of the gains that were made are being removed not only in the reductions in income and working conditions but also in welfare benefits including health, pensions, housing entitlement etc. Please note that I have not mentioned Marx.
What my experience has taught me, or rather confirmed,is that the owners of capital are absolutely ruthless. The history since the industrial revolution has demonstrated this beyond a slither of doubt. On September 11 we will be commemorating two shattering events but the one which we should carefully examine and recall was the coup d`etat of Pinochet in Chile when a progressive reforming President was overthrown and killed with the solid support of the most powerful capitalist country of the time – the USA. There are other examples in history.
It is for these reasons and more that it is inevitable that reformism has failed despite worthy attempts by sometimes very worthy people. Without going into any detail just consider the experience of one country, South Africa. The anti-apartheid struggle was in my view one of the great achievements of the late 20th Century with literally thousands laying down their lives with men and women of extraordinary courage and determination and yet despite some improvement in the lives of many there is still enormous deprivation for a large section of the population. Some of the heroes of that struggle are now multi-millionaires perhaps most notably Cyril Ramaphosa, former General Secretary of the NUM, who led a strike of the miners in 1987 in many ways not disimilar from our miners strike of 1984/5 except they won! It will shortly be the anniversary of the shooting of 112 miners at Marikana killing 34. Evidence show that he was complicit in this massacre and owns 23% ofLonmin shares. South Africa is apparently the most unequal county in the world.
So reform or revolution – I think it was RH Tawney who said “You cannot skin a tiger claw by claw” certainly not a capitalist tiger!
A flexible and genuinely organic/grassroots-orientated model for LU needs to be embraced, one that accepts there is never going to be a one size fits all solution which will please every individual, community, group or region.
If LU truly is to become a truly democratic and representative party it will need to be able to appreciate that no one, whether they be on the Left, or even the right for that matter, will share exactly the same views as someone else and nor should they!
ALLOWING AND RESEPCTING DIVERSITY OF OPINION, ESPECIALLY WITHIN OUR OWN RANKS, IS NOT A SIGN OF IDEALOGICAL INFIGHTING OR FACTIONALISM, BUT A SIGN OF POLITICAL MATURITY AND SHOULD BE AT THE VERY HEART OF THE LU MOVEMENT.
A WILLINGNESS AND OPENESS ABOUT BEING ABLE TO AGREE TO DISAGREE IS OUR GREATEST ASSET.
BY RESPECTING AND PROMOTING THAT DIVERSITY FROM THE START, LU WILL DEMONSTRATE THAT IT WANTS TO BE TRULY REPRESENTATIVE PLATFORM THAT WILL PROVIDE PEOPLE WITH A GENUINE VOICE (WHICH AT THE END OF THE DAY IS THE MAIN REASON WHY PEOPLE IN GENERAL HAVE BECOME DISULLUSION WITH THE MAIN PARTIES.