Compromise between the Left Party Platform and Socialist Platform
Steve Wallis of Manchester Central Left Unity proposed changes to the Left Party Platform submission for the aims section at the founding conference, which, after discussion, were submitted as two separate amendments to those aims for debate at the conference. The justification for those amendments are Steve’s personal views.
One of the problems of the debate between platforms is that it has, at times, become polarised between those who favour an electoral road to achieving socialism (with some such people accused, rightly or wrongly, of being content with positive reforms to capitalism) and those who favour a socialist revolution. The Left Party Platform (LPP) is in favour of a broad socialist party encompassing both (but some members particularly favour elections and others hide some of their politics to accommodate them), whereas the Socialist Platform (SP) is much more openly revolutionary.
Most revolutionary socialists, including myself, also agree with standing in elections, but think it impossible or highly unlikely for socialism to be achieved solely by electoral means. We should also welcome participation from those with autonomous/anarchist views, such as many in the AntiCapitalist Initiative, although I have used the phrase “(preferably peaceful) socialist revolution” in the second amendment below. We should not encourage the participation of people who encourage violence for the sake of it, as counterposed to defending themselves if attacked by the forces of the state – which the LPP’s Kate Hudson (general secretary of CND) informed us at the foreign affairs commission at the policy conference in Manchester is consistent with CND’s position on violence.
Discussions around the formation of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anti-capitalist Party) in France included people of an autonomous/anarchist persuasion, and although they didn’t participate eventually, we should welcome members of the AntiCapitalist Initiative into LU (especially because they are involved in merger talks with two organisations that are more keen – the International Socialist Network and Socialist Resistance). I have therefore included a paragraph in the second amendment below saying that those just interested in extra-parliamentary activity rather than helping with election campaigns (or vice versa) would be welcome.
The extremely undemocratic (misnamed) first-past-the-post electoral system, which would have only been slightly improved if the Alternative Vote proposal (that only the Liberal Democrats campaigned for and which was an awful compromise from the much more proportional single transferable vote system that they advocate) had been passed, makes it extremely unlikely that socialists can make as much headway as socialist parties/coalitions on the continent, particularly Syriza in Greece. The ConDems have also passed legislation for fixed term parliaments of five years – without LU playing a key role in massive extra-parliamentary action forcing a capitalist government to resign, or otherwise forcing them from office by a general strike leading to “dual power”, we would be betraying the masses who look to us to provide a lead.
If there is suddenly another massive economic crisis, on the scale of the 2007-8 credit crunch or worse, which some financial experts predict, such as Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert in The Keiser Report, viewable on RT (Russia Today) or YouTube, or the MoneyWeek magazine’s video/letter entitled “The End of Britain” (nothing to do with Scottish independence!), it would be vital for socialists to respond by leading a revolutionary movement – if not, the far right will have a field day. Waiting for another general election is not an option!
It should also be emphasised that the massive gains in support Syriza achieved, which led to it almost becoming the largest party in the Greek parliament in 2012, could not have been achieved without the mass movements of ordinary working and lower middle class people, including strike waves, demonstrations and particularly general strikes – in which members of Syriza played important roles.
I am in favour of standing in elections in situations where we can create an impact – but we must avoid becoming the polar opposite of UKIP standing against Labour everywhere (or in most seats at a general election), with the serious possibility of letting the Tories back in (perhaps in a coalition with the Lib Dems or UKIP). In general, we should stand in “safe” Labour seats (a strategy which has been extremely fruitful in getting George Galloway, Salma Yaqoob, Tommy Sheridan, Dave Nellist and Michael Lavalette elected for example, though mostly at a council level or in a by-election where far less is at stake). We should avoid clashes with other socialist organisations and the Green Party, in situations where local agreements can be made. [Rushing into a highly expensive and almost certainly unfruitful intervention in the 2014 European elections, where our vote would be massively squeezed, particularly due to “No2EU – Yes to Workers’ Rights” and the Greens planning to stand everywhere (which is necessary for them to get an electoral broadcast) would be a big mistake in my opinion.]
The combination of standing in elections and extra-parliamentary activity would be a big advantage of LU over the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), whose main participants, the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party (SWP), prefer to campaign under their own name between elections, with a major motivation being recruitment to their own parties, and with TUSC only being used at election time.
A major problem with many previous unity projects (and those that still exist like Respect) is that they have been based on lowest common denominator reformist politics, with organisations and individuals within such projects hiding many of their true views (particularly if they are revolutionary socialists). This has been the main criticism of members of the SP when arguing against the LPP.
However, LU has already operated in a very inclusive way, with nearly all comments on the website approved by a moderator and with a forum on which contributions appear immediately without waiting for moderation. Part of the motivation for the second amendment below is to ensure this continues. We should also have publications, such as a newspaper/journal (preferably called “Left Unity” if the party decides to adopt a different name at the founding conference), in which free and open debate between people with different political viewpoints is welcome, rather than making it a bland publication which doesn’t satisfy the incredible thirst for ideas amongst the population of Britain – particularly after Russell Brand’s article in the New Statesman and debate with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, on the subject of “revolution”, that have both received massive numbers of views on the internet.
Paragraph 7 of the LPP statement on trade unions is extremely vague, and contains nothing that even the Labour Party would disagree with! There is no mention of strikes (and certainly not general strikes which have a key role in changing society) or occupations or solidarity between workers in different unions or workplaces. The unamended version reads as follows:
7. We work for and support strong, effective, democratic trade unions to fight for better wages and salaries, for improved living standards, for better working conditions and stronger, more favourable, contracts of employment. We believe that the strength of the union is the people in the workplace; that what each person does at work matters – to make the job better, to make the service provided more effective, to persuade workers to combine for greater strength.
————————————————————————————-
The amendments passed by Left Unity in Manchester, and submitted to content@leftunity.org before the 16 November deadline, are as follows:
AMENDMENT TO LEFT PARTY PLATFORM STATEMENT OF AIMS (paragraph on trade unions)
Add to the end of paragraph 7: “Going on strike (including mass/general strikes), occupying workplaces and solidarity between workers (in different unions and/or workplaces) can be effective tactics in winning individual disputes and changing society.”
AMENDMENT TO LEFT PARTY PLATFORM STATEMENT OF AIMS (new paragraph)
Add new paragraph (11): “In line with the party being a broad socialist party, it should reflect a wide variety of views in our literature and on our website and forum. Our members will include:
a) reformists in favour of gradual change towards socialism and revolutionaries who believe some sort of (preferably peaceful) socialist revolution is necessary while supporting such reforms in the short term (and of course those who don’t know how socialism can/will be achieved).
b) those who believe in change through elections and/or extra-parliamentary activity. Those who want to join the party but only take part in one of those types of activity would be welcome.
9 comments
9 responses to “Compromise between the Left Party Platform and Socialist Platform”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
Wednesday 17th September: Trump not Welcome
National Demonstration against Trump’s state visit
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
I have had an extensive debate on the amendments and justification above with the Left Party Platform’s Felicity Dowling on my blog at http://thatcheroftheleft.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/compromise-between-the-left-party-platform-and-socialist-platform-justification-for-my-amendments-to-lpp/
Note that the text of the article is the same as above; scroll down to the comments (thoughts).
The amendments proposed above certainly address some of my major concerns with the LPP as it stands.
1) We should accept both electoral activity and community activism (broadly defined) as both useful methods of achieving ‘socialism’.
2) We should welcome those who only want to do one of these so long as they don’t wreck the other (if that would be possible?)
3) We should be honest about our politics and seek to organise people around our politics.
You forgot to add something we can disagree on.
Whilst fully agreeing with you that Left Unity needs to be a “Broad Church” party and movement, I think the second part of your proposed amendment b) is mistaken: ie
“b) ………… Those who want to join the party but only take part in one of those types of activity would be welcome.”
We really can’t have a party with any coherence or discipline at all if some members of a local branch can just opt out of the hard slog of the “boring electoral bits” – leaving this to others, whilst they only participate in the much more fun “direct action” . A party with any sort of political and organisational coherence has to be able to expect its members (though obviously not necessarily its broader periphery of supporters) to collectively share the burden of all of the democratically decided on activities and priorities of the party. Otherwise its just a loosely associating campaigning organisation, not a serious political party. If the Party democratically at Conference decides to participate in particular elections as a means to build influence and put across our radical message – then that’s what party members are obliged to participate in…. or leave the party and carry out their vision of political activity elsewhere.
John, is the reverse also true? Can we mandate the membership of LU as a whole to take place in direct action?
While I kinda like the idea of being able to have that kind of numbers on an action, I suspect that is going to be a highly controversial road to go down. Especially if there’s a chance of getting nicked- under a section 5, say.
However, if you’re not prepared to push this, it de facto means you’re priortising electoral campaigning over direct action, not alongside it.
[NOTE: I’m posting this after the conference; I hope discussions will continue on this website (which indeed was something I called for in the second amendment that was defeated by a show of voting cards) and that an archive will be kept of out-of-date documents which can still be read and commented on. The first amendment on trade unions (advocating strikes, including general strikes, occupations and solidarity) was carried, though, by 164 votes to 116 (I didn’t catch the number of abstentions which was also read out). This is very good news, since the amended LPP is not as dominated by the idea of LU coming to power by winning an election, which is extremely unlikely to happen to say the least under our extremely undemocratic electoral system.]
I’ve had a longstanding aim of wanting to unite socialists (particularly revolutionary socialists) with those of a (non-violent, as most of them are) autonomous/anarchist persuasion. The latter group of people are unenthusiastic (to say the least) about getting involved in electoral campaigning, but could take part in extra-parliamentary activity like non-violent direct action, strikes in their workplaces, and campaigns against the bedroom tax and cuts in the NHS. I want them to join Left Unity, but they wouldn’t do so if they were ordered what to do, or made to feel guilty about not doing something they didn’t want to do. That’s the attitude of the likes of the SWP, which we must conclusively reject.
There is actually an organisation that is playing the role of uniting people opposed to capitalism with socialist and autonomous views – the AntiCapitalist Initiative (ACI), which has a national conference on Saturday 7 December 2013 in Manchester (see http://anticapitalists.org/2013/10/29/aci-national-conference-7-december-2013/) that I’ll be attending as an ACI member (assuming they’ve processed my membership request but it’s not limited to ACI members anyway). Some of their members are involved in Left Unity, and the conference will partly discuss LU’s founding conference, but (at the time of the freshers’ fair at least) the biggest society of a left group at Manchester University were the AntiCapitalist Students, but most of them have so far been reluctant to join “a party”. Incidentally, a motion I wrote on keeping Left Unity as the party name, proposed at the conference by another member of my branch and passed overwhelmingly, could make a big difference in attracting people in the ACI (with Left Party, Left Unity Party and the rather ridiculous Democratic Voice being the only alternatives put forward). There were discussions with autonomous/anarchist people in France in the lead-up to the launch of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) but they dropped out due to it being a party.
As many of you will be aware, there are ongoing merger talks between the ACI, Socialist Resistance (Fourth International) and the International Socialist Network (a split from the SWP earlier this year due to the “Comrade Delta” furore and other problems with internal democracy) – which may involve other groupings too.
Although I joined the Socialist Platform, it effectively self-destructed due to a CPGB takeover attempt followed by a lack of serious campaigning within LU until the conference itself when a leaflet was handed out. For example, there are two internal groups – for political discussion (on which I’ve posted several items but has otherwise been unused), and one for information that has not been used at all!
It seems contradictory for me to join the Socialist Platform when I agree with a broad party, but the initial statement of aims for the LPP reminded me too much of failed unity projects that have adopted lowest-common denominator politics with revolutionaries hiding their true colours. I had thought that the Socialist Platform was the best grouping within LU to prepare for a massive economic crisis (like a “second credit crunch” that left-wing economics expert Paul Mason, who used to be in a revolutionary socialist organisation, has been predicting for a number of years – perhaps I made a mistake by mentioning more right-wing financial experts above…) which could present great opportunities for socialist revolution, but I now think that whatever comes out of ACI/SR/IntSN merger discussions would be able to play that role far better.
I’ve realised, since posting the last comment last night, that it sounds undemocratic to suggest that debate should continue on the website when my amendment advocating that was defeated. The amendment actually suggested several different things (and I only had 2 minutes to justify it plus the amendment on trade unions without even a 1 minute right to reply, not that anybody criticised a point I made during the debate) so it shouldn’t be taken as an indication that LU members want to close down debate now that the conference is over. In fact, the person who suggested that debate should just take place internally (which the SWP have tried to insist upon but it hasn’t worked due to rebellious members leaking documents, setting up blogs and debating with the wider left generally including on internet forums and in the Weekly Worker) was roundly heckled on Saturday. If there is to be a decision on ending debate on the website, or hiding it away into a password-protected area, then it would be totally undemocratic to make it before the next National Coordinating Group meeting. If I attend, I will oppose any attempt to clamp down on internal debates, and with such a low level of minimum subs, our enemies (including at GCHQ and in rival organisations) would easily be able to spy on us and contribute to them anyway (not that GCHQ would be put off subs set at thousands of pounds!)
In a Facebook debate I had before the conference at https://www.facebook.com/The14thNovemberMovementLeftPartyUk/posts/463546247099935, largely with Salman Shaheen of the LPP, he said about my two amendments: “I’m undecided on your amendments and will listen keenly to the debate on the day. I don’t think they’re necessarily bad amendments, I’m just not entirely sure they’re necessary. They are, essentially, implied by the breadth of the document in itself.”
The slogan “Solidarity Debate Action” in the Left Unity logo at the top of the website pages should be kept in my opinion. This way of operating is something that has made LU so much better than other organisations I could mention, and we should be able to grow more rapidly now that this conference is over (debating out the platforms and establishing a constitution was vital, but we could do with some policies, so roll on the policy-making conference in the spring!)
To remind you all, the full amendment was as follows:
Add new paragraph (11): “In line with the party being a broad socialist party, it should reflect a wide variety of views in our literature and on our website and forum. Our members will include:
a) reformists in favour of gradual change towards socialism and revolutionaries who believe some sort of (preferably peaceful) socialist revolution is necessary while supporting such reforms in the short term (and of course those who don’t know how socialism can/will be achieved).
b) those who believe in change through elections and/or extra-parliamentary activity. Those who want to join the party but only take part in one of those types of activity would be welcome.
Left unity is a place of discussion and debate. Closing its website to debate would be wrong. Steve im nit so sure a soc res, isn, aci will be a revolutionary regroupment or a centrist one. Soc res are always trying to dissolve into a broader left party. They offered their press to have a respect paper and urged it to become a party. Now they have blocked with the right in left unity, any regroupment will be a rightist one.
I think that attracting those leaving swp would have been aided by a b
Move left! The critics are, because of the aims part of constitution saying left unity is a reformist party. I think it needs to be amended to correspond with socialist aims as the lpp finished up with through the amendments of conference.
Its weird to be a left of labour party whose aims statement is to the right of clause four!
ill have to read it again to see what the aims document says about the labour movement, im still not convinced that community politics + standing in elections = road to socialism. I think we have to bring over yhe organisations of the working class to the need for action for a new democratic society, production for need not profit, for jobs not bombs, anti imperialist and socialist.
I think we should launch a youth and student movement and try to start building a name for ourselves in the struggle against the cuts.
Pete b
Having returned from the first National Transitional Council, I have just made the following comments on Facebook:
Overall very positive I thought – those who have written off LU will be proved wrong. From a personal point of view, me getting onto the website editorial team could be important to prevent reformist politics from dominating. As a reminder, the following amendment of mine was voted for at the founding conference:
AMENDMENT TO LEFT PARTY PLATFORM STATEMENT OF AIMS (paragraph on trade unions)
Add to the end of paragraph 7: “Going on strike (including mass/general strikes), occupying workplaces and solidarity between workers (in different unions and/or workplaces) can be effective tactics in winning individual disputes and changing society.”
Although another much more complex amendment (that I only had 2 minutes to propose alongside that one) was voted down, including that the website would reflect revolutionary as well as reformist views, the passing of the above amendment plus Camden’s to specify that LU wants to “end capitalism” should mean that the website puts forward such views rather than just lowest common denominator politics – indeed that articles putting forward such views don’t have to be followed by the disclaimer “Please note that the opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the position of Left Unity.” [It was also agreed that the website be restructured to separate debate on contentious issues from articles putting forward LU’s views.]
In reply to Pete B:
I’m not too keen on Marxist terminology like “centrist”, defined as “revolutionary in words, reformist in deeds” within the Militant/Socialist Party, but surely something different when referring to dissolving Socialist Resistance into Respect! In common parlance, it is used to mean somewhere between Labour and the Tories (generally Liberal Democrat).
Presumably there was an editing problem in “I think that attracting those leaving swp would have been aided by a b” – if Pete meant to say “broad socialist party” that hasn’t been true in terms of the IntSN who left the SWP in March and it was reported yesterday that a leading student member of the SWP, Mark Bergfeld, and others (from the now dissolved Rebuilding the Party faction I presume) are planning to join LU. Since they first got involved in the Socialist Alliances, the SWP have been interested in getting involved in broad parties of the left (and not having to dissolve themselves unless they wish to as the LPP has and Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party insisted on – with him hypocritically supported by a faction, FISC).
I think Pete’s “right of clause four” point refers to the claim at the founding conference about the following “a democratically planned economy that is environmentally sustainable, within which all enterprises, whether privately owned, cooperatives or under public ownership operate in ways that promote the needs of the people and wider society” (see http://leftunity.org/left-unity-founding-conference-documents-part-two/) entailing that it would mean that LU is in favour of “a mixed economy”. As a former member of the Militant/SP, I know that we talked about not wanting to “nationalise every fish and chip shop immediately after a revolution”. There was an unfortunate situation whereby that statement of aims was not debated (but amendments to it were) at the conference – I tried to raise a point of order since it looked as though that statement was going to be voted on and perhaps accepted without allowing debate of those aims and excluding discussion of platforms (because they were divisive, but that we had spent ages discussing them, those aims were very similar to the original appallingly vague LPP statement and I was suggesting a compromise between the new LPP statement and the Socialist Platform statement), but the passing of one of those amendments meant that platforms were debated anyway to complement the aims in the constitution.