This article is published with the kind courtesy of Arthur Albert and WORKERS INTERNATIONAL NETWORK
In 48 hours 500k people sign up to “Your Party” in an unprecedented show of enthusiasm. This is all the more remarkable in that no one yet knows exactly what they are signing up for, even if it is to be a party or a series of umbrellas. For now all that anyone knows for sure is that it will be different and it will aim for change. So hated are the current politicians and the social status quo that difference and change are more than enough to generate widespread enthusiasm.
A year ago the electorate voted for change. We got change all right, but change for the worse. Instead of low decimal point economic growth, we got economic contraction. Instead of taxing the rich, we got cuts to disabled people’s assistance. Gandhi was changed for Carlos the Jackal, as peace campaigners are now labelled terrorists. International humanitarian aid money now buys weapons for the armed forces. Woke free speech restrictions mean that genocide can’t be called out in case it hurts the feelings of the murderers. Wages and incomes stall while prices and bills accelerate. I could go on in that vein all day and not even begin to exhaust the reasons for people to be angry at the current situation. So too could virtually every person in this country, with the exception of those people who are doing rather well out of it, the mega-rich and their well-paid enablers, the politicians and the media.
Sultana and Corbyn are both advocates of the kind of change people actually want. Secure jobs that pay a living wage, not zero-hour contracts; public services and utilities that work for people, not just for shareholder profit; and a foreign policy based on peace, not warfare. That is why so many joined so fast; this time with this initiative, they hope to get the change that they want and need. Their aim is to fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power.
A vocal few have taken issue with the time this initiative has taken and the secretive back-room nature of a lot of what has preceded this current sign-up drive. While we sympathise with many of the criticisms they have made, we have to point out that these matters were out of our hands; none of us could have issued a call and have hundreds of thousands respond. Now we have to play the cards we have been dealt the best way we can. If there really is a secretive group hiding in the shadows that believes it can manipulate this new party by pulling the strings of the members, then it is in for a rude shock. Momentum cannot be resurrected; large swathes of this new party have been through the school of the Labour Party and graduated with honours. It is in these members that we place our trust.
On the other hand, some individuals were rushing forward with their grandmaster organisational schemes to be adopted right down to the fine details before the website clicker had even reached triple digits. For Marxists, though, while the nature of an organisational structure is important, it is political ideas, method and approach that will be decisive in this new party. So what should Marxists advocate to help this new party develop into a real alternative to the Tories and the other capitalist parties?
The Forde report noted in a shocked tone that the Labour Party administration did not act like impartial civil servants. The reason for that lack of impartiality is clear to every former Labour Party member. It is because the party administration was itself the core of the right-wing faction that waged war on the members and saw them as the enemies (Trots). The administration did everything they could to destabilise the elected leader of the party, Corbyn, hamstring the lay party members and to prevent the selection or election of any further left wing MPs, even going so far as sabotaging election campaigns .
To prevent the situation that led to the defeat of the left in the Labour Party reoccurring in the new party, that of an administration usurping the authority of the party membership, it is necessary to devise a democratic structure based on one member one vote. Where all officials and representatives are elected by the body they represent and to whom they must be responsible and report back to. They must be subject to recall and none of them receive more than the average pay of a skilled worker (£38k per annum) so that none are attracted to the administration for well paid careerist reasons.
The only real guarantee against the new party, its administration, its councillors or MPs, or its leaders getting out of the control of its members is a confident, politically educated membership. Political education and campaigning should be at the core of the new party.
Perspectives for the economic and political development of society should be drawn up and discussed and debated at regular intervals. That way the party or its members will not be taken by surprise by events or blown off course. They will have a map that shows where they are and the route to get where they are going.
In order to deliver the change that so many desire and deserve, a mass redistribution of wealth and power. It is necessary to devise a programme that meets the needs of the working class. The 10 pledges need to be resurrected, and the manifesto of 2019 needs to be revived and updated as a first step in that direction.
While the leadership of the Labour Party has succumbed to a mutated version of the neoliberalist virus that infected their predecessors from 1997 onwards, the party is far from dead yet. Even among the right-wing administration’s handpicked MPs, there is rebellion only a year into office. As Johnson found, winning a landslide victory is not enough to ensure loyal obedience from the backbenchers or the ministers and Starmer is now, if anything, in a more precarious situation than was Johnson, who was at least popular with the rank and file of his party.
While Starmer was easily able to proscribe Marxist groups in the party, he was also able to expel socialists by the score. What he cannot do is prevent the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and he cannot prevent the class struggle from being reflected in the Labour Party. Only a few years after a strike wave, the trade unions ranks are stirring, and NEC elections that were once formalities are now hotly contested between left and right and the beginnings of attempts to transform the unions by the ranks are either underway or are being reflected in the maneuvers of the bureaucrats.
Many in the ranks of Labour and the trade unions will be watching the development of the new party with rapt attention, not just deciding if they should join the new party, but in the days to come, they will also ask themselves whether they could replicate the new party’s policies in their own organisation. In this way the new party can influence labour and the trade unions for good, but only if it is not sectarian. The new party must face towards the labour party and the trade unions in a positive way, criticising their failings but encouraging them to move away from neoliberalism
Marxists are not some quack theorists; we are attempting to express the actual relations that arise from the real existing class struggle. We point out the real common interests of every worker on this planet; not a day goes by when those common interests get closer, and not a day goes by without that common interest becoming more apparent to every worker on this planet. Just as workers in Maidenhead and Middlesbrough have the same interests, so too do the workers of Macau, Mombasa, Milwaukee and Mumbai, who face the same bosses, the same problems and the same solutions. Only on the basis of socialist internationalism will a party that represents the whole working class be built.
