Dispatches from Exile - ‘The Left is dead! – Long Live the Left’ : The Socialist Workers’ Party (UK) and Marxism – A Festival of Ideas 2023
Former chair of the Wellington Socialist Society, Hayden Taylor, provides some thoughts on the state of Marxism in the UK where he currently resides. First published in vol. four of The Commonweal.
The history of socialism is a constellation of defeats that nourished it for almost two centuries. Instead of destroying its ideas and aspirations, these traumatic, tragic, often bloody defeats consolidated and legitimated them.... In other words, we cannot escape our defeat, or describe or analyze it from outside. Left-wing melancholy is what remains after the shipwreck; its spirit shapes the writings of many of its “survivors,” drafted from their lifeboats after the storm.
- Enzo Traverso
Acknowledging the passing of an era or a political ideology is a means of paying homage to the legacy that has been consigned to history. By properly mourning what has been lost, societies can transcend nostalgia and illusions, forging a path toward a future unburdened by the constraints of the past. This perspective suggests that a generation's wellspring of inspiration should not be rooted in the past but rather derived from the yet-unwritten pages of the future.
In 2013, Chris Curtone, a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society, boldly declared in the foundational document of his post-Trotskyist organization, ‘The Left is dead! — Long live the Left!’ This declaration was made with the intention of breathing new life into the possibilities of the Left. Nevertheless, what proved controversial about this assertion was the apparent detachment of certain segments of the Left from the reality of its decline or their lingering attachment to the lost horizons of 20th-century socialism. They appeared incapable of processing and sublimating the past into a contemporary worldview. This essay will offer a brief history of the Socialist Workers Party (UK) before examining its annual showpiece Marxism Festival in order to illustrate that point.
An Owl Flying Backwards: The Rise (and Fall?) of the SWP
Speak one more time
About the joy of hoping for joy
So that at least some will ask:
What was that?
When will it come again?
-Erich Fried
This article does not seek to delve into the intricate complexities of left-wing sectarianism, particularly the nuanced historical trajectory of 20th-century Trotskyism. Nevertheless, a brief exploration of the origins of the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) may provide the reader with insights into the nature and purpose of the Marxism Festival.
The seeds from which the SWP grew are to be found with a young Trotskyist figure from the 1950s in the United Kingdom, Tony Cliff. Tony, born Yigael Glückstein in 1917, was a Palestinian Jewish migrant who moved to the United Kingdom in his early thirties. While still residing in the holy land World War II played a formative moment in Cliff's activist sensibilities, as he cut his teeth on organising against the recruitment of Jews to help in the British war effort against Germany, earning himself a prison sentence enforced by the British for the duration of the war.
Upon his release from prison Cliff moved to Tel Aviv. However, he decided that living in the official state of Israel, formed by a British decree, was going to be untenable for him and his family, so in 1947 he and his wife emigrated to the United Kingdom. Almost immediately upon their arrival Cliff became a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), the official British affiliate of the Trotskyist Fourth International, which argued that Stalinist Russia was a degenerated workers’ state.During his time in the RCP Tony Cliff began formulating an unconventional analysis of the Soviet Union. He posited that, under Stalin's leadership, the Bolshevik Party had effectively transformed the USSR into a bureaucratic state capitalist entity. This view contended that the state bureaucrats responsible for managing the apparatus of government had, in essence, assumed the role of a ruling capitalist class. As Cliff's ideas gained traction a select group of comrades within the RCP coalesced around him to initiate a research initiative known as the Socialist Review Group. Within Trotskyist groups determining the true character of the Soviet Union's project held paramount importance, as it ultimately defined their organisational identity. This question, however, carried little practical relevance to their revolutionary activities but remained a point of doctrinal insistence. For Trotskyists in the Anglo-American sphere, the question revolved around whether the Soviet Union was a state capitalist regime, a bureaucratic collectivist state, or a degenerated workers' state. Following an acrimonious dispute within the RCP, primarily centred around the Korean War and the alignment of Western socialists, Cliff and his cohort were expelled from the organisation. Notably, Cliff's response to this altercation famously yielded the slogan ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow’.
Subsequently, the members of the Socialist Review Group reconvened in 1961 to establish the International Socialists (IS). Although originally flirting with Rosa Luxemburg’s notion that revolutionary organisations should be built from below, by 1968 IS had adopted the Leninist practice of democratic centralism as its guiding principle, the party as revolutionary vanguard. Given its small size, the IS initially employed entryism within the Labour Party as its primary tactic, aiming to recruit young Labour Party activists into its ranks and propagate its ideals within the trade union movement. It abandoned this tactic in 1965, and was then heavily involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the student protest movement. The membership grew to around 1000. Rising industrial discontent led to a ‘turn to industry’, and between 1970 and 1974 the IS focused its efforts on the trade union movement, setting up a number of rank-and-file organisations and factory branches. They attracted a significant number of manual workers and saw membership exceed 3000. The return of Harold Wilson’s Labour government and the signing of a social contract with the union movement saw militancy decline and the rank- and- file organisations collapse. In response the IS renamed itself the Socialist Workers Party in 1977 and contested a number of parliamentary by-elections, with exceedingly poor results.
Jim Higgins, a prominent British Trotskyist, later wrote that ‘The party that was formed in 1977 was not predicated on great upheavals and political differentiation; it was less capable of mounting its own initiatives in the workers’ movement than it had been three years before. Its founding was for purely internal reasons, to give the members a sense of progress, the better to conceal the fact that there had actually been a retreat.’ For Higgins, the forming of the SWP was essentially based upon fuelling the delusion of its members and keeping up a sense of meaning and purpose. Higgins goes on to describe, better than I can, a concept that can be named ‘the primitive accumulation of cadres’ where for organisations like the SWP, 'the only measure of revolutionary advance is the membership figures.'
It must be noted here that this phenomenon of taking major defeats as successes is not unfamiliar to Anglo-American Trotskyism, but rather a seemingly natural law. Instead of recognising defeat and dissolving completely their organisations, say, as Marx did with the Communist League in 1852, Trotskyist organisations in the 20th century preferred to keep their detachments on life support despite their vegetative state, or if not split and recreate the same type of organisation but with even more grandiose claims and goals. Troublingly, this tendency persists within the contemporary landscape of what we still refer to as the socialist left. Here in our backyard, we have an overgrown garden of leftism that no groundskeeper is willing to touch. Those who dare enter the backyard only do so to lop branches off these older, apparently wiser trees, in the hope of grafting them to their own.
For much of the subsequent period the SWP has had a dual strategy of functioning as a propagandist organisation, focusing on Marxist theory, and organising or operating within a number of front organisations. In the late 1970s it achieved significant successes with the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, both formed to combat the rise of the fascist National Front. In the aftermath of 9/11 it was instrumental in founding the Stop the War Coalition, and was a key organiser of the massive anti-war demonstration in London on 15 February 2003, which attracted between 750,000 (official figure) and two million supporters (STWC figure). Thereafter it entered George Galloway’s Respect Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, and organised the Right to Work Movement in 2009. . It was heavily criticised by others on the left for attempting to control these organisations. Jim Higgins, once again, provides insight, describing the Party as akin to a gatecrasher, sneering at the hosts but ‘nicking’ any thing that is not screwed down. Any party focusing on Marxist theory is likely to experience divisions and splits, and the activities described above provoked several more, but a more serious blow to the SWP came in 2013-14. The Party Central Committee held internal disciplinary hearings to deal with accusations of rape against a former National Secretary, and concluded that there was no case to answer. The way the matter was dealt with provoked outrage and the Party shed over 700 members as a result, including several long standing and senior members.
One thing that we can say about the SWP is that it has demonstrated both durability and longevity. It has survived Thatcherism and the advent of neoliberalism; it has survived numerous splits within its own ranks; it has survived the castration of the trade union movement and the decline of industrial militancy; it acclaimed the downfall of the Soviet Union as evidence to support its theory of state capitalism. Its banners are still present on every demonstration and protest. How has the Party survived a high attrition rate? Where does it recruit new members? One answer is from among young student activists who have only just begin their political development, which brings us to the SWP’s annual Marxism Festival.
I Hear Buzzing, and I think Death: Marxism Festival 2023.
Man was, and is, too shallow and cowardly to endure the fact of the mortality of everything living. He wraps it up in rose-coloured progress-optimism, he heaps upon it the flowers of literature, he crawls behind the shelter of ideals so as not to see anything.
-Oswald Spengler
We are packed into a Quaker Meeting Hall in the middle of London for the opening 'rally.' But, unlike a typical Quaker meeting (austere, sombre, confessional), the atmosphere is one of purpose, colour, and grandiosity. Whooping ovations and collective gaieties interrupt sermons from the panel. The hall is dotted with a young and eager cadre in pink tee shirts ready to impress the veterans with their discipline and dogmatism. They are the SWP's fresh meat who, unknowingly, have served themselves up to be fed into the meatgrinder of Trotskyist activism.
One by one the SWP hosts take the microphone. We are told that, despite the multiplicity of crises facing civil society, times are adequate for the worker's movement to respond to and build from. Workers in public services like transport, education and health are engaged in rolling strikes against an extremely hostile Tory government, rioters in Paris are burning cars and barricading streets, while everyday people across the developed world are coming out in droves to protest the idleness of governments in their attempt to rapidly transition the productive base of society to become less reliant on fossil fuels. Covid, corruption and calamity are the order of the day. The police are racist, the Tories are incompetent, and capitalism sucks. But, not to worry, the working class is back and Marxism is more popular than it has been in generations. After all, this is supposedly the biggest Marxism Festival in years. I am told that the organisers have not seen a turnout this large since the height of the post-Occupy and anti-austerity movements. Some had estimated nearly four thousand tickets were sold. However, much like the last apparent watershed moment for the left, this buzzing of activity should be taken as a sign, not of advancement or a forward march of left relevance, but, rather, an indicator of an imminent decline. A death throe if you will.
The event is described as a 'festival of ideas' yet the use of the plural here is quite superficial as there is only one true idea or question that acts as the quilting point for the entire event. ‘Would you like to join the SWP?’ They are not shy about this either. Settling in for a long weekend, the SWP booked out the blocks and quads of the SOAS University in the heart of London, only a block away from the British Museum. In the main quad a fleet of trestle tables are anchored, shifting under the weight of classic and contemporary socialist literature. Surrounding the books for sale are copies of the Socialist Worker newspaper and, of course, badges. Lots of them. Framing the quad are stalls representing all the branches of the SWP in attendance at the festival. Most of these are from the greater London area while some hail from as far north as Birmingham and Manchester. The remnants of the old labour movement are also here in attendance, ' the warriors of the working-day', with their buckets and paywave machines collecting donations. Alongside them are the youthful pods of students grinning like Cheshire cats and decorating themselves with innumerable badges and revolutionary threads. When you walk into the halls to have your tickets checked, you are assaulted by a blizzard of SWP pamphlets and leaflets advising people how best their money should be transferred to the coffers of the Party for membership dues. A bemused look strikes the faces of the cadre when you politely decline their offer.
While ideas are certainly advertised on the tin, the contents of said tin are stale. Despite the level of sophistication that went into the organisation of the event, ultimately what I left with was a sour taste in the mouth. Why? The Marxism Festival of Ideas is simply a recruitment drive and an attempt at trying to reform the public image of the Party in the wake of major sexual assault scandals that rocked the SWP in 2013 which saw 700+ members abandon the party.
Over the three days, the attendees are offered a smorgasbord of SWP theoreticians who speak on exotic leftist topics such as 'Progress or catastrophe? Lukács, Benjamin & German anti-fascist Marxism' and 'Beyond the binary: Marxism, sex and gender', or the more humdrum cliche leftist topics that re-iterate the legacy of 20th-century socialism. Lectures with titles such as, 'Is there anything radical about Stalinism?' or 'Cuba: has it ever been socialist?'.
One thing you cannot fault the SWP on is that when it comes to heavy hitters of the academic and activist left the organisation is certainly well-connected. Jeremy Corbyn, Hannah Lowe, Yanis Varoufakis, Judith Orr and many other big names from the left grace the lineup of lectures at Marxism 2023. Noam Chomsky even beamed in from his home in New York to a crowd of enchanted disciples who basked in his digital presence as if a prophet had risen from the dead, and Noam certainly looked the part. But to be fair there were also workers on strike at Amazon, Chris Small a US Labor Union organiser, climate activists, and the admirable Ken Loach and others thinking about how socialists might organise post-Corbyn.
There is a marquee in the courtyard where local artists play for a transient crowd who come and go as they please between their preferred lectures or sit and chill while they feast on a variety of tasty Asian and Central American food truck treats. Furthermore each night, at a local pub, there are gigs put on for the more keenly engaged attendees and a further chance for the party cadres to ask the real question the whole event is predicated upon to an unassuming quarry. After the first day, at a joint close by, Mully's Bar, I decided to go enjoy a watery English lager and listen to a jazz band the SWP organised to play. I found myself conversing with a young couple, from Australia and England respectively. Being the man that I am, I couldn't hold back my Federation chauvinism and got gabbing about how reasonable the NZ Federation of Socialist Societies was given the state of the Left in Aotearoa. We shared our pessimisms and optimisms about the contemporary situations in each of our home countries. Everything was going swimmingly. We shared ironic quips, we bopped our heads to the sounds of the Soweto Kinch trio's fusion of jazz and hip hop, brought each other rounds of the aforementioned watery English lager, and had a classic intra-anglo cultural exchange. As the night went on and things began to wind down, the irresistible Trotskyist urge finally overcame them both, and as I was shifting my body language to indicate my imminent departure, the Australian turned to me and said, ‘Hey, you should join the Islington chapter of the SWP! Slightly deflated from this, having had the same invitation posed throughout the day,I replied, 'I'll think about it’, and left.
It's not that they are dishonest about this fact. It's more the way the party cadre goes about what they do. It's reminiscent of that uncomfortable feeling one gets when browsing in a store where you have little intention of buying any of the wares or widgets on offer yet some preppy and relentless member of staff will not leave you alone and will tell you how great everything looks on you. Marxism might look good on you, too. This is also the problem. The Party is sold to you as if it is a fashionable ware.
By day two I entered the grounds of SOAS slightly more weary and deeply hungover so my patience was fraying early on in the piece. I attended a handful of lectures that day and stayed around to see the man, the myth, the legend, Jeremy Corbyn, speak to a crowded courtyard of young and old. He’d been asked to discuss his three books that changed the world. There were cheers as he arrived and he looked merry. A reverential hush comes over the crowd. It doesn’t matter what he’s going to say. It’s him that’s saying it. But there’s an immediate air of disappointment as he starts boring away about An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. By the time he’s on his visit to the Texas agricultural museum, and certainly by the time he starts reading from the book, even this captive audience begins to trickle away. The event organisers seemingly wanted comrade Jezza not to address and reflect on his catastrophic parliamentary failure but, rather, keep alive some sort of optimism for the sake of 'the movement',. Hearing Corbyn wax lyrical on his favourite books rather than engage in any sort of critical reflection of his parliamentary defeat, to me, came across as an active attempt at whitewashing what had just happened. This is something the SWP's founder Tony Cliff was a master at.
Nevertheless, the day goes on and the lectures keep rolling. I attended one on the relevance of Trotskyism today, suffice it to say, it appears very little. The lecturer, a former teacher, now union organiser, pontificated on how big Trotsky's seminal work History of the Russian Revolution is and how long it took her to read it and then gave us a detailed reveal into how terrible working life is as a teacher in this Tory run United Kingdom. Last, but certainly not least, we were reminded that what the left needs is an organised and independent working-class party, so we should all join the SWP. I'd had enough of lecturers and leaflets that day so I went home to be a normal person and watch the football over a couple of pints and a bowl of chips.
On the final day, I left my attendance to the very last few lectures, and the final one of the day I attended was a book release for the SWP's track coach, Alex Callinicos. The New Age of Catastrophe was his self-described magnum opus. In short, he argues that the immiseration of the working and middle classes might be a good thing for revolutionaries like himself and the SWP because it will pull people away from the centre and open up the space for a new movement to emerge. A book that I have no doubt reads exactly like any annual report that the Fourth International produced in the 1950s. Capitalism is entering its final crisis, fascism is just around the corner if not already in power but just in the garb of liberal conservativism, really existing socialism isn't really socialism, and we need an independent workers party. By this point, I was incensed by the whole affair and promptly left at the end of Alex's lecture. I once heard a tale, which to date I am unable to source the origins of, where in the later years of his life, Max Weber attended a local SPD meeting and upon leaving the gathering he had remarked to a colleague 'These people frighten nobody.' Whether this is true or not, this is exactly how I felt after attending Marxism 2023.
Reflections
If we examine Marxism 2023 and its popularity as a symptom of the left decay, it becomes apparent that it mirrors a profound deterioration in the legitimacy of Liberalism itself and in times of such delegitimation people do tend to start looking outside of the mainstream offerings of the traditional established parties for alternatives. The problem here for the left though is that progressives and many elements of the left alike are adept at blackmailing radicals into a popular front strategy to stop the imminent imaginary threat of fascism. Ever since the 80s, for progressives, every election has been the most important in a generation and they have used radicals to do their dirty work for them. When the moment becomes ripe for radicals to break with progressivism, they blackmail themselves into leaving the fruit to rot on the vine. Despite the hostility the SWP has towards Jeremy Corbyn's successor in the Labor Party, Sir Keir Starmer, when the election comes in 2025, the derangement of fringe elements of the right will become too much to bear for radicals and they will find themselves holding their nose and voting for Labor to defeat the Tories. This happened with Biden in 2020 and is currently occurring with Labour in Aotearoa.
In the words of Anton Jager, our age is best described as an era of ‘hyperpolitics’, where politics once again asserts itself ubiquitously, extending its influence from the streets to our daily lives. However, what sets this era apart is that this political resurgence does not predominantly flow through traditional political parties or established associative structures that have historically driven change. Instead, it manifests as a diffuse, sometimes disjointed, yet frequently impassioned outpouring of political engagement and activism. This phenomenon spans movements as diverse as the gilets-jaunes in France, the global Black Lives Matter protests, and the tumultuous Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
This age grapples persistently with the questions of state failure and democratic deficits. These concerns are repeatedly posed but seldom find resolution. Despite the fervour that may characterize its leadership, Marxism 2023 appears to lack the necessary breadth and depth to serve as a vehicle for revolutionary socialism. Its outreach remains confined, unable to bridge the gaps among disparate segments of society. Moreover, the symbols associated with the movement, including the clenched fist and the evocation of the Internationale, carry connotations of retrospection rather than anticipation, reflecting a stance that tends to dwell on the past rather than forward-looking progress.
With this in mind, let us end on a quote from Marx himself. In the second edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire he writes:
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content – here the content goes beyond the phrase.
With that, lets us aspire to create content that goes beyond our phrases.
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