From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Two false oppositions (Socialist League-Britain)
...the question of smaller revolutionary left-wing groups entering into larger working class formations like the British Labor Party is a tricky matter and had bedeviled many smaller organizations. In a time of left-wing drift entry in those reformist formations to take advantage of being able to speak to the serious militants make lots of sense. The classic example in the United States was the 1930s entry (not without opposition from those who were happy with the propaganda group spirit) of the Socialist Workers Party into the Socialist Party. While the experience was not long the SWP drew out the best militants from that organization and essentially crushed that party as a pole of attraction for serious labor militants. A huge organization like the Labor Party with lots of authority in the working class however is more problematic, especially in the "dog days" and the pressure to go easy on the tops as demonstrated by this sketch below is strong.
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Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover”the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
********
The main document published before the fifth annual Conference of the Socialist League was the resolution of the National Council recommending the dissolution of the League. This resolution protests against the “action of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party which no longer recognises the affiliation of the Socialist League and considers adherence to the Labour Party to be incompatible with that of the League”. Conference was requested, in the sacred name of unity (with the EC of the Labour Party) to dissolve the organisation. The National Council of the League, however, would still be free, to express “the confident hope” that the following annual, Conference of the Labour Party would reverse the decision of its EC. If this was so, then, and only then, would the Socialist League become “reconstructed as a propaganda organisation inside the labour movement”, the term Labour Movement is used as, a synonym, for the Labour Party. An amendment deleting this part of the resolution, which shows clearly that the National Council of the League had no intention of reforming the organisation without the express permission of the Executive of the Labour Party, was, put. down in the course of the Conference and accepted by the National Council. But, however modified, the resolution still left. the rebirth of the, League to the discretion, of the National Council, which had already, decided to leave this task to the Labour Party Conference, which meant, in effect, the EC of the Labour Party.
The participation of the Socialist League in the Unity Campaign with the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party, which provoked the break with the League and the violent expulsion of its members from the Labour Party was motivated by two principal reasons; an overestimation on the part of the leaders of the League, Sir Stafford Cripps & Company, of their influence over the rank and file of the Labour Party and their underestimation of the power of the tops of the Labour Party whom the actions of the League had inconvenienced and who were ready to fight for their existence.
This false opposition, a majority of it petit bourgeois, decided to commit suicide in order not to inconvenience the tops of the Labour Party.
Cripps & Company were taking good care to express their devotion to “unity” (which means an opportunist bloc on chauvinist lines with other parties along with left phrases and slogans), and they promised to continue to work for the Unity Campaign. Having proved that they were ready to submit to the Executive of the Labour Party, this task limited them to passing on unity resolutions to Labour Party Conferences. In reality Cripps & Company intended to keep in existence a left tendency without really leading it to fight the right wing of the Labour bureaucracy and the Stalinists had their aims made easier of organising the leftward-moving masses around a reactionary programme under cover of “left” and democratic slogans.
There was a Trotskyist opposition at the Conference consisting of two groups:
In this resolution the Trotskyists demanded that the Socialist League continued its existence inside the Labour Party and renounce the Unity campaign. They made no attack against the dissolution of the Socialist League, a dissolution exposing the false nature of the opposition of Cripps & Company.
The Trotskyists did not consider it to be opportune to speak in the presence of militants of the Labour Party about its break with the Socialist League and the dissolution of the latter by Cripps’s adherents nor to denounce the reactionary nature of the Labour Party and expose the pretensions of Cripps to pass himself off as a revolutionary opposition, but judged it preferable instead to consider the affair as the unfortunate consequence of the wrong tactic, which could be rectified by doing what the Executive of the Labour Party demanded of them.
The perspective of a break with the Labour party and the formation of a new Communist party was not presented. Moreover, in their resolution the Trotskyists asked conference to decide “to reconstitute the Socialist League as a revolutionary organisation within the Labour Party”, renewing and spreading the illusion that it is possible for a revolutionary organisation to exist inside the Labour Party. With this opportunist position, which in reality comes round to support for reformism, the Trotskyists in Great Britain are on a level with their colleagues in the United States and elsewhere.
The resolution of the Trotskyists gained 10 votes with 51 against. The dissolution of the organisation was unanimously accepted.
R. Groves informed the Conference that he would continue to work inside the Labour Party and invited those in agreement to meet together after the Conference. After the Conference the Harber and Groves groups met.
Capitulation is something never admitted, whether it be Zinoviev and Kamenev before Stalin, German Social Democracy before Hitler, or simply the sacrifice of the Socialist League to the cause of “unity”.
The reply of the Labour Executive to the obliging dissolution of the Socialist League was a further strengthening of the dictatorship of reformism inside the party.
Twenty four hours after the Conference the Daily Herald, the organ of the labour bureaucracy, warned those who intended to continue to support the organisation and work of the League that fresh measures would be taken against them.
Three weeks after the dissolution of the League the secretary of the Scottish Labour Party sent a circular to all sections asking their delegates to sign an undertaking a) to take no part in the Unity Campaign, b) to accept no proposal for unity in action, c) to accept nothing of like character, and d) to refuse to put itself to any trouble in favour of unity in action (New Leader, 4 June 1937).
“We must struggle for each piece of independence”, Trotsky said before becoming demoralised by the fascist victories and leading the sections of the International Communist League towards the right and into centrist and reformist parties.
But it is not impossible that Trotskyists in Great Britain, following the example of those in France, are going to form an independent organisation (The Marxist Group, which publishes an organ Fight: For the Fourth International, under the leadership of C.L.R. James, a group which includes the greater part of the Trotskyists in the Independent Labour Party, has already preceded them). But unless they recognise their entry into the Socialist League (and the ILP) as an evolution to the right, an abandonment of the Leninist position of the necessity for the independence of the revolutionary organisation caused by demoralisation following the defeats of the proletariat, a demoralisation principally due to a disproportion of petit bourgeois elements in the organisation, and unless they recognise this in all clarity, courageously orientate themselves in complete independence in the first instance towards the proletariat at the point of production, in the factories, the mines, the naval dockyards, and the trade unions, and only in the second instance towards the political parties, they will become no more than a centrist group making a display of “leftist” slogans without mass roots, without real influence.
POSTSCRIPT:
Since the drafting of the above report the leaders of the Socialist League have decided not to establish a common platform with the Stalinist party and the ILP, confirming our forecast as to their ultimate capitulation before the bureaucracy of the Labour Party. Significantly, neither the ILP nor the Stalinists have taxed them with this capitulation. The Stalinists greeted it with pleasure, and the ILP simply regretted the “tactic” of the Socialist League.
We conclude from the press that the Trotskyists have formed a “Left Socialist Federation” within the Labour Party, to spread the idea of a United Front opposed to the Popular Front on the basis of rejecting imperialist alliances and the activity of the League of policy of active class conquest of power and of socialism.
Yet again it is necessary to analyse this point to reveal the pathetic positions of these people. The need for a United Front springs from the weakness and divisions of the working class. For the revolutionary party it is a compromise, intending to prove to the workers an identification with their interests, and at the same time to demonstrate in action against the exploiting class the true nature of other parties.
Without a revolutionary party, exposing the agents of the bourgeoisie, and those who indirectly support them, there is no United Front; there can only be a bloc of centrist and rightist parties, whose principal object will be to camouflage these parties and help them to mislead the working class, which is what realising the Popular Front means in everyday language.
In not openly establishing this, and in asserting that the United Front is possible without a revolutionary party, the Trotskyists themselves, after their fashion, are supporters of the Popular Front.
Such is the swamp in which are enmeshed those who think that the question of the independence of the revolutionary organisation in the struggle for the revolutionary party reduces itself to a simple “tactical” question.
Ernest Rogers
Leninist League
Glasgow
June 1937
...the question of smaller revolutionary left-wing groups entering into larger working class formations like the British Labor Party is a tricky matter and had bedeviled many smaller organizations. In a time of left-wing drift entry in those reformist formations to take advantage of being able to speak to the serious militants make lots of sense. The classic example in the United States was the 1930s entry (not without opposition from those who were happy with the propaganda group spirit) of the Socialist Workers Party into the Socialist Party. While the experience was not long the SWP drew out the best militants from that organization and essentially crushed that party as a pole of attraction for serious labor militants. A huge organization like the Labor Party with lots of authority in the working class however is more problematic, especially in the "dog days" and the pressure to go easy on the tops as demonstrated by this sketch below is strong.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover”the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
********
Two false oppositions
The following article, dealing with winding up of the Socialist League, appeared in the 10 August 1937 edition of L’Internationale, the monthly magazine of the Union Communiste in France. As the original English text has been lost, we have retranslated it from the French.The main document published before the fifth annual Conference of the Socialist League was the resolution of the National Council recommending the dissolution of the League. This resolution protests against the “action of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party which no longer recognises the affiliation of the Socialist League and considers adherence to the Labour Party to be incompatible with that of the League”. Conference was requested, in the sacred name of unity (with the EC of the Labour Party) to dissolve the organisation. The National Council of the League, however, would still be free, to express “the confident hope” that the following annual, Conference of the Labour Party would reverse the decision of its EC. If this was so, then, and only then, would the Socialist League become “reconstructed as a propaganda organisation inside the labour movement”, the term Labour Movement is used as, a synonym, for the Labour Party. An amendment deleting this part of the resolution, which shows clearly that the National Council of the League had no intention of reforming the organisation without the express permission of the Executive of the Labour Party, was, put. down in the course of the Conference and accepted by the National Council. But, however modified, the resolution still left. the rebirth of the, League to the discretion, of the National Council, which had already, decided to leave this task to the Labour Party Conference, which meant, in effect, the EC of the Labour Party.
The participation of the Socialist League in the Unity Campaign with the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party, which provoked the break with the League and the violent expulsion of its members from the Labour Party was motivated by two principal reasons; an overestimation on the part of the leaders of the League, Sir Stafford Cripps & Company, of their influence over the rank and file of the Labour Party and their underestimation of the power of the tops of the Labour Party whom the actions of the League had inconvenienced and who were ready to fight for their existence.
This false opposition, a majority of it petit bourgeois, decided to commit suicide in order not to inconvenience the tops of the Labour Party.
Cripps & Company were taking good care to express their devotion to “unity” (which means an opportunist bloc on chauvinist lines with other parties along with left phrases and slogans), and they promised to continue to work for the Unity Campaign. Having proved that they were ready to submit to the Executive of the Labour Party, this task limited them to passing on unity resolutions to Labour Party Conferences. In reality Cripps & Company intended to keep in existence a left tendency without really leading it to fight the right wing of the Labour bureaucracy and the Stalinists had their aims made easier of organising the leftward-moving masses around a reactionary programme under cover of “left” and democratic slogans.
There was a Trotskyist opposition at the Conference consisting of two groups:
- The Marxist League – of nearly 30 members – publishing a monthly organ, The Red Flag. Their representative was Reg Groves, a member of the National Council of the Socialist League.
- The Militant Group – of about 40 members – publishing a duplicated organ for sale inside the Labour Party – The Militant – For Revolutionary Socialism appearing monthly. Their representative at the conference was D.D. Harber.
In this resolution the Trotskyists demanded that the Socialist League continued its existence inside the Labour Party and renounce the Unity campaign. They made no attack against the dissolution of the Socialist League, a dissolution exposing the false nature of the opposition of Cripps & Company.
The Trotskyists did not consider it to be opportune to speak in the presence of militants of the Labour Party about its break with the Socialist League and the dissolution of the latter by Cripps’s adherents nor to denounce the reactionary nature of the Labour Party and expose the pretensions of Cripps to pass himself off as a revolutionary opposition, but judged it preferable instead to consider the affair as the unfortunate consequence of the wrong tactic, which could be rectified by doing what the Executive of the Labour Party demanded of them.
The perspective of a break with the Labour party and the formation of a new Communist party was not presented. Moreover, in their resolution the Trotskyists asked conference to decide “to reconstitute the Socialist League as a revolutionary organisation within the Labour Party”, renewing and spreading the illusion that it is possible for a revolutionary organisation to exist inside the Labour Party. With this opportunist position, which in reality comes round to support for reformism, the Trotskyists in Great Britain are on a level with their colleagues in the United States and elsewhere.
The resolution of the Trotskyists gained 10 votes with 51 against. The dissolution of the organisation was unanimously accepted.
R. Groves informed the Conference that he would continue to work inside the Labour Party and invited those in agreement to meet together after the Conference. After the Conference the Harber and Groves groups met.
Capitulation is something never admitted, whether it be Zinoviev and Kamenev before Stalin, German Social Democracy before Hitler, or simply the sacrifice of the Socialist League to the cause of “unity”.
The reply of the Labour Executive to the obliging dissolution of the Socialist League was a further strengthening of the dictatorship of reformism inside the party.
Twenty four hours after the Conference the Daily Herald, the organ of the labour bureaucracy, warned those who intended to continue to support the organisation and work of the League that fresh measures would be taken against them.
Three weeks after the dissolution of the League the secretary of the Scottish Labour Party sent a circular to all sections asking their delegates to sign an undertaking a) to take no part in the Unity Campaign, b) to accept no proposal for unity in action, c) to accept nothing of like character, and d) to refuse to put itself to any trouble in favour of unity in action (New Leader, 4 June 1937).
“We must struggle for each piece of independence”, Trotsky said before becoming demoralised by the fascist victories and leading the sections of the International Communist League towards the right and into centrist and reformist parties.
But it is not impossible that Trotskyists in Great Britain, following the example of those in France, are going to form an independent organisation (The Marxist Group, which publishes an organ Fight: For the Fourth International, under the leadership of C.L.R. James, a group which includes the greater part of the Trotskyists in the Independent Labour Party, has already preceded them). But unless they recognise their entry into the Socialist League (and the ILP) as an evolution to the right, an abandonment of the Leninist position of the necessity for the independence of the revolutionary organisation caused by demoralisation following the defeats of the proletariat, a demoralisation principally due to a disproportion of petit bourgeois elements in the organisation, and unless they recognise this in all clarity, courageously orientate themselves in complete independence in the first instance towards the proletariat at the point of production, in the factories, the mines, the naval dockyards, and the trade unions, and only in the second instance towards the political parties, they will become no more than a centrist group making a display of “leftist” slogans without mass roots, without real influence.
POSTSCRIPT:
Since the drafting of the above report the leaders of the Socialist League have decided not to establish a common platform with the Stalinist party and the ILP, confirming our forecast as to their ultimate capitulation before the bureaucracy of the Labour Party. Significantly, neither the ILP nor the Stalinists have taxed them with this capitulation. The Stalinists greeted it with pleasure, and the ILP simply regretted the “tactic” of the Socialist League.
We conclude from the press that the Trotskyists have formed a “Left Socialist Federation” within the Labour Party, to spread the idea of a United Front opposed to the Popular Front on the basis of rejecting imperialist alliances and the activity of the League of policy of active class conquest of power and of socialism.
Yet again it is necessary to analyse this point to reveal the pathetic positions of these people. The need for a United Front springs from the weakness and divisions of the working class. For the revolutionary party it is a compromise, intending to prove to the workers an identification with their interests, and at the same time to demonstrate in action against the exploiting class the true nature of other parties.
Without a revolutionary party, exposing the agents of the bourgeoisie, and those who indirectly support them, there is no United Front; there can only be a bloc of centrist and rightist parties, whose principal object will be to camouflage these parties and help them to mislead the working class, which is what realising the Popular Front means in everyday language.
In not openly establishing this, and in asserting that the United Front is possible without a revolutionary party, the Trotskyists themselves, after their fashion, are supporters of the Popular Front.
Such is the swamp in which are enmeshed those who think that the question of the independence of the revolutionary organisation in the struggle for the revolutionary party reduces itself to a simple “tactical” question.
Ernest Rogers
Leninist League
Glasgow
June 1937
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