The responses in the previous issue of International Socialism by Panos
Garganas and by François Sabado to my article “Where is the
Radical Left Going?” are very welcome [1]. As their articles bear witness,
the condition of the radical left in Europe is quite diverse. Though I
have disagreements with some of the things that both have to say, these
differences are quite minor.

We in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) are enthusiasts for the New
Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, NPA) that Sabado and
his comrades in the now dissolved Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
(LCR) have played a key role in launching. I also recognise the significance
of the realignment that is bringing together the Greek Socialist Workers
Party (SEK) and the other far-left organisations allied in the Anti-Capitalist
Front (Enantia) with the New Left Current (NAR), the most important
recent breakaway from the Communist Party. I also express my disagreementsin some humility: the disastrous recent experiences of the radical left
in Britain do not exactly set up any of the participants in these catastrophes
to preach to their comrades elsewhere in Europe. As will become clear,
the debate, and the concrete development of the NPA have shifted my
own position.

 A new model party?

The most important point to emerge from the discussion is that the general
term “radical left formations” encapsulates two quite different types of
organisation, even though they are both a product of the radicalisation of
the past decade. There are those cases where the level of class struggle and
the political traditions of the left make it possible for revolutionary Marxists
to unite with others who regard themselves as revolutionaries in new, bigger
formations. So far the only example where this has come to fruition is the
NPA, whose founding principles, as we shall see below, are in a broad
sense revolutionary. Then there are other cases in which the most important
break is by forces that reject social liberalism but have not broken with
overt reformism—Die Linke in Germany, the Partito della Rifondazione
Comunista (PRC) in Italy under both its old and its new leadership,
Synaspismos in Greece and some elements in the Left Bloc in Portugal.

Both Garganas and Sabado argue that radical left projects should
follow the first model, basing themselves on a clearly anti-capitalist platform,
rather than on an “anti-liberal” platform that targets neoliberalism
and not the capitalist system itself. They justify this partly by pointing to the
negative experiences of centre-left coalitions such as the plural left government
in France in 1997-2001 and the Prodi government in Italy in 2006-8.
Garganas also argues that significant sections of workers and young people
are not attracted to “the traditional reformism of the past”. [2]

What seems to me valid in these arguments arises from the different
paths taken by the class struggle and by the workers’ movement in various
parts of Europe. France and Greece are the European states that have seen the
most intense social struggles in recent decades. Indeed, in Greece these have
been so sustained and so fierce (think of the huge wave of rioting by young
people that swept the country in December 2008) as to create, in relative
terms, the largest radical left in Europe. Moreover, these are both societies
with strong Communist traditions where social democracy has only succeeded
in establishing itself as the dominant force on the left in recent decades
and on a fragile and contested basis. In these conditions, seeking to build
parties of the radical left on an anti-capitalist programme makes perfect sense.

It remains the case, however, that these parties will still have to
grapple with the problem of reformism. One of the main lessons of the
history of the workers’ movement is that the development of the class
struggle, by drawing new layers of workers into class-conscious activity, will
tend to expand the base of reformist politics, since seeking to change the
existing system seems, initially at least, an attractive halfway house between
passive acquiescence in the status quo and outright revolution. Thus if
we consider the great revolutionary experiences of the past century, the
Russian working class, after the overthrow of Tsarism, gravitated first to the
Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, not the Bolsheviks. In Germany,
thanks to the ingrained experience of reformism and the relative weakness
of the far left, it was the Social Democrats and the Independent Socialists
who were the first main beneficiaries of the revolution of November 1918.
Nor are these experiences confined to the imperialist countries. Consider
how the Brazilian Workers Party, which Sabado’s comrades in the Fourth
International helped to build in the belief that it was a non-reformist organisation,
has become, under the Lula presidency, a pillar of social liberalism.

The implication of these historical experiences is not the fatalistic
conclusion that the mass of workers will never break with reformism: on
the contrary, the Bolsheviks achieved, within the space of a few months,
majority support in the Russian working class, and the German Communists
were able to win over the bulk of the Independent Socialists and build a
mass workers’ party. Nevertheless, these cases show how reformism remains
a strategic problem for revolutionary parties far bigger and better socially
implanted than the NPA, SEK or the SWP.

A major driving force in the development of the new radical left
parties is the experience of social liberalism. After Tony Blair, Lionel Jospin,
Gerhard Schröder and Romano Prodi large numbers of workers and young
people are looking beyond the “old house” of social democracy. But it
doesn’t follow that they have broken with reformism as such. Indeed, so
tight has been the embrace between recent centre-left governments and
neoliberalism that some tendencies on the far left (the Committee for a
Workers’ International, for example) argue that the British Labour Party,
the German Social Democratic Party, the French Socialist Party and their
like can no longer be regarded as reformist parties. I think this view is mistaken
—apart from anything else it ignores the fact that large sections of the
working class continue to vote for these parties, partly out of habit, partly for
fear of the even harder neoliberal policies of the traditional bourgeois parties.
But the sharp shift to the right by mainstream social democracy that gives this
view whatever plausibility it possesses creates a large space to the left of these
parties that is ideologically diverse and open to various political currents. [3]

It should be added that the revolutionary Marxist tradition, which both
the Fourth International and the International Socialist Tendency have tried
to continue, is not exactly a mass force at this precise moment in time. Sabado
says this is because it “is more than 30 years since the advanced capitalist countries
experienced revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations”. [4] That’s true.
It is also true that, whatever achievements the LCR or the SWP can claim, we
have not led mass workers’ struggles of any kind, let alone (as the Bolsheviks
did) a successful socialist revolution. Moreover, we have to struggle with the
incubus of Stalinism. None of this is a reason for liquidating the revolutionary
Marxist tradition, but it does imply that we cannot hope in the short term to
regroup the radical left on a platform that simply reproduces the strategic conceptions
developed by revolutionary Marxists. That does not mean that these
conceptions are simply irrelevant—a point that I return to below.

What does this mean concretely? The situation in France has allowed
Sabado and his comrades to launch a party three times the size of the LCR
whose programme, while in some respects remaining strategically open,
nevertheless explicitly calls for a revolutionary break with capitalism.
Conditions differ elsewhere. Thus in Britain and Germany we confront
workers’ movements in which social democracy has been deeply entrenched
to the extent that it is often assumed that the two are identical. This is why
the emergence of Die Linke in Germany is such a historic development.
Sabado acknowledges that it is “a step forward for the workers’ movement”
in Germany, [5] but this recognition is rather grudging and he prefers
to accentuate the negative, stressing the “left reformist” character of the
project, the weight within Die Linke of the ex-Stalinist PDS and so on.

All of this is true enough, but it ignores the fundamental fact that, for
the first time in decades, the decay of social democracy has produced a serious
breakaway to the left. Of course, Die Linke’s politics is left reformist: what else
could it be given the balance of forces in Germany? Elsewhere the process of
decomposition is so far advanced that such major splits are unlikely. As I noted
in my original article, this is the problem that we are grappling with in Britain.

The chronic, historic weakness of the Labour left would not matter so much
if their ideas were not still supported by millions of people (as is indicated by
the immense popularity Tony Benn enjoys well into his eighties).

The continuing influence of reformism constrains us in different
ways. Respect was doomed ultimately by its failure to bring about a major
split in the Labour Party. But, even so, Labourism continued to make
itself felt. If the SWP had, in the negotiations that led to the formation of
Respect in 2003-4, insisted on the kind of anti-capitalist platform championed
by Garganas and Sabado, the project would have been stillborn
(or would have gone ahead without us). As it was, it was hard enough to
have the word “socialism” included in the coalition’s title (via the acronym
forming the name “Respect”). Were we wrong to have gone ahead on a
weaker platform of opposition to neoliberalism, racism and war? Absolutely
not: despite the ultimate outcome, it was right to have tried. But human
beings make history not in circumstances of their own choosing, and an
explicitly anti-capitalist party was not on the agenda in Britain then.

Similarly it is not on the agenda in Germany today. Does that mean
that our comrades in Marx21 are wrong to throw themselves enthusiastically
into building Die Linke? Again, absolutely not. They are right to seek to try
to develop Die Linke in the most militant and dynamic way possible. Sabado
takes a cheap shot at Marx21, accusing it of “a relativisation of the critique of
the policies of the leadership of Die Linke on the question of participation in
governments with the SPD” [6]. Fortunately, this misrepresents the real situation.
Our comrades take a principled position of opposition to participation
in centre-left governments. But what they refused to do, before the formation
of Die Linke, was to allow the wrong policy of the PDS in participating in
social-liberal state governments in Berlin and elsewhere to be used as a pretext,
as it was, for example, by the local Committee for a Workers’ International
group, for attempting to prevent the creation of the new party. Were they
wrong about that? Would it have been better if what Sabado recognises as “a
step forward” hadn’t taken place? Once again the question answers itself.
Even where circumstances permit the formation of a party on a stronger
programmatic basis, this does not mean the problem of reformism goes away.

Sabado mentions the case of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leader of the French
Socialist Party (PS) left and a key figure in the campaign against the European
Constitutional Treaty in the 2005 referendum, who has now broken away
from the PS with the aim of creating a “French Die Linke”. Sabado asks,
‘Should we support him and join with him in his proposals and projects for
alliances with the French Communist Party, which maintains the perspective
of governing tomorrow—with the PS?” [7] Of course not. The balance of
forces in France allows the anti-capitalist left to relate to Mélenchon from a
position of relative strength. But nevertheless his break with the PS is a significant
one, which exposes the disarray of the reformist left in France in the face
of Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in the 2007 presidential elections and the attractive
power of the NPA embodied in the person of Olivier Besancenot.

The development of the NPA may generate more breaks, not just in
the PS but in the Communist Party as well. The NPA will have to know
how to relate to such openings in a way that involves more than just offering
the choice of joining the party or engaging in “classic” united fronts on specific
issues. For all the excitement it has generated, the NPA will be quite a
small force (albeit significantly larger than the LCR) on the French political
scene and in the workers’ movement. This will limit its capacity to lead in
any real upsurge of social struggles. Realising the NPA’s very great potential
will require a willingness to intervene in the broader political field and
sometimes to make alliances with other political forces, some of which, in
the nature of things, will be reformist. Having said that, I think the NPA’s
founding congress was probably right to have rejected an electoral pact with
Mélenchon in the European parliamentary elections in June 2009. The NPA
is the stronger force and it is important that it demonstrates and builds up its
independent electoral force as quickly as possible.

There is nevertheless a danger implicit in Sabado’s argument and
sometimes explicit in what other comrades in the ex-LCR and in Fourth
International sections when they say that the NPA should serve as a general
model. This is encouraged by Sabado’s dismissive attitude towards what the
forces immediately to his right do. Thus he pours cold water on the defeat
of the forces allied to Fausto Bertinotti, the former general secretary of the
PRC and architect of its disastrous participation in the Prodi government,
at the last party congress. I wonder if this is helpful to Sinistra Critica, the
left breakaway from the PRC that is led by Fourth International members.
It might be if the correct perspective for Sinistra Critica were to build a
hard revolutionary propaganda group that needed to inoculate itself against
pressure from bigger, more right wing forces. But if Sinistra Critica is to
act as a catalyst to the development of a stronger radical left in Italy, it
needs to attend carefully and relate to what is going on inside the PRC. It
is surprising that Sabado barely mentions the Left Bloc in Portugal, which
(despite the prominence of Fourth International members in its leadership)
is plainly pursuing a different approach from that of the NPA, as is reflected
in its membership of the European Left Party, founded by Bertinotti and
now dominated by Die Linke.

The variety of circumstances we face in Europe make it a mistake
to treat any party as a general model. It was a mistake for the leadership
of the Scottish Socialist Party to offer themselves as a model and a mistake
to the extent that we offered Respect as an alternative model. The NPA
has, I believe, a much more promising future ahead of it, but it would be a
mistake to make it a general model either. In stressing the importance of the
specific circumstances I am not relapsing into a kind of national pragmatism.
No, we operate in the context of a common field of problems that allows
us to draw comparisons and learn from each other. Moreover, we share the
aim of building large revolutionary parties. But it is still necessary to engage
in a concrete analysis of the concrete situation in different countries.

 Revolutionaries and the radical left

This brings us to the famous formula, coined by John Rees, that radical
left parties should be seen as “united fronts of a particular kind”. Sabado
attacks the formula at length, and it became clear in the debates that the
SWP has had about the lessons of the Respect debacle that quite a lot of
SWP members do not like it either. The formula is in fact an analogy,
which involves comparing things that are different yet involve important
similarities. A radical left party is unlike a “classic” united front in that it is
based on a broad programme rather than a specific issue. The Stop the War
Coalition is directed against the war on terrorism, not wars in general, let
alone the capitalist system that generates them. Respect, by contrast, sought
to connect that war with a range of other issues and to win electoral support
on the basis of a political programme that sought to address them all.

But a radical left party is like a united front of the classical kind in that
it brings together politically heterogeneous forces. This is partly a consequence
of the relatively open character of such parties’ programmes, which
generally finesse the alternatives of reform or revolution (though this not
true of the NPA). More profoundly, however, it reflects the character of a
period in which it is possible to draw people from a reformist background
into parties of the radical left where revolutionaries play an important role.
The programmatic openness (what Sabado would call the “incomplete strategic
delimitation”) of these parties reflects the recognition that it would be
a mistake to make membership conditional on breaking with reformism.
This stance is correct, but the price is a degree of political heterogeneity.
Before considering the implications of this reality, let me say a couple
of things about Sabado’s specific objections to the formula. He asks, “Didn’t
this conception of ‘a united front of a particular kind around a minimum
programme’ contribute to disarming the leadership of the SWP in its relationship
with George Galloway, for whom Respect had to sustain ‘alliances
with Muslim notables who could deliver votes’?” [8] In the first place, “around
a minimum programme” is Sabado’s own addition, presumably to highlight
the contrast with the NPA. But in fact the degree of strategic delimitation
(to put it more simply, of political hardness) in a party’s programme is a
relatively open question. Whether or not it is anti-liberal, anti-capitalist, or
indeed full-bloodedly revolutionary depends on the basis on which it is possible
to unite real forces in an alliance that is both principled and sustainable.

Did the fact that the SWP leadership saw Respect as a united front
disarm us in dealing with Galloway? Not at all. Sabado’s suggestion doesn’t
make much sense, since the united front conception is likely to make one
attentive (over-attentive, he says elsewhere) to the tensions within the
party. Moreover, as a matter of simple historical fact, growing tensions
developed between the SWP and Galloway as early as the summer of 2005.
The mistakes we made were arguably to compromise too much and certainly
to conceal the seriousness of the conflict from all but a small minority
of immediately affected comrades till much too late. But we were quite
right not to follow the Scottish Socialist Party model of a unitary broad
socialist party and liquidate the SWP. Had we done that it would have been
much harder to salvage anything from the train wreck. To some degree,
avoiding that catastrophic mistake was a consequence of using the united
front formula, since a united front requires the existence of an organised
revolutionary pole of attraction.

Sabado also elaborates on a suggestion in his earlier piece that to
“consider an anti-capitalist party in a united front framework can also lead
to sectarian deviations. If the united front is realised, even in a particular
form, might we not be tempted to make everything go through the channel
of the party, precisely underestimating the real battles for unity of action?” [9]
Once again this suggestion does not make very obvious sense. Why should
we imagine we are engaging in one united front at a given time? In the
past decade the SWP has been engaged simultaneously in a range of united
fronts—Respect, Stop the War, Unite against Fascism, Defend Council
Housing, and Globalise Resistance. In the majority of these we work alongside
people from a Labourist background.

Having defended the formula of a united front of a particular kind, I
must concede that it does not fit the NPA very well. The party’s founding
principles declare, “It isn’t possible to put the state and its current institutions
in the service of a social and political transformation. These institutions,
geared to the defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie, must be overthrown
to found new institutions at the service and under the control of
the workers and the population.” The principles add:

"The logic of the system invalidates the pretensions to moralise, regulate
or reform it, to humanise it, whether they are sincere or hypocritical. At
the same time, the logic of the system helps to create the conditions of its
overthrow, of a revolutionary transformation of society, by showing daily
the extent to which it is true that wellbeing, democracy, and peace are
incompatible with private ownership of the major means of production." [10]

So Sabado is right when he says that the NPA is a revolutionary
party, in the broad sense of seeking the overthrow of capitalism from
below, although he acknowledges that “this definition is more general than
the strategic, even politico-military, hypotheses that provided the framework
for the debates of the 1970s, which were at that time illuminated by
the revolutionary crises of the 20^th century” [11]. In other words, the NPA has
“a strategic programme and delimitations but these are not completed”. [12]
Sabado justifies this in the following terms: “The examples we can use are
based on the revolutions of the past. But, once again, we do not know
what the revolutions of the 21^st century will be like. The new generations
will learn much from experience and many questions remain open”. [13]

Now, of course, there is an important debate to be had about how
much of the strategic inheritance of the revolutionary Marxist tradition
remains relevant today [14]. And it is also true that revolutions always comprise
a decisive element of the unexpected and the novel. In that very general
sense “we do not know what the revolutions of the 21^st century will be
like”. But it does not follow from this that we start at what Daniel Bensaïd
has called a “strategic degree zero”. [15] The “revolutionary crises of the 20^th
century” contain certain strategic lessons. They confirm that the overthrow
of capitalism requires the forcible overthrow of the capitalist state, that this
process presupposes the development of organs of workers’ and popular
power into a challenge to the state, and that a revolutionary party must seek
to win the majority of the workers and oppressed to this objective. Not
simply do Sabado and his comrades agree about this, but much of its substance
is affirmed in the NPA’s founding principles.

There are also other subsidiary lessons that are important, for
example, those developed particularly by Lenin in Left-Wing Communism,
namely that the conquest of the majority requires revolutionaries to be
active in the mass organisations of the working class, even though these are
normally under (at best) reformist leadership, and in fights around partial
demands, which require, among other things, pursuit of the united front
tactic. And there is the complex set of issues related to the struggle against
imperialism and national oppression to which the first four congresses of
the Communist International devoted much valuable discussion.

Then there are the lessons of the experience of Stalinism. These do
not simply reaffirm the fundamental truth that socialist revolution can only
succeed if it is based on a more advanced form of democracy than that
offered by liberal capitalism. They also imply the rejection of what Leon
Trotsky called “substitutionism”—in other words, strategies that seek to
bypass the task of conquering the majority by, for example, relying on a
guerrilla vanguard to seize power (here there may be a disagreement with
Sabado and with Olivier Besancenot given the latter’s espousal of a 21^st
century Guevarism). And then, less a matter of strategy than of its analytical
presuppositions, there is Marxist political economy, the whole body of
analysis of the development of capitalism, its specific class structures and its
interlacing with imperialism that is essential if we are to begin to comprehend
what a socialist revolution means in the 21^st century.

It would be the worst kind of dogmatism to imagine that this body
of strategic lessons and analyses begins to define exhaustively the nature of
revolution today. Many questions do indeed remain open. Nevertheless, the
strategic heritage of revolutionary Marxism remains in my view an indispensable
reference point today. Sabado and I are agreed that it should not define
the programmatic basis of the NPA and parties like it. But I think that, in
reality, we also agree that this heritage should be available to the members of
the NPA and should help shape their debates on its future strategy and tactics.

The real problem is how practically to achieve this. In my original
article I argued that it is necessary for revolutionary Marxists to form an
organised current or to retain their own autonomous party organisation
within radical left formations. Sabado agrees that this is sometimes the
correct option but argues that it would be wrong in the case of the NPA for
two reasons. First, “there is the anti-capitalist and revolutionary character
of the NPA, in the broad sense, and the general identity of views between
the positions of the LCR and those of the NPA” [16]. Second, “in the present
relation of forces, the separate organisation of the ex-LCR in the NPA
would block the process of building the new party. It would install a system
of Russian dolls which would only create distrust and dysfunction”. [17]

These are good arguments in the concrete context of the formation
of the NPA. It is at once a qualitative expansion and transformation of the
old LCR, and one that retains a substantial continuity at the level of both
politics and leadership with the new organisation. Moreover, the relative
weight of the ex-LCR within the new party means that if its members were
constantly caucusing separately this could create a dangerous “them and us”
climate. The problem of being a big fish in a small pond is something that
the SWP grappled with inside Respect, and, though it was absolutely correct
to maintain our independent organisation, this evidently was not a recipe
that guaranteed success. Sabado is also probably right, at least in the short
term, that “it is not very probable, with the present political delimitations of
the NPA, that bureaucratic reformist currents will join or crystallise”. [18]
Nevertheless, the problems I set out in my original article remain.

The more successful the NPA is, the more liable it will become to reformist
pressures from within and without. Negotiating these pressures will often be
difficult and will require a demanding combination of political clarity and
tactical flexibility. More broadly, the whole experience of revolutionaries in
the face of mass struggles since at least 1848 is that these can pull militants
in different directions. Old arguments about ultra-leftism, the temptations of
centrism, syndicalism and abstentionist purism of the Bordiga sort, the problems
arising from the relationship between exploitation and oppression (for us
the key issue in the debate about the veil), are bound to arise.

This means that those who come from a revolutionary Marxist background
have to be putting their own arguments within any anti-capitalist
party. As Antonio Gramsci pointed out, spontaneity always involves diverse
elements of leadership: the question for the new party is how these diverse
elements will determine the party’s response as urgent strategic and tactical
decisions have to be made. Of course, revolutionary Marxists have to avoid
imposing their ideas in a top-down manner on others or turning every
meeting of the NPA into a sectarian row. But they also have to find ways
of organising themselves so as to articulate their arguments in a way that can
win others in the new party to them.
Hence Panos is right that “it is necessary to maintain revolutionary
organisation as a source of education and political initiatives that pushes the
rest of the left forward”. [19] The complication is that the NPA has carried over
much of the revolutionary substance of the old LCR. Nevertheless, at the
very least, there is a pressing need for political education that makes available,
in an open and critical way, to the non-LCR members of the NPA
the theoretical and strategic heritage of revolutionary Marxism. The very
welcome merger of the excellent Marxist theoretical journal ContreTemps
with the LCR’s journal Critique Communiste is a recognition of this necessity,
but a good journal cannot substitute for the much broader process of
education and debate that is required. [20]

These reservations are secondary to my recognition of the importance
of the venture on which Sabado and his comrades have embarked. We wish
them good luck. Their success will be ours as well. Grappling with the same
set of problems and discussing and working together, we can learn from
each other. I regard these exchanges as a contribution to this process.

References

Bensaïd, Daniel, 2004, Une Lente Impatience (Stock).

Callinicos, Alex, 2004, “The Future of the Anti-Capitalist Movement”, in Hannah Dee
(ed), Anti-Capitalism: Where Now? (Bookmarks).

Callinicos, Alex, 2006, “What Does Revolutionary Strategy Mean Today?”, IST International
Discussion Bulletin 7, 6 January 2006, www.istendency.net/pdf/ISTbulletin .pdf

Callinicos, Alex, 2007, “‘Dual Power’ In Our Hands”, Socialist Worker, January 2007,
www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=10387.

Callinicos, Alex, 2008, “Where is the Radical Left Going”, International Socialism 20 (autumn
2008), www.isj.org.uk/?id=484

Garganas, Panos, 2009, “The Radical Left: A Richer Mix”, International Socialism 2 (winter
2009), www.isj.org.uk/?id=513

Sabado, François, 2009, “Building the New Anticapitalist Party”, International Socialism 2
(winter 2009), www.isj.org.uk/?id=512