[Marxism] SWP and Respect -- a central issue is the national question

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Lenin's Tomb writes: "The argument, as laid out in some detail in the SWP's
statement, is that the argument for cross-class 'community' politics as
opposed to class politics was gaining ground among some...."

You know, from the very first post I saw on this imbroglio my gut told me
this was at the very heart of the dispute, and it seems like my instincts
did not play me false.

This highlights the importance of understanding that all these "religious"
and "immigrant" and "ethnic" and "community" movements and issues are in the
realm of the national question and national movements in the age of
imperialist; and especially understanding that what gives rise to these is
not common language, territory and all the other folderol from the
Bolsheviks pre-WWI Kautskyite position codified in Stalin's pamphlet on the
national question, but rather the oppression, exploitation, repression and
persecution of imperialism.

National movements are, by their very nature, multiclass movements, but
contrary to the pre-WWI position of "revolutionary social democracy," they
are not quintessentially bourgeois because they are directed against
imperialism, which IS capitalism in our epoch.

What is needed is not counterposition of the class question to "cross-class
'community' politics" but serious work within the national movement and on
the terms of the national movement against the compromising, sell-out
politics of the bourgeois forces who would be content to accept a few scraps
from the imperialist banquet table --overwhelmingly for themselves-- and
leave the vast majority of the community out in the cold.

There is no question in my mind now that the reason for the split is the
SWP's workerism, a sectarian counterposition of "class" to "community". 

The statement I assume LT alludes to, the one dated Nov. 3 on the SWP web
site, shows this clearly:

"[T]he very success of Respect created political problems - and Socialist
Workers Party members at meetings and conferences had to try to find ways of
dealing with them.

One was in the results themselves. The successful candidates were all from a
Muslim background, despite the substantial white working class vote for
Respect and the mere couple of hundred votes that stopped non-Muslim
candidates winning in Tower Hamlets. This led to opponents of Respect to
spread the idea that it was a "Muslim party" . The other problem was that
electoral success led to something familiar to people who had been active in
the past in the Labour Party but completely new to the non-Labour left -
opportunist electoral politics began to dominate Respect. 

"There were even cases when people said that if they could not be Respect
candidates they would stand for other political parties - and one of the
Respect councillors in Tower Hamlets did switch over to Labour after being
elected.

"For such people their model of politics was that increasingly used by the
Labour Party in ethnically and religiously mixed inner city areas -
promising favours to people who posed as the "community leaders" of
particular ethnic or religious groupings if they would use their influence
to deliver votes. This is what is known as Tammany Hall politics in US
cities, or "vote bloc" or "communal" politics when practiced by all the
pro-capitalist parties in the Indian subcontinent. It is something the left
has always tried to resist."

Full: <http://www.swp.org.uk/respect_cc.php>

For the SWP, the "problem" is that under current political conditions in the
UK, Respect became a vehicle for the expression of a radicalization among
Muslims who have been singled out for repression and discrimination in the
imperialist "war on terror." 

The issue is not, as LT misunderstands it, that anyone is accusing the SWP
of failing to denounce and oppose attacks on Muslims or the discrimination
against them. The issue is that the SWP has completely failed to understand
Respect's success in making itself a vehicle for the fight back by these
communities. 

This developing mass base of Respect in certain areas OF COURSE brings the
problems the SWP refers to in its statement. You're now dealing in a milieu
that is not composed of people who have to a significant degree come to
radical and anticapitalist ideological conclusions and on that basis are
politically active, but with a mass sector DRIVEN into politics by ruling
class attacks, and who come into politics with countless prejudices and
backwardness on any number of questions, as well as with the social
structures of their communities.

And in this context, the tests and norms and standards socialists have
gotten used to applying when operating in mostly ideologically-driven
milieus are not of much use, for the likely result of their application is
to denature the movement, change its character from one driven by the
elemental force of oppressed peoples trying to get the imperialist boot off
of their necks. 

It is no accident, I think, that one of the SWP's outstanding trade
unionists and a member of Respect's national council has resigned from the
party and denounced its trajectory in this affair. Because the tactical
approaches that are most applicable in this kind of situation are akin to
those smart socialists employ in the unions, and not the usual
stock-in-trade of ideological propaganda groups.

I do not disagree with Louis and what he has written on the organization
question side of the issues that have been posed, but I do not believe that
is the main question involved here, but rather the failure of the SWP to
understand and apply a correct policy toward national movements in the age
of imperialism (summarized in the revision of the Communist Manifesto's
slogan that came out of the Second Congress of the Comintern, "Workers and
oppressed peoples of the world, unite!").

Joaquin