Statement on British SWP crisis

The SWP central leadership seems to be imploding. There has been a Bureaucratic Centralist leadership even since Cliff lost the vote on Ireland at the 1971 of 1972 IS conference. This explosive crisis has echos of the WRP crisis of 1985 - 1987 where the rank-and-file could seriously consdier different points of views with openly declared factions vying for the leadership after the Healyite clique imploded.


An explosive SWP crisis was inevitable with Third Camp politics being weakend with a new upturn of the world revolution. Rees admits that the SWP had a one-sided attitude to the 1989 events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's break-up during 1991. Despite this change in line he clings to State Capitalist theory.


Ernest Mandel when he still influenced the FI majority leadership in 1990 was proven correct when he argued there could be protracted struggle for years between different Bureaucratic factions; Capitalist elements; and working class due to crisis of workers' leadership and global Capitalist crisis. Mandel argues in his introduction to "Power and Money" that it was the victory of excessive rapacious Bureaucratic concessions combined with Capitalist inroads was the objective basis for disorientation of the masses. He was proven correct when he stated in the medium-term would defend the gains of those Workers' States against those two forces because workers would go into struggle to defend their immeadiate material interests as they increasingly become threatened.


Cliff in his 1990s introducton to his work on "Russia: A Marxist analysis" confused the revolutionary challenge to Bureaucratic rule in 1989 and the restoration of Capitalism. By making democratic concessions the different castes survived. Those sections of the Bureaucratic castes who wanted to make concessions to Imperialism by devloping Capitalist sectors in those economies won out. This was a move in the direction of Capitalism as an intermediary stage but that does not mean Capitalism has been restored. Most of the left have made a major methodlogical error of confusing this intermediatary stage with its completion. Mandel's analysis of continuing conflicts within the Russian Bureaucracy was proven correct. Those sections of the Russian Bureaucracy who lost out by excessive Bureaucratic pillage and concessions to Capitalists are re-gaining their power by exporpriating Capitalists and Capitalist firms.


I agree with the ex-Socialist Action ediorial board minority who argued that the 1989 events in Eastern Europe were the beginning of incipient Political Revolutions with the qualifications of why their dynamic changed with the Bureaucratic factions who won out. It was their failure to support these upheavals which was leading them out of the FI why the minority joined the ISG.


Sections of this minority partly formed a tendency in 1996 to oppose Stalinphobia in the ISG. This tendency was known as Tendency E (TE). TE sharply intervened against Thorentt's line of supporting German Re-unification. East Germany was one execption because the West German Bourgeois state filled the vacumn. The only other restoration of Capitalism in Europe was Kosovo where Imperialism through NATO forced the Serb Bureaucracy out of Kosovo which led to a similar power vacumn as in ex-GDR. On both German Re-Unification and NATO's war against Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) Thornett/Mackler/Foley argued positions to the right of the British SWP.


Trotsky was correct in the 1930s that the Soviet Union breaking-up even in the context of a victorious Political Revolution would set-back the productive forces. Thornett broke from that analysis when he wrote in a 2000 ISG internal document that the Soviet Union did not form a productive unit on its own. The new upturn of world revolution will mean the defence of workers against Imperialism and Capitalist elements, alongside taking the Political Revolutions futher will deepen. Russia's change of direction could influence Eastern Europe as the full extent of World Capitalism's crisis impacts on them; and the workers are growing in struggle in the Workers' States (except Cuba) which are increasingly taking an anti-Capitalist and anti-Stalinist direction. This is where Trotskyism can begin to apply their strategy of Political Revolution with social consuqences. Despite the destruction of East Germany the new Capitalist crisis is helping those who came from that country to radicalise as they know Capitalism is worse than Stalinism.



When an organisation leads a mass movement which the SWP led in 2003 it it is tested whether it moves in either an opportunist or Ultra-Left direction under the pressure of alien forces. It made a principled error of confusing alliances in a single issue campaigns where Bourgeois forces are not necessiarly excluded but a party which has to be based on a programme and have a clear working class character.


In his document Rees attacks Trotsky and Lenin for being partly inapplicable to Respect and the anti-recession charter. This represents a deepening of Rees's move to Popular Front politics. Rees in his document calls for alliances with Liberal Bourgeois economists such as Larry Elliot. Revolutionary Marxists cannot even agree with Social Democrats around a common programme let alone with direct Capitalist elements such as Elliot. Lenin and Trotsky's method which Ress partly attacks was to offer reformist forces immeadiate and specefic demands which would influence millions of workers; middle class elements; and other specially oppressed within those two classes. Rees like John Ross want to colloborate with these Liberal Bourgeois Keynsians. This is wrong on a principled basis because Keysnians attack workers and middle class to salvage Capitalism, where is what is required is its' revolutionary overthrow.


SWP members should read the American Trotskyist James P. Cannon on methods to build a revolutionary leadership. He made relevant points on why cliquism and unprinciped combinations can destroy an organisation. One key point he made in the History of American Trotskyism is that organisations who have a wrong programme implode at some stage. Until Barnes destroyed the Trotskyists in 1981 the American SWP outside the Bolshevik Party was the most democratic party in the world. Another point Cannon made was that organisational questions are always subordiante to politcal requirements. The Cannon leadership always wanted the maxinum educational value in any political disputes. They always allowed tendencies and factions,with them being represented on leadership bodies.