Organising the party

What about the question of discipline that Lenin points out, given the fact that we’re at such an early stage of our implantation in the class struggle here? Does it mean we really shouldn’t have any discipline at all? The first thing we should say is that we’ve got to keep a sense of proportion about this. We should compare what happened with the US SWP. They lost all sense of proportion over the last four years, or they decided on a split and carried it out in a most incredibly stupid way. And the fact that they’ve done that has led to a certain questioning.

I don’t think there’s a member of our National Committee who didn’t start to wonder — what the hell can we really believe in, is that us, could that happen here? I don’t think there’s a single one of us who hasn’t asked that question. If we haven’t, we should.

Of course, there’s a dilemma here: We can’t junk everything while we think it out, we can’t junk party norms by saying — hell, we’re not quite sure about the experience of this US party; does that indicate we’re doing something totally wrong? Let’s all stop our revolutionary work for a while, anything goes, do your own thing, don’t give any money, forget it. No, we’re not going to do that. There is a bottom line. In the end, the question we’re really going to have to answer is: Was it a worthwhile struggle over the last 15 years to assemble the members we have together today? Was that a worthwhile effort? Not the question of could we have done it better; we can answer that question easily, no one is going to deny that it could have been done better. But was it worthwhile to have got this far? Does that put the class struggle in this country in a better situation for the next step forward? Does that put us in a better situation to intervene in the class struggle as it’s unfolding now? Or have we become an obstacle to that process? Are we an obstacle, are our methods and our politics an obstacle?

That’s the question we have to answer. I think there is no doubt about how we do answer it. Those people and organisations that haven’t managed to do it would love to have developed in the way we have in the last period. They would feel better if they had the sort of thinking machine we have in the party as a whole to try to understand the class struggle today. That’s an asset for the working class in the country, if we can move ahead from here.

Nevertheless, we know that for a number of reasons we have done some things wrong, and we’ve made some steps to change the way we function organisationally — to be more realistic, less clownish, to use Lenin’s term.

Whether all of the steps we’ve taken will pass the test of practice remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I think what’s most positive is our willingness to experiment, to try out new methods of organising the party. It’s this approach that has made possible the development of the party in the last few years.

We have a stronger, more self-confident party because we have an inclusive leadership; because of our industrial implantation; because we’re an ambitious party; because over the last four years we’ve started thinking things out for ourselves. All these things have been part of it.

In other words, our organisational principles are developing through concrete measures like these. They change when someone comes up with a good specific idea to help the party move forward. Are there other measures we have to take? If we can find them we should take them, but it’s a concrete discussion we’ve got to enter into, not a moping around and worrying that maybe it’s not all been worthwhile.

We also have to remember that centralism and democracy are tied together. You can’t have democracy in an organisation if you don’t also have centralism. But we don’t want federalism. Centralism is one of the gains and achievements of our party that no other party in this country has; it’s one of the strengths of our party. It would be off the wall to go over to a federalist structure. You’d find that you would be rebuilding branches, or we’d be contracting rather quickly.

We don’t pass motions in the party instructing branches to do anything. I don’t remember the National Executive ever passing such a motion. We win by authority, by persuasion, or we let it go if we don’t get agreement. That’s the basis of the authority of the party leadership today — activity, building the party, building the revolutionary movement. That’s the basis on which our national leadership has been chosen and will be chosen again at the end of this year.

So we can’t answer definitively this question of what sort of organisation we need, given what Lenin says in that quote. All we can do is take each step as we see it. To answer that in a finished manner is like trying to answer the problem of what sort of finished program we need. We’ve got to take it one step at a time. So far the steps we’ve taken seem to be necessary. That was the political judgment we made, and we had to keep doing that. We always have to be thinking of what other steps we can take, what other dangers we might have fallen into, where we need to push next. But the truth is still concrete: What precise change can be made?

In the meantime, there’s a bottom line. There are rules, we function under them, we’ll have to continue to do it. We aren’t going in for the super-democracy that makes a mockery of Leninism: discussion for its own sake and so on. We expect loyalty to the party. We have to be able to test out our line in practice. In the end it’s a political judgment as to when you impose discipline. You have to assess what does the party as a whole want, what does the membership of the party want on a particular question, before you can carry it out.

A real problem is to breathe life into the steps we’ve already taken, which means a better implantation in the life of the working class. That is a necessary part of figuring out what steps come next.

The functioning of the National Committee poses a certain dilemma: How should a National Committee function in a country the size of the United States but with a population one-fifteenth the size of the US population? That’s a hell of a problem. At the moment we’ve got a very big National Executive; that means that a lot of discussion will tend to take place in the National Executive. But my impression this weekend is that we have a real discussion and a real thinking process here, and that’s been my impression of the National Committee meetings over the last three or four years, and back even further. But it’s a thing we can always improve on. Is there a better model for National Committee meetings? Should they be more frequent and, if so, how will we pay for them? Let’s look at that as we get bigger and get a little bit more experience.

But there is no block to any member of the National Committee or the party as a whole fully participating in the process of thinking things out. We’ve got a line, we think it’s right; but we don’t know everything, and if anyone comes up with good ideas, then let’s go with them. We’re involved in a very gruelling process of building a party. It’s a tiring process, especially when you begin to know what needs to be done and try to live up to the demands of that. And the period we’re in is marked overwhelmingly by a crisis of cadre: Every branch leadership says there are so many openings, but we just don’t have enough cadre, and the new members are not yet developed enough to take advantage of the openings. That’s the kind of period we’re in; we should press ahead.

We’re also rather lucky that we’ve been building a party in a generally good period for the world revolution. We haven’t seen the defeats of the 1930s or the passivity of the 1950s. There have been steps forward and steps back, but by and large the radicalisation that developed in the ’60s has continued. This means we have been given two chances. We had the chance to make our mistakes when the party was young. The revolutionary events in 1979 and since have given us a second chance. If we correct our errors and don’t waste this second chance we can set out once again on the road to building a party in this country as part of an international revolutionary movement and be confident of progress and success.

Notes

Trotskyism and the Socialist Workers Party

1 SWP, The Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch (Pathfinder Press [Australia]: Chippendale, 1984), pp. 91-102.

2 “Rise, Decline, and Perspectives for the Fall of Stalinism” in The Development and Disintegration of World Stalinism (Education for Socialists/National Education Department of the Socialist Workers Party: New York, 1970), p. 26.

3 Trotsky, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International”, The Transitional Program and the Struggle for Socialism (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 1999), p. 59.

4 Myers, The Vietnamese Revolution and its Leadership (Pathfinder Press: Sydney, 1984).

5 SWP, The Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch, p. 95.

6 Percy, “Preparing the party to meet the crisis”, Socialist Worker, Vol. 2, No. 3 (December 1982).

7 Trotsky, “The New Course”, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25) (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1975), pp. 96 & 98.

8 Ibid., p. 97.

9 SWP, The Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch, p. 94.

10 Ibid., p. 94.

11 Segur, “Report on the Present Stage of Building the International” (adopted by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, January 26, 1984), International Internal Discussion Bulletin (SWP: New York), Vol. XX, No. 4 (July 1984), pp. 14-15.

12 Ibid.

13 SWP, The Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch, p. 95.

14 “The world capitalist crisis and the coming Australian socialist revolution”, Draft political resolution for the Socialist Workers Party 8th national conference, printed as a supplement to Direct Action, No. 320, October 8, 1980, p. 17.

15 Lenin, ‘Left-Wing’ Communism — An Infantile Disorder (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 1999), p. 31.

16 Montane, “Revolutionary Perspectives in Latin America and the Caribbean”, Intercontinental Press, January 31, 1983, p. 60.