Reform or Revolution — a reply by Cliff Slaughter to T. Whelan's booklet 'The Credibility Gap—the politics of the SLL' (Part One)

1 Impressionism and Marxism

THE Socialist Labour League and the Workers Press constitute, by virtue of simply existing, an insoluble problem for a certain species of 'left-wing' middle-class commentator in Britain.

This country, they feel with all their heart and soul, is just not the place where you do that kind of thing.

They regard the insistence on principle, the unrivalled discipline and capacity for revolutionary work, of the members of the Socialist Labour League, as something which offends the comfortable British virtues of taking things in one's stride, not getting excited or enthusiastic, approaching everything with due modesty, always stopping to hear the other fellow's point of view, and being prepared to give one's opponent the benefit of the doubt.

These are not accidental 'virtues', but are the characteristic attitudes impressed for centuries on the English intelligentsia, the middle class, and the 'respectable' layer of the working class, by a capitalist ruling class able to develop the technique of compromise in relative comfort because of its historical priority.

It is therefore quite in order that the Marxist Party, proceeding from the analysis of those historical forces which prepare the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system, must invite the frustrated wrath of all those who adapt to the political system of the old order.

There are in Britain, as in other countries, gentlemen who want to live politically by tailoring Marxism and Trotskyism to the requirements of this adaptation.

They use 'Trotskyist' phrases and quotations, and are thus regarded by reformist circles as somewhat daring, even suspect at times, but they are recognized as actually harmless.

Their special value is that they provide a steady supply of political argument, and an atmosphere of unprincipled gossip and innuendo, about the Trotskyist movement, the Socialist Labour League.

Some of these gentlemen are at present grouped together in the International Marxist Group (IMG), whose best-known spokesman is Tariq Ali. The IMG has published this summer an 82-page booklet, 'The Credibility Gap—the politics of the SLL', by one Tony Whelan.

This is Whelan's first public identification with the IMG, but we learn from the publishers' introduction that:

'. . . the IMG is extremely pleased to publish Cde. TW's study of the SLL and its policies since 1964,' and that, 'The IMG offers this pamphlet as a contribution to the discussion necessary for the building of a mass revolutionary socialist party in Britain.'

Further: 'This pamphlet shows concretely where the SLL has deviated from Trotskyism. . .'

The IMG, like the 'state capitalist' group of Tony Cliff ('International Socialism' or IS) has many times prophesied with confidence the imminent disappearance of the SLL, on the grounds that we are hopelessly out of line with the realities of the modern world, and above all because we undertake more and more back-breaking tasks of a type which no reasonable Englishman could stand.

Whelan has known the SLL long enough to understand that we are not at all going to disappear, and so he helps out the IMG with another line: perhaps they can persuade the SLL members, and those attracted to the SLL, that all the hard work is just not worth it.

Despite Whelan's promise of a 'scientific' approach to SLL politics, he never really gets above this level. We shall show that, where he ventures into political argument, he has to resort to the most elementary distortion of our position.

This arises in all probability not from intellectual dishonesty, but because Whelan has never in any way learned to advance from the empiricist and impressionistic method of bourgeois thought to materialist dialectics, to Marxism.

And this has one cause: he has never at any time adopted the standpoint of building the revolutionary party as the instrument for changing the world, but remains the individual intellectual making a series of judgements on the movement according to some rational norms.

These norms appear to be 'plain common sense', but are really the unquestioned assumptions of the middle class, though in this case dressed up with 'Marxist' and 'Trotskyist' phraseology.

Building a party

For this reason Whelan feels no embarrassment about launching a stream of criticisms of this or that aspect of the work of the Socialist Labour League, without explaining why he himself has never built anything whatsoever!

He never at any time counterposes, to the supposed mistaken SLL perspectives, the results achieved by him (or by the IMG and its predecessors?) as a result of having 'correct' perspectives. His 'correctness' (if he was correct) is purely abstract, whereas we are talking about perspectives as a guide to revolutionary action, to the building of the Trotskyist party.

From this standpoint, Whelan is therefore quite incapable of understanding that all his criticisms of the SLL are in fact criticisms of its strongest sides. According to him,

'. . . the leaders of revolutionary organizations should not drive the rank and file to carry out impossible tasks (sic).'

We have, apparently, a 'characteristic hyper-activism'; our 'whole organization only exists on the basis of driving the membership at top speed while they last.' (Whelan's emphasis.)

What Whelan and his associates object to is precisely that the Socialist Labour League works in a Bolshevik way: it sets itself definite political objectives, based not on the surface events, but on the objective forces at work; it fights determinedly to build the organizational resources necessary to achieve these objectives; its members change their consciousness in the course of making these political changes, and actually do achieve what the petty-bourgeois considers to be 'impossible' tasks.

Whelan can never see politics from this standpoint, the standpoint of party members fighting to actually get a change in the working-class movement and prepare for the struggle for power. Marxism is remote from him. What is the need for Marxism, for the dialectical method, if one deduces what is 'possible' from what is 'under one's nose', as Whelan suggests to us?

The Marxist method is the exact opposite of Whelan's series of impressions. For all his claims to being 'scientific', compare his approach with that of Lenin; who wrote:

'The first and most fundamental demand of scientific research in general and of Marxist dialectic in particular is that a writer should examine the link between the present struggle of trends in the socialist movement . . . and the struggle that preceded it for whole decades.'

Whelan, on the contrary, dodges about from one selected incident or document to another, contrasts us with his own norms, defends an incidental passage from one of his revisionist friends, notes that the SLL had a 'better' position than International Socialism on the class nature of the USSR, but that in other respects IS is 'improving', etc. etc.

What an indescribable hotchpotch! What typical petty-bourgeois playing with theory and politics, hostile to all serious building a movement and serious attention to the theory and history of the movement!

If Whelan were presenting a criticism of the SLL from a Marxist standpoint, he would have to ask, as the same article by Lenin indicates: What is the origin of the SLL's 'mistakes'? What has given strength to the persistence of this 'mistaken' course, and why is it getting stronger? How should it be combated ?

Whelan cannot answer any of these questions.

The policy and programme of the SLL—what Whelan calls our mistakes—derive from a principled struggle to develop Marxism in struggle against the revisionists, who have now embraced Whelan, and from our continuous turn into the working class.

The strength behind our growth comes from the renewed upsurge of the working class in the present crisis of capitalism, in a generation which has recovered from the defeats of the 1920s—and 1930s.

To 'combat' this means to line up with all the middle-class and revisionist opponents of Trotskyism whose position has consistently developed over the last 20 years. This is what Whelan has done, and his evolution is by no means over.

This very 'reasonable' British intellectual will be led by his rationalism to abandon all association with Marxism, and in a very short time.

2 Perspectives & party building

WE take from his attack a number of examples of the method which makes this conclusion inescapable.

According to Whelan (p. 32), the question arises, 'Why are the SLL leaders living in cloud-cuckoo land?'

To this 'scientific' question, our scientist replies:

'The answer . . . can hardly be sought in any personal qualities of the leadership; we should not replace Marxism with demonology. In fact it is very difficult to answer it; most probably, the explanation is that their rapid recruitment in 1960-1964 was just too much for them. They could neither understand it nor do anything successfully with those recruited; moreover, it served as justification for and encouragement of their split with the rest of the Trotskyist movement. Consequently, the Fourth International has been unable, despite its best efforts, to correct the increasingly incorrect course of the Triumvirate (Healy-Banda-Slaughter) and its followers.

'We must admit that we don't feel too happy with that explanation; it seems sound, but too many of the details are left out, the ideological aspects of the SLL's evolution are ignored. Accordingly, we will return to the problem elsewhere.'

In other words Whelan explains nothing, and it is difficult to see what alternative there is to the very 'demonology' he disavows.

Indeed, a few pages later Whelan is forced back to such psychological explanation. Asking why the SLL persists in its division from the revisionist Unified Secretariat, he answers:

'. . . deep in their minds, they believe that they cannot turn back.'

Similarly, on the Workers Press, he explains:

'The present writer can only conclude that the SLL leadership, having decided to have a daily when they had one assessment of the situation, are unable to change course, and remained determined to have a daily, come what may.'

In point of fact, the launching of the daily Trotskyist newspaper was a definite political objective set before the Socialist Labour League at the time of the Young Socialists' expulsion from the Labour Party in 1964.

Our Conference 'Perspectives Document' of that year is directed towards the coming process of radicalization of the working class, having to fight through its trade unions, under a Labour government.

From the very beginning, as even Whelan is forced to admit we warned that the policies of Wilson could only lead to betrayal of the working class and would bring the return of the Tories.

In accordance with this perspective, we set course for a daily paper in five years time. The essential political preparation for this was to turn to the trade unions with the cadres won from the youth, and to campaign on every political issue facing the working class under the Labour government.

At the centre of this orientation was our initiative in the whole campaign to defeat the prices and incomes legislation, support the 1966 seamen's strike, and prevent the anti-trade union legislation.

No other political tendency whatsoever was able to campaign in this way, because every one of them was opposed to our central, Leninist and Trotskyist strategy of building the independent revolutionary party; every one of them considered it 'sectarian' to oppose the Labour government as a capitalist government; they all collaborated with the Stalinists to denounce our initiatives in 1965 and 1966 against the Prices and Incomes Bill, against anti-union legislation, and to make the 'left' MPs fight, as premature and sectarian.

Whatever Whelan's asides now, to the effect that he may agree with one or another of these policies, he has inevitably ended up with those who opposed us, because he opposes us on the fundamental strategic question, the building of independent revolutionary parties.

Now, as he contemplates the great tasks being undertaken by SLL members in fighting for the paper, he has to ignore all the political content of this achievement, and cannot explain in any way why, at every stage of the organizational and financial campaign over five years, the League members attained targets which seemed to people like him 'impossible'.

Cloud-Cuckoo land

But let us return to the substance of Whelan's assertion that the leadership of the Socialist Labour League was 'living in cloud-cuckoo land'.

This seems to mean that in anticipating a worsening of the capitalist crisis and preparing for Wilson to hand power back to the Tories, we were in an imaginary world.

In support of this notion, Whelan quotes from certain League documents and Workers Press articles.

As we have indicated already, our perspective of leading struggles against the Labour government's capitalist policies was richly confirmed.

Whelan makes great play of the fact that in 1965 and 1966 we warned the working class of the dangers of a rapid worsening of the economic situation and severe unemployment. Now it is perfectly true that the downward trend of unemployment after the peak of 1963 continued and did not level out until the July of 1966.

It then climbed steeply to 540,000 in February 1967, and, with some slight variations, has climbed steadily ever since.

Every month this year has recorded the highest figure since the war, and it is clear from the August figure that the winter will show a higher figure than 1963.

Everyone knows that the effects of a growing trade war from the USA are still to be added.

Whose was the right perspective?

That which emphasized 'neo-capitalism' and the ability of the system to avoid the slump and unemployment of the 1930s, condemning the Marxists as victims of outdated and sectarian conceptions?

Or our perspective, which turned the advanced workers towards the need for political solution to the crisis?

Marxism is the science of perspective, guiding the revolutionary party of the working class. It is not an exact science, and it is certainly not what Whelan wants, 'a precise, accurate analysis' which, by the way, he defines only after the event !

He never, we repeat, points to some tendency—himself? the IMG ?—which actually worked on such a perspective and whose achievements can be listed.

3 The Swindon By-election

WHELAN deserves special wrath for an attack on the Young Socialists' candidature in the Swindon parliamentary by-election of October 30, 1969, a campaign which he evidently considers to have been a major error.

Our decision to contest the Swindon by-election was of course taken when it first became known that the right-wing Labour MP, Noel-Baker, would resign. At that time, the labour movement was dominated by the mounting struggle against the threat of anti-trade union legislation.

The Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists had taken the initiative in this struggle.

Swindon was a vital industrial centre, a Labour constituency and one where trade unionists had already responded to the political fight against the legislation.

Frank Willis, a leading engineering worker and prominent member of the All Trades Unions Alliance and Socialist Labour League, was named as the Young Socialists' candidate, and his policy had as its axis the slogan: A vote for Willis means: Hands off the Unions !

Is it possible that Whelan and the International Marxist Group oppose the carrying of the fight on anti-union laws into the electoral field ?

Were we wrong to show that the prices and cost-of-living issues for the working-class housewife, for example, must be tackled above all by a political struggle against the government on anti-union laws?

We considered it essential to take the politics of this fight into the trade union movement in the town, and to use the impending election to focus this political fight.

We were also prepared if a Labour candidate were to adopt the policy of opposing the anti-union laws, for the Young Socialist candidate to consider withdrawing.

The fact that the Labour government continually postponed the by-election, until it finally took place only on October 30, 1969, five months after Wilson had been forced to withdraw the legislation (June 1969), does not alter any of these facts, or invalidate any of these policies.

We now have, for example, Whelan arguing that Wilson's retreat on the anti-union laws 'proves' that pressure can change the policies of government.

An important question of programme is at stake here. Of course, revolutionaries work to defeat the policies of governments, as in the case of the anti-union laws.

But we did not draw from this stage of the struggle the conclusion that what was required was simply more pressure to ease the Labour government into a more 'left' position.

On the contrary, the very fact that they had been forced to retreat on this question only sharpened the alternatives. Anti-union laws were not just a passing phase of policy, but represented the basic needs of the employing class in the crisis.

Consequently, the defeat of these laws meant that the employers would have to find a new channel for the meeting of these basic needs, i.e. if the Labour government could not do it, then there must be a Tory government.

What then was the task of the revolutionaries, the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists ?

To withdraw from the political struggle in the by-election ?! On the contrary, to change the emphasis decisively to socialist policies to meet the whole crisis and answer the Tories !

Continued tomorrow