The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the erosion of
civil liberties grinds on relentlessly, the privatisation of our education and
health services gathers pace, as does the rate of global warming - and as I
write, the government has announced a new nuclear power programme. I have been
politically engaged since the early sixties, and during that time the left has
never been weaker or more fragmented than it is today. Given that Rosa Luxemburg’s
description of the choice before us being socialism or barbarism has never been
more stark it would be easy to surmise from the above that my view is that that
there is no future for the left nor possibility of humanity’s self emancipation
– in short that we are all fucked. I admit that any sober assessment of our
situation must lead to the conclusion that at the moment the odds seem to be
heavily on barbarism (but then, when weren’t they?), but there are a few
glimmers of hope to be seen and there remains no alternative for us to but
continue to work against the odds. So in the short dark days of January 2008,
we ecosocialists (or green socialists or socialist greens or whatever) need to
plan a course of action for the coming year
Ever since the mid seventies I have believed that a
regroupment and refoundation of the left in Britain was a necessary
precondition for the building of a mass party of humanist and environmentally
aware socialism based within the working class and its institutions. I remain
convinced that such a project must remain the central task for us today, in
parallel with and informed by our activities as trade unionists, anti war
activists or in whatever areas of day to day resistance to capitalism we are
jointly and severally able to engage
The leverage for such a refoundation could conceivably be
based on one (at least) of three main agencies; the Left in the Labour Party
and the Trade Unions, a regroupment of the far left sects or the developing
social movements, in particular the green movement. 2007 wasn’t a good year for
any of those three potential routes to progress. Despite the trajectory of the
Labour Party since the mid eighties, from a notionally social democratic party
to Blair’s corrupt, neo liberal election machine, there was always a residual
organised left within it, with a real, if declining, base within the trade
union movement and among elements of the trade unions bureaucracies. Socialists
within the Labour Party had a good(ish) case when they argued that all attempts
to build an alternative to Labour to its left by small groups recruiting in
ones and twos had failed in the past and that the natural home for socialists
was within the Party in order to fight for its rebirth. However, last summer,
the remnants of the Left in the Labour Party failed even to get to the starting
line in NuLab’s leadership race and at its conference in September the Trade
Union bureaucracy gave away the last tenuous ribbons of democratic control by
party members. NuLab is now explicitly and irreversibly a party of the right
However, while the vast majority of the Trade Union
bureaucracy appears to be welded immovably to the apparatus of NuLab, there is
growing dissent and disillusionment with the whole Blairite/Brownite project on
the part of growing numbers of trade union activists, including a minority of
the bureaucracy. Thus, despite the steady erosion of membership, the
traditional ‘official’ sections of the Labour Movement remain a key battle
ground for socialist ideas
In a touching, if slightly embarrassing, example of the
triumph of hope over experience, I have been involved in many of the attempts
at regroupment of the left, from the Socialist Movement and the Chesterfield
Conferences, through the SLP and the Socialist Alliance to Respect. All of
these initiatives have failed, most recently last autumn, when the SWP
leadership’s hysterical reaction to their erstwhile greatest ally, George
Galloway’s, rather modest criticisms of their incompetence and autocracy led to
the implosion of Respect. So now we have the absurd spectacle of two
‘Respects’. The SWP’s version of Respect now effectively consists just of the
SWP – a ‘united front of a special type’ indeed. Respect Renewal contains the
best elements of the original initiative, including Ken Loach, the impressive
Salma Yaqoob and the ISG/Socialist Resistance group (and, for better and/or
worse, the Gorgeous One
Finally, and most ludicrously, in November the Green Party’s
electoral obsessives’ wing overwhelmingly won the day in a referendum aimed at
making the Green Party look like a miniscule copy of the three ‘grown-up
parties’ for PR purposes. On first sight, the modest growth of the Green Party
seems like good news for the left. With over seven thousand members, over a
hundred local councillors and two MEPs, and with policy positions that place it
well to the left of the three neo-liberal parties, the Green Party would seem
to be naturally a major player in the development of a mass movement of the
left
However, in reality it has an active membership of probably
less than 1500, its political composition is an extraordinarily eclectic (and
incompatible) mish-mash ranging from reactionary Neo Malthusians, through hippy
lifestylists to socialists trying to develop a modern environmentally aware
praxis. The dominant politics of the organisation is a narrow obsession with
‘environmental’ issues largely divorced from their social and political
context, married to an exclusively electoralist practice with not one whit of
analysis of the nature of the state or structure of society
As it currently operates, the Green Party is likely to
remain within the comfortable minority niche it has established for itself,
unable – and to a large extent unwilling – to develop a base among working
class communities and organisations
So there is a vacuum on the left and, with the exception of
activism within the trade unions, no consensus among socialists on which way to
move forwards organisationally.This situation cannot just be willed away, it is
only through activity and over a period of time, that the issues willed be
clarified. It is possible that our comrades in Socialist Resistance might be
right and there is a realistic chance for Respect Renewal to consolidate and
begin to grow as a core of a genuinely broad based socialist party
It is possible that a significant group of left trade unions
and trade union bureaucrats will definitively break from NuLab and form the
basis for a new party of labour. It is even possible that we in Green Left will
succeed in moving the Green Party away from the electoralist anoraks and
towards a more explicit understanding of the socialist implications of its
egalitarian, environmentalist and fuzzily anti-capitalist program and
recognition of the role it could play in rebuilding the left. All of the above
are possible, but unfortunately I don’t think any of them are likely.
What next for Green Left? We have to move Green Left on from
being little more than an internal email discussion group to being an activist
group that has clear (if minimal) strategic objectives. As socialists who
recognise the scale and urgency of the crises that capitalism brought upon
mankind, our aims and objectives have to be more ambitious than maintaining a
left discussion group in the Green party. Ian Angus has written that ‘It is far
easier to write socialist essays about climate change than to actively build
movements against it. But, as Marx wrote, interpreting the world is not enough
— the point is to change it.
The time is ripe for ecosocialists to move beyond
criticizing capitalism, into supporting, building, and learning from real
movements for change. If we don’t do so, all of our words and theories will be
irrelevant.’ He has also described the role of ecosocialists as ‘making the
greens redder and the reds greener’. I think that what this all means for us in
Green Left is that we need to have a twin track strategy over the next year.
Our internal strategy
We have to work within the Green Party to spread a wider
understanding that, as Ian says ‘ecological destruction is not an accidental
feature of capitalism, it is built into the system’s DNA.’ We need to be
developing an understanding among fellow party members that the system’s
insatiable need to increase profits – ‘the ecological tyranny of the bottom
line’ - cannot be reformed away. We are not going to do that by endless
abstract discussions – although formal debate does have its place. And we are
certainly not going to do it by getting bogged down in endless navel gazing and
inward looking arguments about abstruse points of internal organisation.
Firstly, we need to do it by involving Green Party members
in real world campaigns and day-to-day agitational, rather than simply
propaganda activity in the wider movement; for example getting our local
parties working with local CND or StWC branches, with tenants involved in DCH,
with local community groups and civil rights activists in the defence of
refugees and with trade unionists in local campaigns to organize low paid
workers – and continually explaining the commonality of these and the
environmental concerns of the membership.
Secondly, we need to be making proposals within the Party
for action that promote debate and raise awareness among rank and file party
members that chime with their level of consciousness but which move them to
begin to question some of the fundamental assumptions of bourgeois ideology and
which raise demands that cannot be met within the limitations of a capitalist
state. In other words, we should be developing transitional demands. For
example, the Justice for Palestinians motion at our Spring Conference in a few
weeks (modesty forbids me from mentioning its author) is not dramatically different
from the rather anodyne motion on Israel and Palestine from Richard Lawson –
except that while the latter merely states opinions that I broadly share
(except for the issue of the Two State Solution) the former commits the party
to campaigning for the release of Hamas MPs and to supporting the boycott
campaign against Israel. In other words it challenges Greens to move from
sentiment to action on the side of the oppressed. Similarly, the proposed
amendment to the MfSS section on Income and Economic Security (oh dear, I’m
blushing) doesn’t make a stirring – and to most GP members incomprehensible –
call to ‘expropriate the expropriators’. Instead it calls for a minimum wage to
be based on a widely recognized benchmark of decency – and calls for a maximum
wage tied to it. Such a call widely resonates with Greens’ (and very many non
Greens’) sense of justice, but at the same time it challenges the structure of
capitalism and the state.
If the Old Man was with us today he would probably agree
that this was an example of transitional politics (although obviously he would
condemn it as he hadn’t thought of it himself).As a continuation of this
strategy I suggest that at the Autumn Conference we should press for the GP to
affiliate to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Cuba Organic Support Group
(COSG is an organisation which supports the organic movement in Cuba through
speakers, publicity and the promotion of Gardening Brigades to Cuba).
In addition, if the vote goes with us at Reading , we should perhaps move for
affiliation to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Thirdly, as a continuation of the approach described above,
we should be making a consistent attempt to develop the consciousness of our
activists by organising debates and discussions, whether within the context of
‘official’ political education programmes as we are starting to do in London,
or independently as Green Left.
Fourthly, we should be seeking to challenge the electoralist
anoraks and amateur bonapartists within the structure of the party at every
opportunity. We should try to ensure that we have as many left candidates as
possible for GPEX in the Autumn – to let posts on our leading committee go
uncontested is unforgivable.
Our external strategy
But working within the Green Party is not enough. The second
track of our strategy must be to work, as an organised group of independent
ecosocialists, within the broader movement. In other words, if our work within
the Green Party is fundamentally about ‘making greens redder’, then our
external work must be about ‘making reds greener’. Central to this, I think, is
the establishment of a network of green socialists (or whatever) in Britain.One
of the high points of 2007 for me was the meeting in Paris which established the fledgling
Ecosocialist International Network. At that meeting were twenty comrades from Britain , including members of Green Left, the
Red-Green Study Group, Socialist Resistance and the Alliance for Green Socialism, along with two
SWP members who play a leading part in the Campaign Against Climate Change.
While it was heartening to see that among the thirteen
countries represented at the meeting, the largest contingent was from Britain , but it
was salutary to note that among the British groups there had previously been an
absolute minimum of contact and even less collaboration. Consequently, on
leaving hospital just before Christmas, I wrote on behalf of Green Left to all
the British participant in the Paris
ecosocialist meeting, to suggest that all the groups and/or individuals who
were at the Paris
event have an initial meeting to exchange experiences and to explore potential
areas of practical joint activity. I immediately received a positive response
from Edward Maltby, a Paris based AWL member who was at the initial meeting and
in the last day or two have received expressions of support from Alan Thornett
of Socialist Resistance and Richard Kuper of the Red-Green Study Group. I
propose that we should now get moving on organising the meeting as soon as
possible, but leaving ourselves with a bit of space in order to give us time to
cast the net wider than the original participants. If we can establish a formal
(though necessarily loose) network by late Spring I believe that it should be
the focus of Green Left’s external orientation in the coming year.
While we obviously shouldn’t approach the initial meeting in
a prescriptive way, I think that we should have a couple of modest proposals
for practical joint activity by members of the network. At the same time I
think that we should be very open to any suggestions from any of the other
participants.In addition a modest programme of activity aimed, I would have
thought, at providing a socialist alternative to SERA, we should consider two
slightly longer term projects.
The first is to either assist the Greeks in setting up a
European network meeting in the summer or early autumn or to do it ourselves. I
think it very important that at this stage we, either as Green Left alone or a
wider British ecosocialist network, make contact with the constituent members
of the Nordic Green Left, Groen Links and perhaps the Dutch Socialist Party
with a view to involving them in a European meeting.The second project is that
we (as part of a wider network) should organise an ecosocialist delegation to
Cuba next winter. Such an initiative could support and promote our work within
the Green Party and be a useful promotional gambit in spreading the key
concepts of ecosocialism with the wider labour movement.While there may or may
not be a long term possibility for socialists to transform the Green Party, or
for Respect Renewal to develop a real popular base, or for socialist to build
any meaningful opposition in NuLab, or for the AGS to achieve whatever it is
trying to achieve, I believe that the establishment of an ecosocialist network
will make a positive – and, I believe essential, contribution to the rebuilding
of our movement.
An emphasis on the fact that our joint commitment to
developing a dynamic ecosocialist praxis is far more significant than the
varying tactical choices we have individually made about membership of this or
that organisation is vital for building the network. And our explicit
recognition that non of us hold sole copyright on the Way, the Truth and the
Correct Line can help us to start to develop new ways and areas of joint work
that can prefigure not just a renewed socialist politics but a renewed
socialist movement.
Sean Thompson
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