CWI,CMI split

[Aurora]

Self explanatory,why did people split with the CWI and form a new international?i dont know much about it,but i think it was about entering the labour party is this correct,were there any other reasons?

thanks

[Socialistpenguin]

Well, I don't speak for everyone, but in my opinion the split came over the factor as you stated: entrance in the Labour Party.
At the 1991 conference the British organ Militant, (as it was known back then) came to a cross roads: it had been expelled from the Labour Party after a witch hunt, and it's members where asking which way it would move forward. The majority CWI section, with the figurehead of Taaffe, said that the Labour Party no longer represented the interests of the working class, that it had become just another pro-capitalist party. The CMI, with Grant and Woods, declared that the Party still had genuine links with the working class, and that to abandon the Labour Party would be folly.
The majority decided to set up Militant as an independent political party. After their expulsion, Grant and Woods went up to set Socialist Appeal.
This is what I know of the split between the CWI and the CMI :P

I also think that there was a bit of personality fight going on: Grant, in my opinion, seemed to attack Taaffe more than Taaffe did Grant: of course, this could just be my own personal bias.
Bolshevik_butcher could also give you some info for a less biased outlook.

[Aurora]

thanks,thats basicly what i thought.cause i always noticed we seem to share the same views on most things and of all the splits that always seemed the least worth while.

do you happen to know if the CMI still enters Labour?

[Devrim]

The majority CWI section, with the figurehead of Taaffe, said that the Labour Party no longer represented the interests of the working class, that it had become just another pro-capitalist party.
Oh my god, they are quick on the ball. Maybe Chel$ki should pick a few of them up in their attempt to retain the premiership.
Devrim

[gilhyle]

Actually, I think the debate was based on a misunderstanding on why Trotskyists vote Labor - it never was in the simplistic way Militant put it because Labour was supposedly a working class party. Many on the left criticised Militant for decades for misunderstanding why one should vote labor and that misunderstanding was embedded in the split.

But it is interesting that many of those who had criticised Militant on this point themselves moved more towards anti-globalisation movements, Respect and what have you in the face of Labor's rightward move. they hardly understood the point well themselves.

The underlying argument was always that workers should be recommended to vote along class lines and to vote along lines of struggle where there was militant struggle. In the absence of candidates of struggle, workers should still vote labor no matter how rightward moving it is because it remains te case that to vote labor is to vote for the party of the trade union movement.

Underlying this is that revolutionaries dont attach much significance to how people vote and dont expect much from it.

Picking more left wing groups to vote for is pointless, unless they are candidates of struggle or the revolutionary party itself.

[Louis Pio]

Well the split was as correctly stated over the attitude to the massworkersparties like Labour, contrary to belieft the majority of Militant Wasn't expelled but rather pulled out after the "open turn" (the decision to stand independently). The majority argued they would go from victory to victory etc by stading openly, this has not happened. By majority we are talking bout the british majority around Taaffe, in other sections the forces were different.
Theres a rather lengthy discussion here "traditional organisations" (http://discussion.newyouth.com/index.php?topic=1747.0)

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 04:49 pm
In the absence of candidates of struggle, workers should still vote labor no matter how rightward moving it is because it remains te case that to vote labor is to vote for the party of the trade union movement.
Is it, still? How much control does the TUC - even in the sense of the union bureaucracy - still have over Labour's real policies? In practice, it seems to act more like the U.S. Democratic Party nowadays.

In some sense somebody could claim the Dems are "the party of the trade union movement" too - in that most unions and union members support them - but that doesn't translate into any kind of control.

Another question would be: when many workers still vote Labour, what's their subjective motivation? Does anyone still see that as a class vote? If not, there's nothing to solidarize with there by encouraging people to vote Labour.

I know I'm on the other side of the Atlantic here, which is why I'm not making any categorical declarations, but I really haven't seen a lot of good arguments for continuing to endorse Labour, let alone submerge a group within it.


The majority argued they would go from victory to victory etc by stading openly, this has not happened.

As you say, but then again decades of entryism hasn't produced any revolutionary parties either. A lot of groups working within reformists parties have been influenced more by the reformists than vice versa. Maybe the lesson is there are no magic bullets, nor tactics that work in all situations?

You're also right that others who've broken with Labour haven't done so in a revolutionary direction, but rather towards "anti-globalization", RESPECT, etc. But that isn't really a positive argument for continuing to support Labour.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Severian:


Is it, still? How much control does the TUC - even in the sense of the union bureaucracy - still have over Labour's real policies? In practice, it seems to act more like the U.S. Democratic Party nowadays.

It's not quite that bad, yet! The situation, as I am sure you know, is totally different in the two countries.

The left (and not just in the trade uinion movement) was all but physically destroyed in the US between say 1945 and 1960; this has not happened in the UK as yet (nor is it on the cards). We are suffering from a different kind of rot.

Blair is sat right at the top of this pile of ordure.

However, the tactics we have adopted have helped end his career.

Brown (if he takes over) will need to be more careful who he dumps on.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 14, 2007 11:48 am
The left (and not just in the trade uinion movement) was all but physically destroyed in the US between say 1945 and 1960
I don't think this is really accurate. The "housebreaking of the labor movement" is a better way to describe part of what happened in the 50s IMO.

You gotta keep in mind this period also saw the early part of the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott (1955). And the biggest strike wave in U.S. history, in '46-'47 roughly.

So it wasn't unrelieved reaction. The CPUSA disintegrated, sure; under the impact of the Khrushchev revelations as much as McCarthyism. Other "left" organizations had a hard time but weren't "all but physically destroyed".

****

But I'll agree the situation historically is very different in the U.S. than in Europe. The U.S. has never had a mass Labor Party or other mass reformist workers' party - the closest it came was before WWI.

By itself hat doesn't get us much closer to establishing whether the UK Labour Party is still a mass reformist workers party or in any sense a workers party....

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Severian, I do not disagree with what you say, but these new movements did not in general look to the old left or to the unions (since their influence had been all but destroyed in the 1950's -- I think 'housebreaking' is too weak a word, too).


By itself that doesn't get us much closer to establishing whether the UK Labour Party is still a mass reformist workers party or in any sense a workers party....

I absolutely agree; Lenin was more accurate about the old Labour Party, calling it a "bourgeois workers' party', as I am sure you know.

But it still has important links with organised labour, and these links are far more structural and go far deeper than the tenuous links there are between the US unions and the DP.

Sure, this is weakening all the time; how far it will go is anyone's guess.

[gilhyle]

As always, the tipping point for Labour will be hard to spot. But if we differentiate clearly between the tactic of advocating a vote across the country and the tactic of advocating a vote where there is a candidate of struggle then it becomes possible to see why the alternative to voting Labor is so unattractive. What alternatives are we sowing hope in ?.......alternatives we know are doomed to fail.

You might say in response that voting Labour is not a very effective thing to do either, but that is part of the point: as long as the choice is between voting for left social democrat cliques and a rightward mass social democratic party, neither choice is particularly constructive but the later is marginally less silly.

[Louis Pio]

As you say, but then again decades of entryism hasn't produced any revolutionary parties either. A lot of groups working within reformists parties have been influenced more by the reformists than vice versa. Maybe the lesson is there are no magic bullets, nor tactics that work in all situations?


It could be argued that the decision to split from Labour, despite the largest part of the rank and file still remaining there had something to do with the failure. Btw it's a bit "funny" that the Taaffe group never produced any theoretical justification for their new turn, there's words in their documents that talk about the qualitative change in Labour, but the theoretical explanations has never been provided.

Of course there are indeed many practical problems with entryism, as with all other revolutionary theory put in pratice. And deep entrism as practised in France for example (and many other countries) does invietably lead to becoming reformist. I however doens't think that's what happened in Millitant, Millitant had probelems but that wasn't one of them.

[The Grey Blur]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 03:00 am
What what what!?! The Trotskyist International split again?? Okay after the 600th time it stopped being funny, now its just sad.
What what what!?! You changed your politics again?? Okay after the 600th time it stopped being funny, but you're still a liberal at heart.

Anyway, the CMI/CWI split as said earlier in the thread was basically on whether or not Labour could still be recognised as a mass worker's party. Personally I'm not sure, as living in Ireland I can't judge categorically. I think the CWI and CMI are both still excellent organisations, the work in Nigeria and Pakistan repectively has seen them gain major support. Hopefully with Grant and Taffe's personal politics moving to the background we might see more cooperation...

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 12:48 pm
As always, the tipping point for Labour will be hard to spot. But if we differentiate clearly between the tactic of advocating a vote across the country and the tactic of advocating a vote where there is a candidate of struggle then it becomes possible to see why the alternative to voting Labor is so unattractive. What alternatives are we sowing hope in ?.......alternatives we know are doomed to fail.
They're doomed to lose the election, if that's what you mean. That's an argument I'm very familiar with....having heard it many times in support of voting Democratic.

I think if you're going to be a communist and promote some form of independent working-class political action, then you can't be too worried about immediate electoral success. That's possible only a few places in the world...and revolutionaries don't use the electoral system primarily as a way to get into parliament and pass legislation, anyway.


You might say in response that voting Labour is not a very effective thing to do either, but that is part of the point: as long as the choice is between voting for left social democrat cliques and a rightward mass social democratic party, neither choice is particularly constructive but the later is marginally less silly.

OK....I'm certainly not here to tell anyone to vote for small reformist or semi-reformist (centrist) groups. All the arguments for critical support of mass reformist workers' parties no longer apply when their base isn't massive nor working-class.

[Axel1917]

I think that cormade Teis has covered things pretty well, but I must point out a minor detail: the organization I am in is no longer known as the Committee for a Marxist International (CMI); the official name was changed to the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) last summer, given that most people knew us by that name and not as the CMI.

[RedLenin]

the one who *****es about the fact that a menshevik didn't come to power in the bolshevik party.
Right. Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Petrograd Soviet and one of the main leaders of military issues, the head of the Red Army, and one of the most persistent agitators for proletarian internationalism. Real Menshevik there. Trotsky was a Bolshevik in 1917. Believe it or not, people do change! It is really fucking stupid to call Trotsky a Menshevik simply because, for a while, he thought he could keep the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks united. The real material realities of Russia won him over to the truly revolutionary side, the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was as much a leader of the Russian Revolution as Lenin, and without him I doubt the revolution would have gotten as far as it did. Stalin by comparison played a far less important role.

As for the CWI, IMT split. I think that the IMT has the correct analysis, as the Labor Party in Britain still has major links to the trade unions and is still a workers party. The problem is it's leadership. It is a bad idea to abandon the party altogether and entryism can still be a useful tactic. Of course, this work must also be combined with other revolutionary work if we expect to get anywhere. I also believe that both the CWI and the IMT have very similar tactics in regard to the US, mainly the task of building a mass party of labor based on the trade unions. I think it would be interesting to see more cooperation between these two groups, as both are quite large and active.

[Severian]

Off-topic posts split again, to here (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=62835). I left those which were partly on-topic. Please refrain from this type of derailment, or yes, borderline trolling, in the future.

[Andy Bowden]

In terms of the LP and the attitude of Socialists to it in the post-Berlin Wall, New Labour era I think it is neccessary to break links from the LP. Its no longer a mass workers party, its no longer who workers look to and its not even Social-Democratic anymore.

Trying to stand at a demo and propagandise for joining the LP and "reclaim it" is never going to get you anyone (not least because most of the demos are actually because of the policies of the LP).

So yes, in this sense the CWI were on the right side in comparison to the CMI. Building a Socialist pole in the LP is just no longer viable, and a spectacular waste of time and energy for Socialists.

The question is what kind of Socialist organisation do you build when you leave the LP? Heres where I think the CWI got (and continues) to get it wrong, and a much more important split is present between the Scottish leadership of the CWI and the CWI leadership.

The Scottish CWI (now no longer in the CWI) believed that it was neccessary to form a broad party of the Left - the SSP - uniting all Socialists regardless of their background - and to do this, the resources of the CWI in Scotland should be funnelled solely into building this broad party. The rest of the CWI believed it was neccessary to keep their own full timers, paper etc in the party.

This would have essentially made the new party a CWI front and limited the ability of the SSP to attract Socialists not of the CWI stripe.

There is a question of how Marxists should organise within such organisations that I accept, however. I don't accept that this organisation should exist by having your own full timers, papers and effective front control of an organisation however.

So I think that that is why the CWI in England, Wales etc have not had the same success as Militant did when it was in the LP, and why the SSP (despite the recent crisis) continues to have much more support in the working class in Scotland than other English Socialist groups.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Sorry for bumping this up, but:

1) Shouldn't entryism be considered in regards to the LibDems?
2) On a lighter note, would it not be more appropriate for "Labour" and the "LibDems" to switch party names (and then have the ex-LibDems adopt "Social-Democratic Labour")?

[Redmau5]

1) Shouldn't entryism be considered in regards to the LibDems?

When were the Lib Dems a party of the working-class?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I'm not a fan of entryism at all, but given the LibDems political stance compared to Labour's stance, I was suggesting something to IMTers, who are entryists par excellence.

[bolshevik butcher]

The Wiggs who went onto become the Liberal Pary, now known as the Liberal Democrats, wre formed as one of the two classic parties of the Bitish bourgoirsie, the Liberals being partiuclarlly aggressive in their support for British Imperialism. Why would any socialist organisation consider working within such an organisation?

The Labour Party was formed as the political wing of the British labour and trade union movement, and it continues to do so in this way to be the mass party of the British working class. It is currently empty and dominated by the right wing. It has been at this stage atmany times in history, a lot of poeple seem to have the idea that the prominence of the far left in the late 70s and the 80s were a normal state of affairs in the Labour Party. They were far from this. They were the product of an era of high class struggle, the Labour Party does not exist in a bubble outside of material conditions. It reflects the current state of struggle.