What is Sectarianism? (ADM, 1989)

* [FONT=Tahoma]WHAT IS SECTARIANISM?[/FONT]
There is a contradiction which lies at the root of The Socialist Party's
identity as a revolutionary party. On the one hand, the party states that
it represents the interest of the working class; on the other hand, most
workers do not see their objective class interest and are either unaware
of or opposed to the SP's claim to be the only party which is for the working
class. So, the sole party standing for the working class is not known of
or supported by the workers; the working-class party is in a minority in
relation to the workers in their many millions. This contradiction is the
source of much of the frustration which socialists feel. We want the workers
to 'wake up' and transform the party from a movement for the working class
into one for and of the working class. This problem of making the crucial
revolutionary leap .from being a minority which is for the workers to having
a majority of workers for themselves is the central problem which faces
socialists; it is the problem of dialectically transcending the contradiction
which has been stated.
[FONT=Tahoma]The two enormous errors which have historically emerged out of the working-class movement in its historical struggle to assert itself aoliticallyhave been Gradualism (often referred to as Social Democracy) ana Vanguardism. The gradualist fallacy, theoretically'elaborated by Bernstein and dominating to its ruin the Second International (1889-1914), is based upon the assumption that workers will never want more than reforms and that therefore 'socialists' should abandon all intentions of awakening a revolutionary consciousness in the working class and get on with the 'practical' task of benevolent reformism. Even though some of the gradualists (it is hard to estimate how many there were then, or are now) favoured the socialist alternative, they argued that to demand socialism and nothing less,while the majority of workers wanted only the 'something less' of reforms,was 'sectarian'. Eight decades and eight Labour governments later, the record of history confirms that the SP was quite right to have warned that the Labour Party would only be able to become a mass party of the workers (who were not socialists) by acting as a party for the capitalists. The gradualists' 'something less' has not catisficd the workers and now they are increasingly abandoning the tired old Labour Party. The vanguardists share with the gradualists a contempt for the workers whom they do not think can ever attain revolutionary consciousness. According to the various vanguard parties, the workers must be led to revolution. Not only Lenin, Stalin and the entire Bolshevik disaster, but every 'revolutionary vanguard' from Mao to Mugabe, has illustrated clearly the validity of Engels' statement in the last century that the majority can never be liberated by enlightened minorities. Both the gradualists and the vanguardists attack the SP for being 'sectarian' because we spend all of our political energies putting the case for revolution to the working class, rather than adapting our ideas to fit in with the current ideology of the workers. To be non-sectarian, in this sense, is to talk down to our fellow workers, to 'get on their level' and demand what they demand- in short, to solve the problem of being a revolutionary minority by joining the non-socialist majority. If such unprincipled compromise is non-sectarianism (and it certainly is what most of the people who call us sectarians mean by the term), then the SP should be proud to be sectarian.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]Having rejected the left-wing attacks upon us for remaining honest and principled, and having disposed of the attack Upon 'sectarianism', the matter is often left to rest. But it rests uneasily, for we are still a revolutionary minority trying to relate to the majority of our fellow workers without whom there can be no socialist revolution. In what relationship should this revolutionary minority stand to the working class? Marx and Engels addressed themselves to this important question, but, as is clear from the following passage from The Communist Manifesto, what they had to say- would not appeal to the SP. (This becomes clear if you replace the terms 'Communists' and 'They' with 'SP' in this passage:[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties-. They have no interests separate and apart from the[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]working class as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]The writers than go on to outline basic socialist principles, making the point that communists/socialists are 'the most advanced and resolute' workers who comprehend 'the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement'. It is clear that at this stage (1848) Marx and Engels were bending over backwards to avoid the sectarian danger of detaching the revolutionary minority from the working-class majority. In trying to avoid the sectarian position they adopted a reformist one, advocating several reform measures and support for national struggles in The Manifesto, which they later were wise enough to repudiate. They did not, however, disown the passage quoted above. Twenty years later, writing to Schweitzer, Marx wrote of 'the contradiction' between a sectarian movement and a class movement?[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]The sect sees its raison d'etre and its point of honour not in what[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]which distinguishes it from the movement.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]This concern about the danger of sectarianism was not an isolated instance; Marx was as concerned to preserve the working-class movement from the emergence of what he called sects, whose main purpose seemed to him to be distinguishing themselves from everyone else, as he was to guard against reformism and other anti-socialist trends. In 1864 Marx threw himself wholeheartedly into the First International which had an overwhelmingly non-socialist membership. His concern was to play an active role within the working-class movement. Explaining his participation in the International to Bolte, in 1871, Marx wrote that 'The International was founded to replaKce the socialist or semi-socialist sects by a really militant organisation of the working class.' Such participation was in line with the guidelines given to the revolutionary minority in The communist Manifesto. Contrary to those guidelines, the SP does exist as a separate, independent party with our own distinct principles. We are concerned to distinguish ourselves from the non-revolutionary majority within the organised working class. It must be stated that Marx, and especially Engels after Marx's death, seemed so concerned to avoid sectarianism, i.e. detachment from the non-revolutionary majority within the working-class movement, that they tended at times towards opportunism. For example, in 1886 Engels, writing about the forthcoming U.S. election, stated that 'A million or two of working men's votes next November for a bona fide working men's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform.' Engels was wrong: tens of thousands of American workers voting for socialism would have been 'worth infinitely more' then, as now, than millions of votes for a non-socialist candidate put up by the workers. In his last years Engels was impressed by the progress of the ItP, preferring its tactics to what he called 'the socialist sects'.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]Wrong as they were in their methods of trying to avoid it, Marx and Engels were right to see sectarianism as a major problem for the socialist minority. To sum up the problem, it is that revolutionaries, being in a minority, become so concerned to preserve themselves that they further isolate and alienate themselves from the wider world in so doing. This sectarianism can manifest itself in the following ways:[/FONT]

1. [FONT=Tahoma]The party can become so concerned with its own existence - with its past, it customs, its identity, its title - that it loses contact with the wider struggles of workers which are initiated outside it. The class struggle becomes a theory, accepted in princinple, but not in active participation as a party.[/FONT]
2. [FONT=Tahoma]The party, in its understandable frustration at not becoming a majority, can drift towards hostility towards those who are not in it - to blame[/FONT]

[FONT=Tahoma]the workers for their political ignorance. Even though many workers in the world outside are trying to see society more clearly and trying to «v\^« changes, the revolutionary minority refuses to listen to or learn[/FONT]
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[FONT=Tahoma]from anyone or anything not born of itself.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]3. Members of the party can lose intesrest in the frustrating business of relating to what is going on in society, preferring instead to indulge in theoretical-cum-theological disputes which could only interest the initiated, or, worse still, to devote all of their political thinking to internal party affairs. 'The Struggle' ends . up as a tedious, often destructive, crusade to purify and then re-purify the minority, ceaselessly battlwing to gain control of the 'soul' of the party from those who might contaminate it.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]These are the characteristics which emerge when a revolutionary minority becomes a sect. Just as reformism poisons the principles of a revolutionary party, sectarianism, in detaching the party from the excitement of being a part of the living struggle of history, converts revolutionary principles into proclamations divorced from historical activity.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]Is the SP a revolutionary party or a sect? After over eighty years of persistent, independent, uncompromising struggle, it is not surprising that the party exhibits some sectarian features. Some members are fed up with doing very much to change the world except repeat that We Are Righ,t; some have become absorbed in internal conflicts, the resolution of which will not make the slightest difference to more than a couple of dozen people who care about such matters. It is probable that there have always been certain sectarian trends within the party, as there have been in all small, principsled, working-class organisations. These trends are a product of frustration and, perhaps (although we are on dangerous ground here), they sometimes reflect a certain personality type which is attracted to the cosy isolation of the small organisation. Whatever the precise cause of the drift towards sectarianism, Marx was quite right to see it as a danger to be avoided if a revolutionary minority is to relate to the movement of history. Taken to its conclusion, sectarianism would make the revolutionary minority smaller, less effective, more eccentric, leaving it finally as a valueless sect - a Monument S to what it once tried to be. The vast majority of SP members are not sectarians. They are out to make more socialists, and to do so on a principled basis, and not to remove the party from the working-class movement. It is that outlook, and the democratic possession of the party by well-motivated workers who are more concerned about the future than the past, that will guard the SP from becoming a sect.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma]STEVE COLEMAN[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma](THIS STATEMENT WAS WRITTEN IN RELATION TO THE ITEM EOR DISCUSSION ON THE 1989 CONFERENCE AGENDA; IT WAS READ TO ISLINGTON BRANCH AT ITS MEETING ON 16 MARCH, 1989 AND WAS ENDORSED BY THE BRANCH.)[/FONT]