Do people power movements need organisations like the Socialist Workers Party? Are such revolutionary political organisations still necessary in the 21st Century? James O'Toole explains why workers still need a revolutionary party.
Different ideas
There’s always a minority of people who will stand up for what’s right, defend their workmates, the first person in a workplace to express their indignation at an act of oppression or the first person in a community to organise a protest against a cutback.
There is also another minority who are the exact opposite. We’ve all met them- they are intolerant, pessimistic, they scab on picket lines, tell racist or sexist jokes, vote for right wing parties and only care about themselves.
Most working class people are neither militant or reactionary but somewhere in between.
There’s a reason sections of our class don’t stand up for our own interests:
The ruling ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class because the rich own the media, they own the schools, their ideas dominate because it pays to imitate the top dog.
The ruling class run companies in competition with each other and compete in the market in a dog eat dog fashion. Their way of looking at the world is individualistic and selfish and to succeed you have to play their game.
Workers are also forced to fight with one another- compete for jobs, fight for hospital beds. When you confront the system as an individual it's easy to feel isolated and powerless and to give in to ruling class ideas. It's easy to be pessimistic.
Workers do have the potential to break from these ideas though.
We work together in large numbers. We can begin to learn solidarity and cooperation through struggle.
In any struggle, protest movement or strike some workers break with the ruling class ideas while others may take longer to do so. There’s also that minority of scabs who don’t.
This uneven level of ideas means it makes sense to build an organisation that can unite the minority of workers who want to fight and are breaking with ruling class ideas. This unity makes them much stronger.
They can become a pole of attraction lifting the confidence of other workers and pulling the workers in the middle ground into struggle. If they convince enough of the middle ground to come their way they can marginalise the scabs, the racists and the pessimists.
No individual can fully break with the ruling class ideas by themselves. You need debate and argument with others in the course of common struggle.
For example - Someone on a strike may learn how to run a picket line but may not have broken with racist ideas. But a party that has members from every section of the working class, including migrant workers, women workers etc will have members who challenge these divisive and damaging ideas.
So in a revolutionary organisation we help each other in breaking with the ruling class. If the movements we’re involved in don’t break from divisive ruling class ideas those movements won’t win. We need to understand the system we’re fighting against.
Also workers need to understand the system we're fighting because one day workers will have to run things themselves.
Keeping the militants going
The uneven nature of struggle also means that the fight on various issues might have long periods of time in between. If you take part in a struggle against a single issue, say like the property tax, and then there’s a gap until another struggle comes along you can fall into demoralisation and fall back under the spell of the ruling class ideas.
It’s easy to get pessimistic if you go it alone!
The revolutionary party can debate and discuss how the movement is developing and by uniting fighters from many different struggles can change from one front of battle to another and keep the most militant sections of the working class in fighting form and ready for new struggles.
For example. If an isolated rank and file union member has to deal with a sell out by their own union leaders it’s easy to give up in despair.
But a revolutionary party can make sense of why the union leaders act the way they do and build up rank and file strength for a future fight to replace the bureaucrats.
Why not just build movement?
There are many people who say “We should just build the movements” and that it’s wrong to build a party. The argument is that if everyone forgets their differences the movement will be stronger.
Firstly a real revolutionary party does not have interests opposed to the movement. It must be the heart and soul of building every fightback against the system. The revolutionaries should always represent the long term interests of any movement and should point out the nature of the system the movement faces.
Secondly the diversity of any movement is very important as the more organisations mobilise the bigger the protests. We need to draw the unions, community groups and various parties into united action- not because we agree with the people who run these organisations but because we want their working class supporters to feel part of the struggle.
People gain the confidence to challenge their own leaders by fighting back.
But diversity is also a weakness too as there are forces within our movement, like the union leaders or even right wingers who use populist slogans to win over workers, who do not want the movement to become a challenge to the system.
Also even some workers break more slowly than others from ruling class ideas and influence.
So we have to both build the movement and also take on arguments that threaten the movement. We need to unite with any group that will fight but also argue with them if they promote conservative ideas that will weaken our side. These debates are vital to the health of any movement.
So the revolutionaries are part of the movement. They are that part of the movement that defends the long term interests of the movement but also of the whole working class.
This means challenging nationalism in the name of internationalism, challenging sexism in the name of women's liberation, challenging racism by uniting all workers, working with the union leaders when they call an action but mobilising the rank and file to kick them out when they won’t.
This all takes politics and organisation.
Challenging the State
In every country the ruling class has built a machine of oppression - the State. They have unelected bureaucrats, police officers and the army command, they have the prisons and courts.
They can use this unelected oppressive machine against the working class. They can coordinate repression on a national scale from one centre of command. They can move the riot squad from one protest to the next. They can shut down traffic, phone networks and mobilise the army if really threatened. They are very organised.
Our side needs to be as capable of coordinated action as their side.
During a revolution the key militants from various struggles and who are located across the country need to be in contact with one another. We need to be able to come to decisions and unite to implement them in a coordinated fashion. Otherwise the ruling class can pick you off area by area.
Imagine an uprising in Cork that wasn't coordinated with the movement in Dublin?
The ruling class police commanders and the Army generals go to college to study tactics. The revolutionary party has to be a school of strategy and tactics for our side.
We learn from participation in current struggles which raise our confidence but we also examine those current struggles in light of the experience internationally of 200 years of working class rebellion. We have to learn from the past- not like parrots but always adapting and learning.
Revolutions are complex. Look at Egypt. Today the people marching alongside you might be marching against you at a later point. Without learning from the past and also from international struggles we can’t make our way through maze of revolution.
International solidarity also matters because revolutions can’t survive if they are isolated. We need to make links with like-minded groups across the world. The SWP is part of an international grouping of revolutionary organisations. We have sister organisations in dozens of countries all fighting towards the same goal.
Why democracy matters
How can a party built to challenge the centralisation of the State stay democratic? Isn't a revolutionary party undemocratic?
You need both absolute democracy and the ability to act as one. You need debates and discussion and democratic decision making because no individual or small group of individuals can know everything.
You need constant feedback and discussion so that the party is in touch with the changing moods of the wider working class. So that you know if your tactics are working. Working class members of a revolutionary party have to be able to steer the party through regular democratic debates and meetings.
But if the decisions are to mean anything the members have to unite to implement them. If you have open discussion but then go do twenty different things then how do you know if you made the right call or built the protest on the right issues? You need to have open debates and then all go fight as one.
Just like on a strike- workers debate whether to go out or not but once the decision is made we all pull together with the majority decision and pull in the same direction.
Not like other political parties
A lot of people are rightly disgusted with mainstream political parties. Sometimes this transfers over to the call to exclude even revolutionary parties from movements.
Firstly the members of revolutionary organisations are people like everyone else. The SWP in Ireland for example has everyone from welders to lone parents, white collar workers and unemployed activists.
Secondly -Their point of view is a legitimate part of the movement. It's undemocratic to tell them that they can't be revolutionaries!
It’s also a big mistake to exclude the revolutionary point of view as this just helps the spread of ruling class ideas and prevents them being challenged in a coordinated fashion.
The right wing parties don’t need to give out flyers on protests as they monopolise the media but the left do need to get their message out their through flyers and newspapers.
There are classes in society. There are those who run the factories and offices, the rich have right wing parties to defend their interests. The union bureaucracy have the Labour Party.
Workers need to create their own party which defends the interests of our class.
The point of a revolutionary party is not to join the system, but to dismantle it through a people power revolution. When we stand in elections it’s only to use the platform to promote struggle from below.
Building the revolutionary party today
The SWP is part of the People Before Profit Alliance because we want to work with anyone who wants to fight this system and we understand that by growing in confidence through fighting back working class people will raise their expectations and be opened up to the idea of revolution.
While enthusiastically building the wider radical left we remember the reasons listed above why even in the 21st Century and as long as we live under capitalism we need to build organisations like the SWP.
If you agree text JOIN to 0863074060 today!
