Like John Rees, SWP leader Chris Harman feels the need to respond to an
article by Neil Davidson that I dealt with in part one of this series.
As always, we are grateful to Socialist Unity for making Harman’s
article available.
Harman is troubled by Davidson’s claim that there is more democracy in
the trade unions than in the SWP:
"First, it is simply not true that party members have fewer rights than
members of unions. We do not have the mass purges and intimidation of
dissidents that characterises UNISON at the moment. Any comrade or group
of comrades can raise matters directly at party councils.-a far more
direct route than in any union. We actually have a disputes committee
whose reports most years are characterised by the fact that they involve
no expulsions-and the committee is chaired by a comrade who was
outspoken in defending certain positions opposed to the CC just three
years ago. There has never been any restriction on what people write for
the preconference bulletins."
I am afraid that comrade Harman misses the point entirely. Unlike the
more obvious bureaucratic practices of the Stalinist movement, the
Trotskyist movement maintains orthodoxy through peer pressure rather
than trials and expulsions. Here is how it works.
The leadership of these self-declared vanguards is based on the notion
of “revolutionary continuity”, a term that was bandied about incessantly
in the American SWP. Basically, it is closely related to the notion that
the current leader or leaders of the “vanguard” grouping are descendants
of Marx-not genetically but programmatically. You also have a
preoccupation with “grooming”. For example, much was made in the
American SWP about how Jack Barnes was “groomed” by Farrell Dobbs, who
was in turn groomed by James P. Cannon, who was in turn groomed by Leon
Trotsky. Instead of a race horse getting brushed down, you have a
profound thinker at party headquarters channeling the essence of
Marx-thought. When you decide to write a sharply critical article for a
convention, your fear is not that you will be expelled but shunned
because you had the temerity to question the disciple of Karl Marx.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/the-fight-in-the-swp-part-three-chris-harman/
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