The latest issue of International Socialism, a quarterly journal of the
Socialist Workers Party in Great Britain, contains Alex Callinicos’s
Revolutionary paths: a reply to Panos Garganas and François Sabado.
In the previous issue, Sabado-a member of the NPA in France-had made a
number of points in an article about party-building that I am
fundamentally in agreement with, especially this:
"So in what respect does the new party constitute a change compared to
the LCR? It must be a party that is broader than the LCR; a party that
does not incorporate the entire history of Trotskyism and that has the
ambition of making possible new revolutionary syntheses; a party that is
not reduced to the unity of revolutionaries; a party in dialogue with
millions of workers and young people; a party that translates its
fundamental programmatic references into popular explanations, agitation
and formulas. From this point of view, the campaigns of Olivier
Besancenot constitute a formidable starting point. It must also be a
party that is capable of conducting wide-ranging debates on the
fundamental questions which affect society: the crisis of capitalism,
global warming, bioethics, etc; a party of activists and adherents,
which makes it possible to integrate thousands of young people and
workers with their social and political experience, preserving their
links with the backgrounds they come from; a pluralist party that brings
together a whole series of anti_capitalist currents.
"We do not want a second LCR or an enlarged and broader version of the
LCR. To make a success of the gamble we are taking, the new party must
represent a new political reality, following in the tradition of the
revolutionary movement and contributing to inventing the revolutions and
the socialism of the 21st century."
Panos Garganas is a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in Greece, a
member of the international state capitalist tendency that the British
SWP effectively leads. His article summarized the kind of opposition
mounted by the state capitalists toward the NPA initiative, which I
would liken to a neurotic’s fear of a loss of control-or worse, General
Jack D. Ripper’s feelings about fluoride in “Doctor Strangelove”, the
fluoride in this case being non-revolutionary ideology:
"The mistake that the LCR may make is if they liquidate their
organisation once these conditions are met. Even within such a “sharper”
radical left it is necessary to maintain revolutionary organisation as a
source of education and political initiatives that pushes the rest of
the left forward. Indeed a dissolution of the LCR would be a huge
concession to the false pluralism that flattens all traditions within
the radical left to the same level. The idea that the disputes between
left reformists, anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists or Stalinists all
belong to the past and that the radical left can make a fresh start by
wiping out these “ideological” differences and moving on with current
political debates has more to do with liberalism than Marxism. The
Italian left has paid a huge price because such ideas predominated in
Rifondazione. We should urge the comrades of the LCR not to go for a
repeat."
Perhaps better insulated from non-revolutionary germs than the French
Trotskyists, Garganas offers up an approach that sounds suspiciously
like the one that they have taken:
"Throughout the 35 years since the collapse of the Greek Junta the left
to the left of these parliamentary parties has existed as a milieu that
was powerful enough to attract not one but two mass breakaways from the
youth organisations of reformism: the Eurocommunist youth broke en masse
to the left in 1979 and the CP youth did the same in 1989, forming the
NAR. It is within this context that SEK, our revolutionary socialist
organisation, has been trying to regroup the radical left in a way that
avoids the twin dangers we are discussing.
"In 2007 SEK joined the United Anti-capitalist Left (Enantia) along with
four other organisations, including the Greek sister organisation of
LCR. Now Enantia is in the process of discussions over a united
intervention with the left alliance, Mera, which is led by NAR. The
coming months may see a new anti-capitalist left emerge not only in
France but in Greece too."
I wish Garganas and his comrades well, but would only urge them to avoid
the mistakes made by the British SWP in Respect, mistakes that reflect
“vanguardist” thinking although it is doubtful that they understand that
this has been a problem. Callinicos’s article continues along the same
anxious trajectory set out by his comrade Garganas.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/alex-callinicos-reacts-to-the-npa/
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