Alex Callinicos’s nearly 12,500-word article in the latest International
Socialism (Thunder on the Left) reminds me quite a bit of the kind of
explanation I heard from former members of the SWP in the USA over the
years about the group’s collapse. It was not the fault of the leaders
but of objective conditions that the SWP went from nearly 2000 members
in 1978 to just over a hundred today. It was almost inevitable given the
decline of the trade union movement that supposedly would have nourished
the sect’s growth. That decline was in turn an inevitable outcome of a
hollowing out of the industrial sector and the loss of blue-collar jobs.
It should be noted that the SWP leadership itself never bothered to
provide much of an explanation for the loss of 95 percent of its
members. In their eyes the party was always poised to take advantage of
great opportunities looming on the horizon. Indeed, if you do a search
on “opportunities” on the Militant newspaper website, you will find
links to 982 articles. This was typical:
In the months ahead, the party will reach out to get an expanded
hearing among working people on the roots of the world economic crisis
and a fighting road forward for our class; take advantage of
possibilities to advance the campaign to free the Cuban Five and defend
the Cuban Revolution; and opportunities to join strikes and social
struggles of workers against attacks by the rulers and their government.
To Callinicos’s credit, he avoids this kind of cockeyed optimism even
though, like Jack Barnes, he refuses to acknowledge his own role in a
torrential loss of members. Like the sympathizers of the American SWP,
he relates his sect’s trouble to objective conditions:
This decline is a consequence of two processes, one long term, the
other more short term. In the first place, the general tendency in
advanced capitalist societies towards the greater fragmentation and
individualisation of social life erodes the bases of many mass
organisations—not just political parties, but mainstream churches and
many of the other institutions that helped to impose a degree of order
and security during the early chaotic phases of capitalist development.
This phenomenon was already visible during the post-war boom, when it
was diagnosed as “apathy”, a disease of “affluence”.
Secondly, neoliberalism—a result of the ruling class response to this
insurgency—has accelerated the tendency to fragmentation and
individualism and weakened working class organisation. But it has also
reshaped bourgeois politics as the mainstream parties have converged on
acceptance of neoliberalism. What in France is called la pensée unique
(the “sole thought”) ideologically integrates the political elite with
media bosses, big capital more generally, and much of the academy in
acceptance of market capitalism and bourgeois democracy as defining the
horizons of rational social life.
My explanation differs from ex-members of the SWP in the USA and
Callinicos’s. It paraphrases what Julius Caesar said in Shakespeare’s
play: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,
that we are hemorrhaging members.”
full:
http://louisproyect.org/2014/07/04/alex-callinicos-take-a-look-in-the-mirror/
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