PARTISAN!

Edith Fischer, Brisbane

Pauline Slaughter’s recent article makes a series of errors which result in a sectarian understanding of the tasks facing the socialist movement in the United States. The problem starts when Slaughter raises the tactical question of an organisational split with state loyalism to the position of a strategy (or even a principle) by arguing for a split with the DSA Right – which does include state loyalists and more commonly coalitionists. This is a misunderstanding of Mike Macnair’s argument in Revolutionary Strategy, and should be cleared up.

Of course, Slaughter gets some things right. Mamdani and his handlers in the DSA right are scabs. The Mamdani administration is an uneasy coalition government between the DSA Right, progressive liberals, factions of capital, and the bureaucratic and police apparatus of the city government. This coalition is doomed, and communists should be open in their criticisms of such an arrangement. However, that does not mean that they should necessarily split and form separate organisations.

An organisational split with the right-wing of the workers movement is, for Macnair, a tactical concern. What is not a tactical matter, but rather a matter of strategy, is that the revolutionary forces in the workers movement must be able to organise themselves openly and politically, and to conduct propaganda and agitation openly. This is because the rightists will inevitably utilise undemocratic tactics to suppress the revolutionary left in order to present themselves as productive coalition partners to their capitalist allies. As such, we cannot be members of working class organisations on the (undemocratic) terms of the right. Revolutionary communists must establish their own organisations, publications, and propaganda apparatus that cannot be suppressed by the right. In the Democratic Socialists of America, the revolutionary left does have broad freedom of activity and propaganda, as well as a wide freedom of activity. As such, a split would be both destructive and undesirable.

Splits are chiefly a defensive weapon. They are productive when they allow for greater freedom of organisation and propaganda by revolutionary forces. This was exactly the role that the split in the Second International played in the context of the imperialist war of 1914. Splits are rarely an effective offensive weapon; they do not strengthen the movement in the short term, they simply defend the basis of future victories. Nor do they politically “clarify” the movement – in fact, they often obscure the real differences in accusations of factional maneuvering, bullying, and bureaucratic abuses.

A split in the DSA would be undesirable as matters stand. The right is not in control of the organisation, and is unable to seriously suppress revolutionary forces. If this was to change, then a split may be necessary. Alternatively, a triumph of the revolutionary forces would certainly force state loyalists to seek greener pastures for their efforts (already much of the old Harringtonite wing of the organisation has fallen into history’s dustbin). It is vital that the revolutionary left is able to present itself as the true guardian of working class organisational unity. We know that it is the right who are the true splitters; they seek to divide the working class along national lines, they seek to make common cause with liberals and progressives, they seek to manage the capitalist state rather than overthrow it.

There are further problems with the article’s analysis. Counterposing the state loyalist DSA Right with the sectarian milieu is an artificial distinction. Many of these sectarian organisations are themselves coalitionists or even state loyalists. Some, like the FRSO and the CPUSA, are avid supporters of the Democratic Party’s left wing. Others, like the Shachtmanites and other “Third Campists” side with their own imperialists on the question of the Ukrainian defence. The Freedom Socialists and Socialist Alternative consistently call for the formation of a Labor Party – yet another centrist fudge on the question of a revolutionary program. The split between revolutionaries and state loyalists (and the various vacillating centre layers) is real – but it runs through the entire socialist movement, not just through the DSA. Separate “chemically pure” organisations are not the solution.

These forces are not any more likely to support a revolutionary program than those within DSA. However, I agree with Slaughter that we cannot abandon these layers. Certainly, systematic propaganda efforts must be made to win their rank & file, and the many small socialist collectives and other workers groups to a mass socialist party. Slaughter’s analysis also hits on an important point, one which Kautsky made excellently in his work on French socialism: that parliamentary cretinism begets and reinforces ultra-left abstention in the workers movement. Between these two poles, our American comrades have a difficult task ahead of them.