by Anarcho
When Globalise Resistance was formed a few years back, almost all anarchists (rightly) considered it as nothing more than an "anti-capitalist" front for the SWP, a means by which the SWP could attract people who would not touch them with a barge pole. In a way, we should have been flattered that the SWP considered libertarian ideas more relevant and appealing than their Leninist dogma. After all, the SWP would not need front organisations if they could attract people on its own merits.
Needless to say, SWP members argued that it was not a front organisation and pointed to various "independent" members of the GR steering group as evidence. Recently, however, GR has seen four non-SWPs resign. In their joint resignation letter they note that "many of you will have suspected our deep dissatisfaction with the organisation for some time" and they wanted to "clearly lay out" their reasons for resigning. "It is no secret," they note, "that GR is dominated and controlled by the SWP" but they became involved with it because it "has been a vibrant organisation." They broke with GR when it became little more than "the mechanism through which the SWP engages with the European Social Forum process" and its agenda "is primarily aimed at increasing the profile of the SWP within the movement." In short, "within the ESF and more widely, we believe, the SWP has followed a course which endangers the process as a whole and is proving detrimental to the building of a pluralistic movement capable of radical action in the UK." In other words, the usual SWP undemocratic practices we all know and love.
All four of them are now involved in creating the "Radical Activist Network." This is being launched on March 5 and will involve opposition to all "forms of oppression, exploitation and domination in society, which dehumanise people, destroy our natural environment and reduce life to a system of economic values" and "a belief that radical and sustainable social change can only be achieved through collective, grassroots organisation based on solidarity, equality, democracy, openness and respect for others." After their experiences with the SWP they add "a rejection of top-down, hierarchical and authoritarian models of political organisation."
Commenting on all this in the CPGB's "Weekly Worker," Tina Becker argued this was "throw[ing] out the baby with the bathwater and reject[ing] political parties per se" rather than rejecting the SWP's "particularly perverse and bastardised method of 'democratic centralism.'" Which makes sense only if you think, like anarchists, that real "democratic centralist" parties are authoritarian hierarchical and top-down by their very nature (a position few Leninists are usually happy to admit to). In contrast to CPGB wishful thinking, an alternative analysis would be that the activists have drawn sensible, libertarian, conclusions from their experiences in social struggle. It seems the height of idealism to compare reality to a mythical organisational form which has never worked when it has been applied.
What to make of it all? Well, beyond the "we told you" reaction, the obvious conclusion to draw is why libertarians are leaving it to the likes of the SWP to create organisations like GR. There is a real need for organisations which, while not libertarian as such, operate in a libertarian manner and through which people who want to act can do so. Such bodies would not be "fronts" but rather autonomous self-managed groups which draw together those who want to change the world for the better whether anarchist or not.
Rather than just denounce the SWP for being bureaucratic opportunists seeking to funnel popular discontent into their party we should be asking ourselves why we let them get away with it by not creating a real libertarian alternative.
Link: http://anarchism.ws/writers/anarcho.html Related at Infoshop: http://www.anarchistfaq.org