History – Militant and the CWI

Could you sum up the history, firstly, of Militant and, secondly, of the CWI? What were the major landmarks?

Militant did not drop from the sky. We trace our antecedents back to the Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain and, of course, to Trotsky’s International Left Opposition. My generation joined in the early 1960s, others later. We began Militant in 1964 when we were still together with another group and the official section of the USFI in Britain. But we were always in opposition to the USFI leadership on a range of questions. On the question of Europe and whether it could be unified on a capitalist basis; on the issue of the economic upswing in which Ernest Mandel leaned towards a ‘neo-Keynesian’ type of position; on the colonial revolution as it was then — the revolution in the colonial world; on the attitude towards the left within the Labour Party, in which they had a position of ‘deep entrism’, hiding their ideas. At the world congress of the USFI in 1965, we were effectively expelled from the USFI.

Militant was started in 1964 when a new generation came into our ranks. At the outset we were few in number. The anti-war movement and the anti-nuclear weapons movement called the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was very big in Britain in 1959-60. The marches to Aldermaston, the research headquarters for nuclear weapons production, were important. Then the big apprentices’ strikes took place, the strikes of young workers in the engineering industry in 1960 and 1964, A number of comrades came to Trotskyism through the youth wing of the Labour Party.

We met up with an older generation of Trotskyists, such as Ted Grant, Jimmy Deane, Arthur Deane and so on. In the early 1960s, after a short period, we collaborated with the Cliff group, today’s SWP, in a journal called Young Guard, within the youth wing of the Labour Party. We found that we were not compatible in approach, so we founded Militant in 1964. This was not an ideal name. We have had more discussion on the names for the papers than any other issue. But in time, all names become synonymous with a definite trend and a body of ideas.

We decided to call ourselves Militant. We had a subhead, ‘For Labour and Youth’. And that was deliberate because we believed the Labour Party then was the place to be. The Labour Party was a bourgeois workers’ party with a leadership which had always been bourgeois. But the base of the party was the trade unions, the organised working class. The first issue of the paper was an eight-page monthly. We had no full-timers before we started building Militant. I became the first full-timer.

How many people?

We had about 40 comrades nationally, a combination of an older generation and young people. The youth came to the fore while most of the older generation dropped away, although there were some notable exceptions. It was predominantly a youth organisation actually, in the first period. And when I say youth, I’m talking about people of 18-21. I became a Trotskyist when I was 18, The overwhelming majority were young people. Some of our comrades were no more than 14 or 15 and they have stayed the course.

We rooted ourselves in the Labour Party. We were fortunate in the sense that the Young Socialists were formed in 1960 and renamed as the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) from 1964. The SWP/IST (the Cliff group) left the Labour Party in the mid-1960s. The Gerry Healy group left or were expelled earlier because of the methods that they used. So, in a way, we had a clear field. But we were small. We did not have anybody on the National Committee of the LPYS initially. Then one comrade from Scotland was elected, and then we won another comrade already on the National Committee. By 1970, we had won a majority on the LPYS National Committee. Eventually, we won all the regional places on the National Committee. This was achieved by consistent, patient work but also through argument and a scrupulously democratic attitude and comradely approach in discussion.

We also worked within the Labour Party itself, the adult party, and we always had a base in the trade unions. Our organisation always has been, and always will be, predominantly a working-class organisation, although with a very good layer of students, young intellectuals who have broken from capitalism, some who have broken from their bourgeois or petty-bourgeois background and put themselves on the standpoint of the proletariat. It was never a problem about people coming in from different backgrounds because of the process of integration into our organisation of those coming from a different social milieu than the working class.

We built up our position, very slowly. We decided we could not cover everything. If you aim at the sky, you will always score a bull’s-eye but be diffuse. So if you have 40 people you concentrate them in a specific field, the most important arena where you can make gains. Hence, in Italy it does not make much difference where you would first win adherents to Marxist ideas. It is a question of winning a base, developing and educating them, and then deciding where you would deploy those forces. In Britain it did not really make all that much difference to begin with whether it was in the Labour Party or outside the Labour Party. We won people wherever we could and then, to use a military term, it was all forces at the point of attack. So we were in the LPYS and we won a majority. We then had an echo of this within the Labour Party.

In the 1970s there was tremendous upheaval in society. We went from a monthly paper to a fortnightly paper. We bought our own printing press. We collected money from every comrade and sympathiser. We were very self-sacrificing. We made demands on ourselves and others, and still do. If people have got a good job they pay a high proportion of their salary to our organisation. We make no secret of that. If someone is unemployed they make a sacrifice which is smaller but equivalent and as valued as Somebody who is in a good job. We built up our resources. As well as the printing press we acquired small premises in which we printed the paper. I was the only full-timer. I was taken on as a full-timer when I was 20. I was also the general secretary. We started a fortnightly paper. Then we went over to a weekly, expanded our press and increased the number of full-timers. We talked about producing the paper two or three times a week, and did occasionally. We were talking, at one stage, about producing a daily paper. But we always had the attitude that the production of the paper was not an end in itself, it was a means to an end. It was a lever to the other political work that we were doing.

We eventually built up Militant to a sizeable organisation in the 1970s, coming to national prominence in about 1976 over the question of the youth officer of the Labour Party. One of our comrades, Andy Bevan, was selected to become the youth officer of the Labour Party although he was a well-known Marxist and Trotskyist. The capitalist press, backed by the right wing of the Labour Party and officials, tried to get him sacked. We defeated that attack. We were seen by Labour members as ‘good young people’ who were doing a good job, the Labour Party was a ‘broad church’ and should accept different trends and so on. Remember, the Labour Party since the 1920s has never been like the Rifondazione Comunista (RC) in Italy, accepting official tendencies. You could organise a newspaper, a group of like-minded ‘friends’, but you could not officially be in an organisation, although the right wing was organised and the Labour machine was their organisation.

We methodically developed our position, having a big effect on the Labour Party conference in the late 1970s. In 1978, we defeated the national leadership of the Labour Party on the key question of the ‘Social Contract’. This was an agreement between the official trade union leaders and the Labour government to hold down wages. A resolution to the Labour Party conference was moved by one of our comrades, which effectively opened the door for the unions to break the Social Contract. The trade unions took the resolution as a signal to come out of the Social Contract which, in turn, led to the so-called ‘winter of discontent’. The low-paid public-sector workers went on strike, which brought the working class into head-on collision with the government. That led to the defeat of the Labour government of 1979 and the coming to power of Thatcher.

Britain in the 1980s

I will not go fully into the political background, but that opened up an entirely different situation in Britain. The decade of the 1980s was most important for genuine Marxism, Trotskyism, in Britain, Thatcher was the whip of the counter-revolution. In Liverpool we had built up a powerful position within the Labour Party. We were a minority on the City Council Labour group but we convinced the Labour group to confront Thatcher on the issue of a ‘needs budget’. The government had taken £60m away. We did not come to power in the local council to do as, I believe, in Italy the RC and the DS, do, that is, to administer neo-liberal reforms in a ‘mild way’ claiming to ‘mitigate’ the effects. We said no, we would not carry through any cuts in council services or increase the rates — a local property tax which affected the lower middle class and workers. We would declare a ‘needs budget’ with a deficit and demand that the extra amount for spending should come from the government. This was an ‘illegal budget’. The government must give back to Liverpool £70m it had stolen from the city.

In order to force them to do that, a mass mobilisation was necessary. Labour won control of the city council in 1983 with a huge majority and increased it in 1984. We organised two general strikes in Liverpool and in 1984 produced an illegal budget which, technically, made the councillors liable to be fined by the government. To cut a long story short, Thatcher retreated in 1984 because the miners’ strike was taking place at that stage as well. She made financial concessions to Liverpool. We and the Liverpool workers won a victory. But the miners were defeated in 1985. Thatcher came back and penalised the council for its 1985 budget. She would not have been able to get away with this without the support of the right-wing leaders oft he trade unions and, particularly, of Neil Kinnock, the then leader of the Labour Party.

I want to stress that the number of councillors who were Militant, that is, members of the Militant Tendency, as we called ourselves then, were always a minority. We did not have a majority of the councillors. We had a powerful position in the unions as well and an important presence in the Labour Party. But, because we had a worked out strategy, the majority of the councillors, the left, and even some who formally stood on the right, went along with our strategy and saw no alternative. We mobilised from below to put pressure on those who wavered.

The government was defeated in Liverpool in 1984 but a witch-hunt had already started, a vicious attack to drive us out of the Labour Party, orchestrated by the bourgeoisie and taken up by the right wing of the Labour Party. Clare Doyle, myself, Keith Dickinson, Ted Grant and Lynn Walsh who were on the Militant Editorial Board, the ‘official’ leadership of Militant, were expelled in a blaze of publicity. We were all over the television, radio and the press. Kinnock then attacked the Liverpool councillors in 1985-86, We describe these events in our book: Liverpool – A City that Dared to Fight. After the Editorial Board was expelled in 1983, they then came for the Militant leaders of the Liverpool struggle in 1985-86 and a number were expelled. The Labour Party in that city became empty.

We decided when Thatcher was re-elected in 1987 to launch the struggle against the poll tax, which was very successful despite the fact that the official Labour and trade union leadership peeled away and abandoned the fight. That resulted in the mass demonstration, the so-called ‘riot’, in Trafalgar Square in 1990. But the issue that buried the poll tax was the decision of 18 million people to refuse to pay it, This paralysed the collection of the tax and forced Thatcher onto the back foot. Her own MPs revolted and she was removed 28 prime minister.

In the late 1980s, we had 8,000 members, even though our leadership had been expelled from the Labour Party. We made some mistakes at the time when we were expelled. We should have organised an independent party then.

What was the circulation of the paper?

It varied, but at one stage it was between 15,000 and 20,000 per weekly issue, The readership was much larger than this because the paper would be passed on to friends, acquaintances and workmates. On the big poll tax demonstration of 1990, we sold 10,000 copies of the paper. You could not go anywhere without seeing sellers of the Militant. There was one famous occasion when there was a television crew making a drama programme about a strike. Some of the actors were acting out the ‘strike’ in a street. One of our comrades came across them, went up to the actors and tried to sell them a copy of the Militant because he thought it was a real strike! In the miners’ strike we were an important left force, Arthur Scargill approached us for a bloc in the course of the miners’ strike. We sent several of our comrades all over the world during the miners’ strike: to South Africa, Europe and so on, alongside other miners, to raise support and solidarity.

After the poll tax struggle, there was no real life in the Labour Party. Its youth wing had been closed down and it was not possible to work as before. We launched an independent organisation. At the time, we saw this as a temporary tactic. With Kinnock in control and steadily moving to the right, and as a consequence of the Labour Party emptying out, we went outside of the Labour Party to have more effect. At the same time, we also said we would be prepared to rejoin the Labour Party if it changed. It was not really on this issue but on other issues, organisational questions, that Ted Grant and his supporters decided to organise a faction. But . they on to other issues and were roundly defeated. At our special national conference in October 1991 of about 800 people, held in the North of England, they got 7% of the vote! They then decided that they would collect money separately for their group and subsequently formed their own separate organisation.

We then decided to continue with the independent tactic. The Labour Party became more and more empty. In the 1990s and since, because we changed our tactics, we were successful in a difficult period in retaining and building our forces. We decided to stand independently for local councils and for parliament. Britain has a much more difficult electoral system for minority parties than exists elsewhere in Europe. It is ‘first-past-the-post‘, so a party has to get a huge number of votes to get into parliaments. We now have seven councillors in England. Internationally, we have nine councillors in Germany, eight in Sweden, one in Australia, one in Sri Lanka, four in Ireland and a bloc in Pakistan.

The transitional approach

Many of the far left in Italy say that in Britain, and also in Italy, the CWI has some opportunistic positions. The first opportunistic position was about the question of the nation state and the revolution. Your comrades in Italy, in Falce Martello, at the time, stated in their material, many times, that it is possible for a peaceful transition to socialism to take place They took Engels’s statement on the case of civil war in France and used this.

The second was that in England you never spoke against the monarchy because the mass of the people have sympathy for the monarchy. Then there is the question of women and gays and minorities. You had old ideas about the level of the consciousness of the working class, about the prejudices of the working class about gays, about feminism and so on. You did not actively support feminism and gay rights. That was talked about in the Italian far left. It was how we fought of Militant in Britain. Still today, they continue to say that entrism is the strategy for the revolution. Of course, it is possible some kind of independent force in some countries will develop, but the general line is ‘entrism’ because we will have a real revolutionary party only on the eve of revolution. But do you think it is a tactic or a strategic position? In many of Ted Grant’s articles and documents you have the impression that it is strategy.

On the last point, I think that it is undoubtedly true, that Ted Grant not only considered it a strategic position but a ‘principled’ position. Any deviation from that was a ‘denial’ of a correct approach. We approach the question of the state in a transitional fashion, taking into account the consciousness of the working class, especially in the older industrial countries such as Britain. It would be posed somewhat differently in the neo-colonial world or, for instance, in Argentina in the 1970s or the 1980s, and perhaps in Italy with its ‘communist’ tradition. However, we put forward a transitional programme in the same way that Lenin and Trotsky did on the issue of the state.

The October Russian Revolution took place under a ‘defensive’ slogan, support for the Second Congress of Soviets in an armed demonstration. On the eve of the revolution, the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries as well as the bourgeoisie were accusing the Bolsheviks of organising for an insurrection. Trotsky denied that. He said the workers were going out into the streets, yes in an armed demonstration, but as a defensive measure against the counter-revolution. In general, that is the way the working class and the labour movement have approached the question of force, peaceful or violent change.

Let me give you a typical example of the way that this would come up in a conversation with a worker in Britain. We were working in the Labour Party, a reformist milieu. But it had a clause in its constitution – Clause Four, Part Four – which stood for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. That clause was a reflection of the pressure of the Russian Revolution on the Labour Party in the aftermath of 1917. Blair eliminated it in 1995. That and other measures were the signal for the liquidation of the Labour Party as a workers’ party. But when it was a workers’ party at the bottom, we put forward transitional demands, within the party and outside, following the example of the Bolsheviks. Their slogan was for ‘bread, peace and land’, and everything that flowed from this. It was a combination of events and correct slogans at each stage that led to the idea of the Russian Revolution.

However, we were in a non-revolutionary period – a radicalised period, but not a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation, not even the situation of Italy of the 1970s. We were working in the Labour Party for the reasons I have explained before, and we put forward demands on housing, education and social services. We also put forward the demand that a Labour government should take over, using language that could be understood by workers, the 250 monopolies which controlled 80-85% of the economy, with compensation only on the basis of proven need. In other words, not complete expropriation, which I will explain. We advocated a socialist plan of production to be drawn up by the working class, trade unionists, housewives, small-business people and so on through committees that would control this plan.

That was our basic propaganda, our transitional approach. We would go to meetings, Labour Party or trade union meetings. Sometimes, these were big meetings. We would say: this is our programme for the future. You would get some of the ultra-lefts who would stand up and say: “You are absolutely wrong, Trotsky was in favour of soviets, you should be putting forward soviets at this stage; it is to reinforce workers’ illusions to think that we should work through parliament.” They were childish arguments. We had to point out to them that the majority of the population, including the working class, have illusions in bourgeois democracy and parliament, and we cannot eliminate those illusions through propaganda alone. A combination of arguments, put forward skilfully, and the experience of the working class will teach them to embrace alternative socialist and Marxist ideas.

The Bolsheviks did not even abandon the slogan of the Constituent Assembly until after the Russian Revolution, because Lenin was always worried about a retreat if the revolution stalled. The Constituent Assembly was only dissolved when the masses had established the alternative of soviet power, the soviet government. It shows the care with which Lenin and Trotsky approached the outlook of the working class and the popular masses.

How do we break the illusions of the working class on the question of bourgeois ‘democracy’? Workers would ask: if a government came in and introduced the measures Militant advocates for parliament, is the ruling class going to just accept this? It would organise a military conspiracy. We would say, we agree with you. But in that situation and in the situation leading up to it, we would demand that the trade unions and working-class parties prepare the working class in defence of any radical measures which were to be introduced. We would give them examples, of what happened in Chile. There was the parliamentary struggle of Allende and the extra-parliamentary activity of the masses for arms. The same happened in the Spanish Revolution.

All of these points we brought out. Not in a little room. I am talking about meetings and rallies of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, and on TV and radio. We would say: we are not pacifists, we will defend the right to strike, freedom of assembly, etc., with force of arms if necessary, if they are threatened by reaction or fascism. But so would, we hope, all workers and the left leaders in particular. We are not at the stage which the ultra-lefts have come here to talk about.

Then the argument would arise: are you going to compensate the capitalists for fleecing the workers? Trotsky raises this point in a discussion on the transitional programme. He said: “We would even be prepared to buy the capitalists out, we are not theoretically opposed to that.” So we put forward the idea of compensation to small shareholders on the basis of proven need. We would not fully compensate the big capitalists and the huge stockholders, but perhaps the small men and women. – Bourgeois propaganda on this issue invariably taunts: ‘If the big companies are taken over what about the investment of the little man with a few shares?’ We would compensate them. But not the big shareholders, not the billionaires.

Then the question is posed of what kind of state are you aiming for? Do you think that parliament will be retained? Trotsky theoretically raised that you would not necessarily replace ‘parliament‘, the building, per se. But the basis upon which it would be constituted would be radically changed. The way we formulate it – for a socialist plan of production, drawn up by committees of workers, trade unionists, shop stewards and so on – is a popularised form of what are, strictly speaking, workers’ councils or ‘soviets’, Our ultra-left friends could not see it but we did it in such a way that the average worker could grasp what we were driving at.

On a general theoretical level, we defend the ideas of Marx on the character of the state in his writings on the Paris Commune, of Lenin at the time of the Russian Revolution and of Trotsky. We have never, ever, used the quote of Engels in the introduction to the Class Struggles in France to argue that ‘peaceful change’ is the only option. In fact, we argued exactly the opposite. It was Kautsky and Co who falsified the circumstances and intention of Engels in that particular quote.

Bob Labi: “We had polemics against the CP on that.”

We said: we are not pacifists, read our material, we will fight, but so will ordinary trade unionists. We would hope that Tony Benn and Jack Jones (leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union in the 1970s who went through the Spanish Civil War), would be alongside us fighting to defend the right to vote, the right to strike and freedom of assembly. With this approach, no Labour leader could accuse us of being ‘wild men with knives between their teeth’, to assert, ‘they are mad, they just want an armed confrontation, they want civil war’. Marxists and Trotskyists have to overcome the arguments of our opponents who imply that we want an ‘immediate armed insurrection’. That is why we need a transitional approach.

On the question: can it be done peacefully? The Russian Revolution was carried through, initially, peacefully. The storming of the Winter Palace; how many people were killed? A handful. The violence came afterwards from the bourgeoisie in the civil war.

On the state, in our theoretical journal and special pamphlets we explain our position at length and in detail. We have also featured explanations of the state in our weekly paper. On the question of a peaceful transition, would you say to workers, ‘we want violence, we want civil war’? We would argue that we want to carry through a change through winning a majority, a democratic majority. In the Russian Revolution there was a democratic vote in the soviets; the Bolsheviks took power. No party was illegalised in the first period except the Black Hundred fascists, The Bolsheviks only banned other parties after they had taken up arms to overthrow the government.

Are we in favour of multi-party democracy? We answer, yes, and that includes the right to exist for the Tory party. In Italy, you would have to say the bourgeois-democratic parties have the same right. We are not in favour of granting the same rights to outright fascists. We would illegalise them. The open fascists want to destroy democratic rights, including the working-class movement. But as far as the other bourgeois parties are concerned, they would be able to participate in elections. A democratic, workers’ state would have nothing to fear from them. In the Russian Revolution, the Mensheviks were not illegalised, the Bolsheviks did not close down the Social Revolutionaries. In fact, initially they went into a coalition with the Left Social Revolutionaries. But when they resorted to an uprising against democratic workers’ power, then the Bolsheviks had no choice but to ban them. But it was seen as a temporary measure. Once the civil war was over, soviet democracy could be restored, the Bolsheviks reasoned. That proved to be impossible in a divided, culturally deprived society for a number of reasons. The same measures would not be necessary in a culturally, economically advanced and developed society.

If in Britain, the mobilisation of the overwhelming power of the working class could draw in the middle class, you could not then theoretically rule out that you could get a majority workers’ socialist government to carry through the expropriation of the capitalists, backed up by mass support outside of parliament. In relation to the US, Marx, in the 19th century, did not theoretically rule out peaceful change because of the weakness of the standing army then. And this was the man who wrote about the capitalist state as the “armed bodies of men and their material appendages”. Of course, the situation of the US has changed fundamentally since then. The US is now one of the most militarised societies in the world.

History has shown that a privileged class, group or caste will not give up its wealth and power without a fight, utilising if it can the most ruthless and, if necessary, violent means. Look what happened in Spain in 1936 and in Chile in 1972-73. If Allende had prepared the working class properly, instead of prevaricating, the outcome could have been different. He took over 25% of industry. Then, when the counter-revolution mobilised in June 1973 with the attempted coup, the workers responded by going into the factories and took over 40% of industry. They saw that the military coup was coming and demanded arms, which were refused by Allende.

In the Portuguese Revolution, when Spinola attempted his coup in March 1975, the masses responded and the government was forced to take over 70% of a industry. Then they stopped halfway. But with that power and a mass revolutionary party, they could have established such an impregnable position that the resistance of the ruling class would have been completely ineffectual. It cannot be ruled out, but it is not likely, that socialist change would be peaceful, as Chile has shown, as Spain has shown.

This is a transitional approach which leads the average worker from demanding reforms to the idea of the need for the socialist transformation. If you baldly demand the socialist revolution, soviets and the rest, you will come up against a brick wall in Britain but also in Italy at this stage. On the issue of a republic for Britain, in our programme me call for reforms in housing, education, social services, ‘take over the 250 monopolies’, a state monopoly of foreign trade, but also for the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords. The monarchy is not just there for decorative purposes in Britain. Theoretically, every British government is appointed by the monarch and can be undemocratically dismissed without an election. The capitalist class could use the monarchy to achieve this, as it did in Australia in 1975. We are against presidencies in general just like we are against monarchs or the House of Lords. We stand in favour of the abolition, not the replacement, of the monarchy and the House of Lords.

Gays and women

On the question of gays, we never supported or fostered anti-gay prejudices. What is true is that there were some comrades who had a very crude position. They would repeat Engels’s position in Origins of the Family condemning gay love in ancient Greece. That position of Engels has been used by some of the gay groups against Marxist ideas today. Marx and Engels were products of their time and the prejudices that existed, not of the situation which exists today or the present position of Marxism. There was an initial reluctance of Militant to take up this issue, But we never justified the repression of gays. We never took the position of Castro or any such leader or organisation. When resolutions came up at the Young Socialist conferences, which we influenced, and elsewhere, the attitude of some was: ‚well, it is not important, we will give support to it, but it will not be a major issue as far as we are concerned.’ That is not the case today. We have comrades, you can see by our material, comrades in the leadership and so on, who are openly gay.

Prejudices against feminism? No, that is just not true. We are against the division fostered by petty-bourgeois and bourgeois feminism. So are most working-class women. They greeted the women’s movement of the 1960s amongst other things because it opened the door for working-class women. We support the demands of women, it is a vital issue. In fact, some of the gains made in the past are under attack through advertising, the commodification of sex and so on.

We do not agree with some artificial demands for all-women shortlists for labour movement officials. The British working class has had experience of bourgeois ‚feminism’ in the form of Thatcher. Our comrades are socialist feminists, but we are not just going to go along with everything the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois feminists put forward. The USFI, particularly the American SWP, we felt, emphasised the question of gays, women and racism, while not giving sufficient emphasis to work in the trade unions and in the working class as a whole.

The organisation which was most successful in attracting, winning and integrating women, particularly working-class women but women in general, into the party and into leading positions in the party, was Militant and the Socialist Party. The Executive Committee of the England and Wales section is made up of a majority of women. They are not there just because they are women. They are there on merit, on their ability. And then there is the Campaign Against Domestic Violence (CADV) which we set up.

We had more effect on this than the organisations that are critical of us for not having sufficient concentration on women’ issues. They talk a good fight but on the CADV we had a huge effect. We set up this campaign and got significant support from the trade unions. This had a lasting effect in the trade unions and in the workplaces.

The Labour Party

On ‚entrism‘ this arose from the police-type regimes which existed in social democratic and Stalinist parties in the past. Marxists were not allowed to put forward and campaign for their ideas. That is not the case today in the new open period following the discrediting of bureaucratic and Stalinist methods. Also, this was perceived by Trotsky as a short-term tactic. An incapacity to heed Trotsky’s advice in the 1930s in Spain or to use the tactic correctly wrecked the revolution. The socialist youth under Largo Caballero had openly appealed to Juan Andrade and Andres Nin: ‘Come into the young socialists, take us over, you are the best theoreticians in Spain.’ They refused but the Stalinists did not make that mistake. Santiago Carrillo was won over by the Stalinists. (This is detailed in the latest book by Anthony Beevor on the Spanish Civil War.) The Stalinists, who were weaker than the Trotskyists in Catalonia at the beginning, as a result of their entry and other factors, took over the socialist youth and large sections of the Socialist Party. In fact, Caballero came into collision with them. That particular tactical blunder, and the inadequacies politically of the POUM leadership, helped to wreck the revolution.

Today, the classical ideas of Trotsky on work in the ‘traditional’ organisations are not applicable. Marxists and Trotskyists sometimes openly adhere to broad formations, which are in ferment, where there is the right to put forward your point of view and to campaign for your programme in a friendly, comradely way inside the party itself. Unfortunately, in the ‘long winter sleep’, historically, during the boom of 1950-75, Marxists were reduced to a handful in Britain and also Italy. The Communist Party in Italy was a solid Stalinist monolith. The Socialist Party had certain openings, but was not even like the British Labour Party. It was a petty-bourgeois formation in large part, but at certain stages had more radical political features as well. But there were limited possibilities for Marxists to gain support when capitalism was going ahead and reformism was strong.

People like Ted Grant made a mistake in entering the Labour Party in 1948-49. He originally opposed going into the Labour Party then but, when he was defeated and had very small forces, he tried to rationalise it by saying that Marxism could make no progress either inside or outside of the Labour Party. It is not an active Marxist approach, it is contemplative. It is a quietist attitude which does not take a dynamic approach towards the possibilities for Marxism at each stage. The best tactic for Trotskyists in that period of the 1950s would have been to work independently, which Gerry Healy and his party did, although their methods were reprehensible. They largely concentrated in industry and won some militants. Then, at a later stage, when the Labour Party was radicalised and filled out, they entered the Labour Party and were initially more successful than the Grant group.

Ted Grant’s perception was based on the fact that the mass communist parties created in Western Europe came from the old organisations of the proletariat, from splits in the old organisations. This occurred in Italy after the September 1920 days and the split in the Socialist Party, when a mass Communist Party was created. In Germany there was the split of 1917, then the split of the USPD, with Zinoviev going to Berlin in 1920 and speaking in German for about five hours in Halle. He won over hundreds of thousands of members of the USPD to the new Communist Party, bringing with them many daily newspapers! The same in France, with the Tours Socialist Party Congress, when the majority of the active worker members came over to the Communist International. But that was against the background of the Russian Revolution and the authority of the Communist International, when these were traditional organisations without the police-type atmosphere that developed within the Labour Party in Britain in response to the Russian Revolution. Lenin told the young Communist Party of Great Britain to work in the Labour Party and Trotsky even raised the theoretical possibility that the CP could take over and become like the Independent Labour Party, with 30,000 members, and in effect control the Labour Party. So out of this reformist or centrist milieu, there would be a revolutionary kernel, from which would develop a mass Communist Party at a certain stage. It was a correct idea and correct for us to think of that, but history has developed in a different way.

I made many speeches in the past in which I said, ‘no matter what happens, we will remain in the Labour Party’. We argued against premature splits from the Labour Party, against ultra-lefts who criticised our work from a sectarian point of view. But an almost automatist perspective developed — ‘we have 2,000 people now, we will be 4,000 in two years time, 8,000 soon after and then tens of thousands’. But it did not take account of the ruptures and the sharp, abrupt changes in the situation, the most important of which was the collapse of Stalinism and the effects this had in demoralising and emptying the former ‘traditional’ parties.

Ted Grant’s followers and their co-thinkers internationally are stuck on one particular tactic. It is like a golfer using only one club instead of a whole bag full! Tactics depend upon the objective situation. For us to have remained in the Labour Party in the 1990s and today would have tolled the death knell for us, In passing, I do not dispute that there are still opportunities for Marxists in the RC but they are not the only possibilities in Italy. What about the radicalised youth who are repelled from the RC? It is a fossilised view of Marxism to just have one approach of this particular character. We have a variety of tactics.

We are part of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands, which has moved towards the right recently. We also work in the WASG, as you are aware, in Germany. But in other situations where there is no, even small, party which offers the opportunities and the possibilities of creating the basis for a larger formation in the working class, we pursue an independent tactic. This has been very successful on a principled, Marxist basis. For instance, our comrades in the Socialist Party in Ireland have four councillors, but also, importantly, we have Joe Higgins who is an MP a very effective one.

If, for argument’s sake, in the future the right wing is vomited out of the Labour Party and the left takes over, as happened in France with the eviction of the neo-socialists from the Socialist Party in 1934 (the Socialist Party swung over to a centrist position), in that situation, we would reconsider our approach. We have to be flexible, but we also have to see the opportunities that are developing for extending the bases of Marxism and Trotskyism today. The development of a mass party or a sizeable, Marxist revolutionary organisation is not one act or one event. It is a series of opportunities which can present themselves but they must be seized. It is an art to work out what to do in those situations, to intervene, to extend the influence and support for Marxism. Those comrades who argue you just have to maintain one tactic will find that history passes them by.

Another question is the history of the international.

This is a large subject. I have written a book on it and even that only deals in a very schematic fashion with the main points. Even when we only had members in Britain, we always considered ourselves internationalists, for obvious reasons. Capitalism is a world system and the opposition to it must be organised on international lines. The tendency is there now for the trade unions to do that, to come together across the national boundaries of Europe, which we support. But the same applies from the point of view of the working class and Marxism. That is why Marx formed the First International. We have gone aver the experience of the Second International, the Third, and Trotsky’s idea of the Fourth International, which still retains its validity as an idea. Putting it into practice in a mass sense has not been brought to fruition because of a combination of objective difficulties and subjective mistakes that were made by many of those leaders who adhered to Trotsky’s ideas. We were always looking for international supporters.

Originally, most of them internationally came through the Labour Party Young Socialists or, accidentally, through meeting different comrades. By the time of the early 1970s, we had developed a position where we had a number of points of support internationally. A comrade who worked with us in Britain went back to Northern Ireland on the eve of the events of 1969. I went there, we had discussions with some people and won them over. That was supplemented by young Irish comrades, such as Peter Hadden, won here in Britain at Sussex University, who then went back to Ireland. That is how we established the Irish section in Northern Ireland, but also in the South. Later on, people like Joe Higgins, the present Socialist Party MP in the Irish parliament, came along, We have a very strong position now in the South of Ireland and also in the North.

We also had a base in Sweden and we had made contacts in Sri Lanka as a result of visits which we made. We had established different points of support but it was not any kind of coherent international organisation. We only decided to set up an international organisation in 1974, in a pub in London – a bit like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did in the 19th century. We did not want to form an organisation and claim that we were The International, which is why we took the name ‘Committee for a Workers’ International’, Most of our recruits and our support, including young people, came through our work within the traditional organisations, which were viable at that stage. Visits were made to people in Italy, Spain and so on. in Spain, for instance, we built through a comrade who visited the Young Socialist conference here. I had discussions with him initially. Bob Labi made contact with Nigerian comrades, From that we developed the position in Nigeria. Tony Saunois built our position in Latin America, Clare Doyle and Rob Jones in Russia and so on.

However, we were almost hidden because we were working inside the ‘traditional organisations’, and the right wing of the British Labour Party and the bureaucracies of other parties, while they feared us organising on a national scale, were apoplectic about our international connections. Because of that we lost opportunities to establish ourselves in the consciousness of workers and revolutionaries internationally who were searching for an international organisation. So we were not really known to the more advanced layers of the working class in many parts of the world, although Militant was known. We did not even publicise the material of the CWI, it was largely internal material which was amended for public use. But with the break from Grant and his group in 1991/92, we decided to launch the CWI much more clearly, with public material appealing to the advanced workers.

But in the early 1990s we decided that we would open a dialogue with other international organisations. The collapse of Stalinism forced us to review our work and approach. Other organisations would be forced to change, we thought, and some of them did, but not always in a positive direction. Some of them moved in a rightward direction, while others, like the SWP in Britain, who we did approach for discussions, merely asserted that they had been right ‘all along’. They were more successful, it seemed then, than the Socialist Party and the CWI in Britain. Militant had suffered as split. Inevitably, the fallout of that pushed us back. On the other hand, the SWP, with their theory of the ‘1930s in slow motion’, were super-activists on the public arena with posters and a lot of noise.

They seemed to be everywhere but the SWP became synonymous with ‘students with placards’. It was a kind of voluntarism, of trying to speak louder than your voice, attempting to appear more important than what you actually counted for within the working class. The SWP was largely a petty-bourgeois organisation, but with a certain layer of impatient workers as well, who thought all that was required was to proclaim the revolution. To some extent, they are still doing it on demonstrations with their slogan of “one solution, revolution”. But when we opened up a discussion, we clashed with them and still do on a number of issues. We offered collaboration. Unfortunately, that broke down in the Socialist Alliance, where they wanted to impose their programme and their forms of organisation on what should have been a loose form of organisation.

We went to see the USFI and we opened up a dialogue and discussion with them. Bob Labi, Tony Saunois, Lynn Walsh and I all visited the USFI. I met Livio Maitan for the first time in many years. But it became clear to us that they were on a more opportunist trajectory, towards liquidation of the ideas of Trotskyism. We sent comrades to see the LIT. I have been to see the LIT in Brazil. Tony Saunois spoke at LIT conferences and so on. Our comrades in Brazil were at one stage part of their organisation with faction rights. So we went on a ‘voyage of discovery’ to see whether the political landscape had changed. Unfortunately, we found that, as far as other international organisations were concerned, it had not changed all that much.

Therefore, while we still keep our lines of communication open and we are still prepared to discuss and debate with these organisations, we have concentrated our efforts in the past period in building up the CWI and our membership, developing the ideas of the CWI. We now have organisations or individuals linked to the CWI in 34 countries. Some of them are substantial organisations with an implantation in the working-class movement and are factors in the life of the workers’ movement, or in a particular section of the working class. In Britain, after quite a difficult period of the 1990s, we are building.

We have declined from the 8,000 members we had in the 1980s in the whole of Britain but we are still a formidable party with roots in the labour movement and approximately 2,000 members. But that is quite a commendable achievement on the basis of all the difficult objective factors that I mentioned before. We have maintained a very good older cadre who act as a lever for the next generation to develop. We have also recruited a substantial layer of new young comrades who are participating in the struggle. But we are also putting a certain amount of attention and time into developing them politically and theoretically. We have at the present time, in England and Wales, over 30 full-timers, most of them at our national centre, but with regional full-timers in Wales, in the Southwest of England, in Manchester, in the Northeast, in the West and East Midlands, and Yorkshire. At its height, Militant had 320 full-time workers for the party – some of them voluntary. Not all of them were paid a wage. Some of them were unemployed and were paid supplements. But that was an indication of the position that we had.

In Ireland, we have an important organisation with councillors and an MP. Our section in Germany has just come through the experience of the WASG with our comrade, Lucy Redler, standing as number one in the list of the Berlin WASG, getting 50,000 votes in Berlin. In Sri Lanka, our comrade Siri stood in the presidential elections last year for the USP and came third. This has given our party an important platform to intervene in the present situation.

In terms of membership, the CWI is one of the most important, if not the most important, of the Trotskyist internationals. We are still small in comparison with the international tasks that are posed by the period. We certainly have now more of an international basis. We are present on all continents and nearly all of the countries of Europe, although we only have a toehold in some. Southern Europe is unfortunately one of the weaknesses of the CWI, apart from Greece and now Cyprus, which we hope to overcome in the next period.

Relations within the CWI

Do the national sections have autonomy to decide their own policies? Is there continuous discussion with the International Secretariat (IS) of the International? What is the relationship of the politics and organisation of the sections?

We still accept that democratic centralism is vital for a revolutionary party. Even in a trade union or the workers’ movement, forms of centralism exist. In the 1990s, because the term ‘democratic centralism’ was linked to Stalinism, we temporarily changed the terminology to ‘democratic unity’. But we found this was inadequate. We defend the idea of democratic centralism but oppose bureaucratic centralism. Some other Trotskyist organisations have given a bad name to Leninism, Trotskyism and to democratic centralism. They pursue a form of bureaucratic centralism.

We have, in national sections and at international level a transparent democracy: the election of all officials and the right of recall. I am an elected official and other comrades in the leadership are elected officials of the International. There is the right of recall. If one quarter of the branches demands a special national conference, it has to be called. If one third of a Central Committee demand a special CC it has to be called. If a certain number of the sections demand a special World Congress, resources allowing, it has to be called. The World Congress is the highest authority of the CWI. We lean more towards democracy, autonomy and the development of independent national leaderships in the sections, rather than an overemphasis on centralism. This is necessary because of the bad experiences of Stalinist and social-democratic forms of organisations. The baleful influence of Stalinism has even infected some Trotskyist organisations as well.

In general, it is entirely wrong to resort to expulsions as a first reaction on policy issues, which has happened in some organisations but not in the CWI. Differences need to be discussed. In Scotland, we had a political split with the leadership of our then section in 1998. But we wanted them to stay in the International to argue their point of view even though they had broken a number of the political and organisational norms of our party. But they decided they could not stay.

Bob Labi: “In the discussions in 1998, we disagreed with what they were proposing – the political basis and how they were proposing, through the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), effectively to liquidate the CWI section. We took no disciplinary action against them despite the fact we disagreed totally with what they did and how they have subsequently developed. In fact, they eventually left us, voluntarily, in 2001, precisely because we decided not to take disciplinary measures on this issue even though they had broken with our norms and traditions. Sometimes, when we have been unfortunately faced with corruption, for example, as within our group in Ukraine, we have taken disciplinary measures. We had no alternative.

“But in regard to Scotland (all the documents are published and in the public domain) we did not take any disciplinary measures because we were politically confident that, in time, we would be proved right, as has been revealed in the degeneration of the SSP since. But they left of their own volition, they were not forced out. I think this is linked to another point. Peter said in the 1990s we discussed with groups internationally and we did not reach agreement. In terms of how the CWI has developed in different countries, it has very often been through meeting and discussing with different groups or different parties, with which, over a period of time, we have found a common basis and they have joined us. It has been in a minority of cases where already existing members of the CWI have gone to different countries to set up CWI groups. Outside Europe, in Sri Lanka and in Nigeria, today’s CWI sections come from the members of existing groups or parties, joining the CWI maybe 30 or 40 years ago.

“Presently, we are discussing with the Socialist Party of Malaysia which has its own history. It developed independently but we are discussing with it and the same is true for other countries. So the fact that we are not discussing with other international groupings at this present time does not mean that at a national level we are not discussing with different groupings. We have to see on what basis we can agree and what basis we disagree, and how relationships can develop, which sometimes can be over a long period of time before the issues become clear. It is not just discussion itself; it is experience, events, the development of the objective situation and our own activities’.

Do you think of yourselves as an ‘international’ and, arising from this, do you think that the future leadership of an international revolution will emerge from an enlargement of the CWI?

We are an international organisation and, as I have previously explained, always took an internationalist approach, even when we had few forces outside of Britain, But, given the historical experience and the disappointments which have arisen from the failure of quite small organisations who proclaim themselves as ‘the’ International, we were against this when we established the CWI in 1974. We can point to the analysis that we have made historically and, particularly since 1991-92, as a correct description of the general political situation facing the working class and the conclusions which flowed from this.

That does not mean to say that we have been correct in every detail, that there have not been mistakes, for instance, on the likely tempo of events. The great socialist leaders like Marx himself, while correct in their general analysis, made many mistakes on timing. History has a way of confirming a perspective only after a delay and sometimes after considerable time. Because the political arena internationally is littered with self-proclaimed ‘Internationals’, we called ourselves the ‘Committee for a Workers’ International’. This implies that we need a new International which could begin to establish mass roots and the CWI will take the necessary steps, with others, to realise this.

Would this mass International be merely an ‘enlargement of the CWI’? We are a small organisation that has sought to maintain the thread of genuine Trotskyist and Marxist ideas in one of the most difficult objective circumstances for maybe 100 years. There are some comparisons to be made with the position facing Marxists and Trotskyists since 1989 to that which confronted the Bolsheviks and Trotsky following the defeat of the 1905-07 revolution. In Russia, a period of reaction set in, accompanied by splits both to the right and the left, reflected within the Bolsheviks.

Of course, the Russian Marxists confronted much more brutal repression – executions, exile and persecution – than Marxists in general, certainly in advanced industrial countries, faced in the 1990s. But, even in the period of reaction of 1905 to 1911/12, the Russian workers’ movement could still look towards the international horizon and see the rise of strong workers’ parties and other organisations of the working class – in France, Germany, Italy, even in the US, where Eugene Debs got almost one million votes for a socialist programme in the US presidential elections in 1912. This was a source of encouragement and strength to them.

The present period has been of a more generalised worldwide ideological reaction, which has affected the workers’ movement, almost without exception, on every continent and in practically every country. The ideas of socialism and their proponents, never mind Marxism and Trotskyism, have had to struggle just to maintain their existence against the background of a pro-capitalist, pro-market ideological barrage. This has had the effect of creating ideological confusion which has left its mark on even those who still claim to be Marxists and Trotskyists. Some have even abandoned their previous ideological standpoints, formal adherence to Trotskyist ideas, and have openly embraced a reformist perspective. In fact, the overwhelming majority of even radical intellectuals today subscribe to these ideas in one form or another.

Organisations and parties, formerly standing on the ultra-left (the IST/SWP in Britain and internationally, and fragments of the LIT) while maintaining certain sectarian practices – an intolerance towards other ideas, an unwillingness to debate discuss and open up dialogue – have shifted towards the right. Others have retreated into a sectarian cul-de-sac.

A major factor in this ideological confusion arises from the fact that in the recent period the proletariat in Europe, Japan and the US has not yet moved decisively onto the political arena. When they do, this will exercise a profound effect, not least on the confused ideological melange which constitutes the intellectual milieu of even those who consider themselves ‘radicals’ at the present time. So our answer is that a new mass International would not be just an ‘enlargement’ of the CWI, nor would it necessarily come from those proclaiming themselves to be Marxists and Trotskyists today. New formations of the working class and young people, splits of a sizeable character from reformist and centrist organisations, could develop and look towards a new mass International. These new fresh forces of the working class will constitute the overwhelming majority of a new mass International. We believe, however, that the CWI, as long as it maintains its clarity politically and dynamism organisationally, will be an important part of this process. In general, a mass International will be built not in a linear fashion, of gradual accretions in support for the CWI or any other organisation, but by a combination of fusions between genuine Marxist forces and even of splits towards the left of sizeable workers’ organisations and parties which will move towards a Marxist position.”

There were many experiences from previous internationals, which differed substantially from one another. The Fourth International, even when Trotsky was alive, was quite ineffective (apart from Vietnam and maybe the SWP in the US). Also there were many splits in many groups in what appeared to be an ‘eternal war’ with each other. The most serious attempt to build a mass revolutionary International was the ‘Third’. The approach of Lenin was not sectarian. In Moscow, in the first congresses of the International, there was the participation of the centrist USPD, led by Kautsky, and the anarchist CNT trade union from Spain, as well as opportunist elements from the French Socialist Party such as Cachin, of anarcho-syndicalists like Rosmer and Serge, and also the international Workers of the World of ‘Big Bill’ Haywood. Do you think the future of a mass International needs to be a pure ‘Trotskyist’ International?

I answered part of your question above. I would not agree that the Fourth International launched by Trotsky was ‘ineffective’. It did not manage to establish a mass base, largely because of the difficult objective factors which existed in the 1930s, during the Second World War and the situation I described earlier in the post-1945 period, The mistakes of those who were in the leadership after the murder of Trotsky played their part also. Nevertheless, the analysis by Trotsky of Stalinism and a whole number of other questions are indispensable political weapons for the new generations of workers to intervene in the struggles which are opening up. Without Trotsky’s monumental contribution on the analysis of the Stalinist regimes, the generation of Marxists who followed him would have been at an enormous disadvantage. No doubt they would have found a way to a correct analysis and method but with many difficulties, false starts, barren detours and so on. The greatest contribution of Trotsky, as he himself conceded, was not the leading role he undoubtedly played in the Russian Revolution, but in his work of a theoretical character, which he undertook in the 1930s.

The idea of the Third International was first launched by Lenin against the background of the debacle of the First World War and the capitulation of the reformist and centrist leaders to social chauvinism. However, it only became realisable on the basis of the greatest event in human history, the Russian Revolution. This naturally attracted the support of the world working class and compelled all political formations within its ranks to adopt a position for or against the revolution.

Reformist and centrist leaders were compelled to display a certain sympathy because of the mood of the workers within their ranks. This meant that opportunists, disguised reformists and centrists, as well as genuine revolutionary fighters, some of whom came from anarcho-syndicalist backgrounds, such as Rosmer and Serge and the IWW, found a place in the ranks of the Third International.

Lenin, while he welcomed genuine class fighters, even if they did not agree necessarily with the Bolsheviks’ rounded-out Marxist programme and approach, nevertheless adopted a different attitude towards opportunist leaders. These, he recognised, represented a potential danger, a corrosive reformist influence within the ranks of a revolutionary International. He was therefore compelled to expand the original requirements for member organisations to 21 until most of the reformist, opportunist leaders could find no place within the ranks of the Third International. Therefore, while Lenin welcomed all genuine mass and potential mass forces irrespective of their initial political positions, he, along with Trotsky, was nevertheless insistent on the Marxist, revolutionary character of the Third International.

Would a future mass International need to be a pure, ‘Trotskyist’ International? Whether it would be known by that name or not is not important. It is the political content, the programme and methods by which a new International is formed that is crucial, The terms ‘Marxist’, ‘Leninist’ or ‘Trotskyist’ denote for us the ideas of scientific socialism applied to the modern era. No matter how old an idea or body of ideas, if they are the best in explaining the character of the modern era and the tasks of the workers’ movement, then they are the most ‘topical’ and current. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that there would be certain transitional forms of international organisations before arriving at the idea of a mass Marxist International. We seek to collaborate with others in order to take the workers’ movement in general forward, as well as discussing with and joining together with – the genuine forces of Trotskyism where there is general political agreement.

In your brief history of the CWI you said that there are conscious, good revolutionary comrades internationally, workers and youth, who are presently outside the CWI, What do you consider are the conditions for the fusion or unification with other groups or parties?

There are many good revolutionary forces worldwide who are not CWI members or sympathisers or, in some cases, do not even know about the CWI. We would collaborate with all of these forces on concrete issues and seek to open up a discussion, debate and dialogue, which is absolutely essential in this period for clarifying the tasks of the workers’ movement internationally. It is not possible to lay down in advance and in every circumstance the conditions for fusion or unification with other groups or parties. Where we can arrive at ideological agreement on the main issues, then the CWI would be open and welcoming to all those who wish to join our ranks.

However, given the background I have mentioned earlier of political and ideological confusion, it would be wrong to rush into this without the ground being properly prepared. This means, in general, discussion, an attempt to work together in practice, and common campaigns on crucial issues, both within countries and internationally, We have joined together with groups who were initially not Trotskyist. I give examples of this in the history of the CWI. At present, we are discussing with important organisations such as the Socialist Party of Malaysia. We do not have agreement with them on a number of issues but we have friendly collaborative relations, with invitations to speak at each other’s meetings in the hope of clarification and possible agreement politically, which hopefully would have organisational conclusions. However, even if a fusion or unification is not possible with some groups, there is no reason why collaboration would not be possible.

In recent years, in a lot of the material of the CW, you have spoken of the ‘long night’ of the 1990s but that socialism is now coming back onto the agenda. The world is in turmoil, but you hear from many people that ‘socialism is a good idea but, unfortunately, it is utopian’. Others say that ‘socialism does not work because human nature is too egoistic’. Do you think, after the tragic experience of Stalinism, that socialism in the real sense of the term could work and solve many of the problems of humanity? Can socialism as a system work?

We have answered these questions many times in our publications and in books such as Hannah Sell’s Socialism in the 21st Century, in Socialism Today, in a series of articles, and in the publications oft he sections of the CWI. I will give a brief summary here. The ideological reaction of which I have spoken dominated the 1990s, although the working class did attempt to struggle in big movements. Now, because of the experience of 20 years of neo-liberalism and its clear failure, especially in the neo-colonial world, a shift has taken place, which has put socialism back on the agenda. Even the fact that Chávez in Venezuela moved from a position of ‘humanitarian capitalism’ to proclaiming the need for ‘socialism’ is an indication of what is taking place. In Europe as well, there is a layer of young people — not a substantial force at this stage, but important — which is searching for socialist ideas. Many of them have become Marxists through observing the situation, reading and looking at events internationally.

Nevertheless, there is still in this situation an element of the 1990s in the scepticism displayed towards socialist ideas. The memory of Stalinism is still there as a certain barrier to the genuine ideas and forces of Marxism. Some, even good young people, say initially that ‘socialism is utopian’, that it does not work, as the experiences of Russia and Eastern Europe indicate. In this sense, we have a more difficult job than even the generation of socialists and revolutionaries before the First World War. Socialism was then a grandiose idea to be put into practice in the future. The Russian Revolution realised this dream and reverberated around the planet, in the ten days that shook the world’. But then we had Stalinism.

Reinforced by hostile capitalist propaganda, the impression has been given that ‘socialism has had its day’, and it is necessary to try more ‘radical’ ideas. This is accompanied by the age-old argument against socialism that human beings are too ‘egoistic’ or ‘individualistic’ to act in common, in a collective or altruistic fashion, to change society. History has shown that this is wrong, as evidenced by not just the Russian Revolution but the numerous attempts at revolution made by the working class and the poor in the 20th century which failed due to faulty leadership. The mass of the population will not look for an alternative until the present system is evidentially and clearly breaking down. This is not true of the combative, courageous minority who are looking for explanations and can find a way to socialism and Marxism now. As we explained above, the boom of the 1990s and the earlier part of this decade has not yet exhausted itself. It will take great events – and they are coming, not least through the economic difficulties of capitalism – to shake off the lingering illusions that this system can be ‘reformed’ and rendered more ‘humane’.

Even when there is a rupture, the masses will not necessarily always turn to ‘socialism’ first because of the experiences of the past. They will ransack the ‘storerooms of history’, embrace ‘easier’ attempts from the past as examples for change. In these conditions, reformist ideas and parties built on them can grow. Centrist formations could also develop, especially in the neo-colonial world, with the objective conditions facing the masses worsening and becoming unbearable. Experience is the greatest teacher of humankind. Having exhausted these false paths, not at once and not all together, the masses will look for a socialist alternative. However, this movement will not be a simple repetition of the past nor will the parties that fight for socialism merely be a replication of what has gone before. New fresh layers moving into action will throw up all kinds of innovative, imaginative ideas but will become a mass force. Karl Marx once said that socialism as a broad concept when an idea grips the minds of the masses it becomes a material force. This we saw in the Russian Revolution and also which impend in Britain, Italy and worldwide.