To build a workers party…you need workers

With a right-wing Labour government in power and Trump and Reform UK setting the political agenda, there are currently a lot of discussions among leftists about the need to create a new left party. The need for a working-class and socialist alternative to Starmer’s Labour is dire, and we support any initiative in this direction. However, the current discussions among various left groups have brought to the surface everything that is wrong with the British left, and provide examples of how not to advance this goal.

This starts with the group Collective, linked to Jeremy Corbyn, Len McCluskey and many others. They had a series of closed meetings whose main purpose seems to have been convincing Corbyn to launch a party…only for him to refuse. Carla Roberts’s coverage in the Weekly Worker did a pretty good job of showing how this band of finished Labourites is hopeless, so we will not dwell on it.

Finally, many are realising that waiting for Jeremy can’t be the only strategy for the left. This is the context in which Prometheus issued a call for a debate on the need for a new party, with many individuals and groups (CPGB, RS21, Why Marx?, etc) responding. But we need to be frank: the discussion so far has been a talk shop centred around organisational matters. What type of structure should a party have? What sort of democracy would it need? An electoral alliance or a party? Should it have a paper press or an online one? And on and on.... Nothing of substance has been written on why the left is so weak and divided. And, crucially, what should this new party fight for? If this debate is to be useful, it must be pursued on a different basis.

No programme, no party

It seems many in this discussion assume that the reason the left is weak and divided is simply because no one has ever thought of bringing everyone together before. It is in vogue to denounce the “sects”. Very well. But many who rage against the “sects” often happen to be members of one. The divided state of the left is not an organisational issue. It is not something that can be solved by amalgamating existing groups around a vague commitment to communism.

The left is weak and divided because it lacks a programme that can unite the working class against the British imperialist rulers. When we say programme, we do not mean an abstract description of the goals of communism and a list of general, timeless positions. This is what the CPGB draft programme is, and it is no basis for unity. A programme is a guide to action to advance the interests of the working class. It must draw the lessons of the preceding struggles, lay out an understanding of the specific period we are in, confront the obstacles in the way and set the tasks of communists. While it does not resolve everything, this is what we tried to do in our document “The breakdown of US hegemony & the struggle for workers power” (Spartacist no 68, September 2023).

So, if we come down from the clouds of abstraction and get into the real world, what is obvious is that the left is weak and discredited and growing numbers of workers are turning to the right. Any discussion about a new left party should start by explaining why this is and what to do about it.

Why is the left weak and divided?

The past three decades have been characterised by the hegemony of the US empire, whose ideological pillar was post-Soviet liberalism. Throughout this period, most of the radical left essentially adapted to liberalism, positioning itself as its most radical wing. Most socialists pursued alliances with liberal elements, middle-class intellectuals and trade union bureaucrats — forces all tied to the liberal wing of the ruling class. Other socialists stood on the sidelines, clinging to Marxist purity and doing nothing to address the problem (which is what our organisation did until our recent reorientation).

Meanwhile, the working class was being pummelled by the rulers in the name of these very lofty liberal principles and institutions. Just think of Blairism or the EU. As a result, the working class increasingly came to hate liberals and everyone associated with them. But since the far left became indistinguishable from the liberal camp, workers turned their backs on it, looking instead to politicians like Trump or Farage and seeing in racist and “anti-woke” demagogy an alternative to the unbearable status quo.

The Corbyn movement is a prime example of this. Corbyn first generated enthusiasm among workers but spent years conciliating the Blairites. He campaigned for “remain” and then for a second referendum, hopelessly trying to appease them. As for the far left, it latched on to Corbyn uncritically. The price to pay was that millions of workers turned their back on the left and looked to Johnson and Reform UK.

This is why the left is so weak: it is enmeshed with liberals. And as a result, workers have been deserting the left, which is now almost entirely made up of middle-class people, a fact reflected in the pages of Prometheus itself. The endless exchanges on organisational questions are typical obsessions of the petty bourgeoisie.

So, the task of revolutionaries is to fight within the left for a rupture with the liberals and to turn to the working class and fight for what it needs. The radical left is in competition with Reform UK for the allegiance of the working class. Saying this might shock liberals, but it is just true. This does not mean adapting to Farage, which is the mistake of Galloway’s Workers Party. It means being able to tap into the same discontent and provide it with a class-struggle road against the ruling class. To do so, socialists have to declare war on liberalism — starting in our own movement.

Turn to the working class

This is why those who propose any sort of orientation towards the Green Party are wrong. Socialists need this like a hole in the head. The Greens are a party of the liberal middle class, supporting anti-working-class taxes like ULEZ and the pillars of the liberal imperialist order, like NATO and the EU. Any association with these people would be political suicide and a gift to Farage.

Equally wrong is Mike Macnair’s view that “it is not the job of the party to give tactical direction to trade unions or to individual strikes” (Prometheus, 26 November 2024). What is the point of a communist party if it isn’t to guide the struggles of workers? Communists will not win workers with theoretical treatises, but only if we can prove in struggle that our strategy is superior to that of Labourite union bureaucrats. Macnair’s conception simply ends up leaving those people in charge of the trade union movement.

To turn to the working class and get involved in its struggles; to stand in complete opposition to the ruling class, the liberals and trade union bureaucrats; to place our hopes in the class struggle and not in Corbyn or any other Labourite “saviour” — these are the tasks of communists. Much more could be said. We urge readers to study the current issue of Workers Hammer, which embodies the type of party we want to build.