Building a revolutionary party

Posted item #14 'Why we need a socialist workers party'

The Socialist Review Group, which Cliff founded in 1950 after a split from the main British Trotskyist organisation, remained tiny throughout the 1950s. Entering the 1960s, it had only 60 members but grew to around 400 at the beginning of 1968 (via a name change - International Socialists - in 1962). In the wake of the tumultuous events of '68, membership was around 1000 and, following interventions in class struggle in the upturn years of the early 70s, this grew to 3-4000 by 1974.

IS changed its name to the Socialist Workers Party on New Year's Day 1977. This wasn't some momentous event, but rather a formalising of how the organisation had developed in preceding years. The party's name derived from its paper, published on a weekly basis since September 1968, and the notion of being a 'party' reflected its growth in size compared to a decade earlier.

It was also symptomatic of the emphasis Cliff placed on the goal of building a revolutionary party inspired by the example of Lenin and the Bolsheviks: 1977 was midway through the publication of Cliff's multi-volume biography of Lenin. Volume 1, called 'Building the Party', had helped persuade the great majority of IS members of the need for Leninist principles, though this was controversial with some who were still influenced by more libertarian ideas.

The article here coincided with this move from IS to SWP - Cliff doesn't attend much to the reasons for the change, but instead focuses on the tasks facing party activists. The old IS had in fact been through a rocky two or three years, with a damaging split in 1975 when around 150 members left - this was against the backdrop of a sharp change for the worse in working class combativity, disorienting everyone on the left. Cliff reflects, however, on exisiting strengths - notably the ability to take significant initiatives, e.g. Right to Work Campaign - and outlines ideas for how to move ahead.

The 1970 talk about Lenin

Posted item #7 Cliff speaks on Lenin (1970)

This is the first section of Cliff's talk about Lenin from 1970. He was then in the early days of rediscovering Lenin's ideas and writings for his comrades in the International Socialists. During the first half of the 1970s he gave talks and wrote numerous articles about various aspects of Lenin's life and politics, with a major emphasis on Lenin's ideas about building a revolutionary party (and the practical experience of the Bolsheviks).

This focus was linked to his dedication to orienting the IS - which in 1970 still had a fairly weak worker composition, depending heavily on students - on working class struggles and creating a party rooted in both the Marxist tradition and working class organisations. There was some resistance to this, with Cliff having to argue relentlessly for some Leninist positions.

The talks and articles of the early 70s developed into the multi-volume Lenin biography, published between 1975 and 1979, that I wrote about in my previous post. In these books Cliff elaborates the ideas he derived from Lenin - as well as the facts of Lenin's political life - in far greater detail.

Cliff on Lenin

Posted item #6 Cliff speaks on Lenin and the party (1996)

Marxism 96 appears to be the source of a great deal of the publicly available video and audio material of Tony Cliff: the only video interview with Cliff, the only video on YouTube featuring Cliff's public speaking, and also this audio recording (in 3 parts) of his talk on Lenin. If he'd been laid low with flu that week, we would have almost nothing.

I've already posted the videos - this one is strictly speaking audio, but it has enjoyable animation to accompany it (courtesy of notthebbc on YouTube). The three parts of the talk together provide most of the key Leninist principles Cliff championed, especially from the 1970s onwards. He returned, again and again, to the core concepts outlined here, often using the same examples and phrases to make his point.

His bit, at the end of Part 1, on how revolutionaries relate to other workers on a picket line crystallises the major issues around how the revolutionary left can contribute to achieving shared goals and simultaneously win wider support for their ideas in the working class. This was one of the recurring preoccupations of Cliff's life, in particular once his group had reached a size where it could have influence on the course of at least some struggles. This was true from probably the early 1970s onwards.

By 1996 the Socialist Workers Party had somewhere between 8000 and 10,000 members, many of them with roots in the trade union movement and many possessing political expertise gained from years of activism. Cliff was insistent on the need for every generation of revolutionaries to learn from the giants of our tradition. This talk offers an example of him, approaching 80, popularising the ideas and spirit of one of those giants for a new generation.

Determination and flexibility

After Cliff's death in April 2000, a tribute called 'Tony Cliff: theory and practice' reflected on the qualities that enabled Cliff to provide effective leadership in the International Socialists tradition over half a century. Writing in the International Socialism journal, of which he was then editor, John Rees described Cliff as 'the most determined person I have ever met'. His single-mindedness and unwavering commitment to revolutionary socialism, which Dave Renton also captures in his tribute, were phenomenal.

A key aspect of this was his determination to pursue a course of action 100%. As Rees observes, it is only possible to assess any strategy or intervention if it has been done properly. After all, if it was only done with 50% effort and failed then how can you tell if it was the wrong strategy, or simply not done with enough dedication? This means it isn't sufficient to simply pick up and drop initiatives without any commitment to seeing things through.

I recall Cliff imploring us at a SWP meeting in the late 1990s, "Don't be grasshoppers, just jumping from one thing to the next thing". He was partly championing consistency and commitment, but he also meant that socialist activists mustn't intervene in various activities and struggles without also building socialist organisation. Strengthening the revolutionary party helps build bigger and more effective campaigns in future, and also increases the forces of revolutionary socialism.

Another key element was ruthless honesty - not as a moral injunction but in order to evaluate situations accurately and plot a course of action. Cliff repeatedly insisted that revolutionaries must not tell lies, either to others or to themselves. Telling the truth to yourself - seeing the world accurately, facing reality - is an underrated quality. The alternative is a distorted view that prevents us deciding on the correct approach. Such honesty was crucial in Cliff's development of the theory of state capitlaism to understand the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. He recognised that orthodox Trotskyist claims just didn't match reality, which prompted his challenge to the received wisdom.

The flipside of Cliff's determination and decisiveness was flexibility. While being unshakeable in principle, he had a gift for adapting tactics and methods of organising to suit changing circumstances. There will inevitably be occasional tactical errors, and it may take time to convince everyone of the need for change, but it is vital to grasp the key tasks for socialists at any given time and adapt accordingly. In this respect he was influenced by Lenin, who made massive tactical turns in repsonse to the pressures of events, especially in the revolutionary year of 1917 but to an extent throughout the Bolsheviks' history.

This combination of dedication, decisiveness, honesty and adaptability is necessary now, as ever, for socialists. Responding to the greatest crisis of capitalism for decades requires initative - and then commitment to seeing it through. It also means adapting how revolutionaries organise to fit changed conditions, whether that's the kind of meetings we organise, the alliances we form or the ways we use new technologies to spread resistance and disseminate ideas.