By the organised left I mean that part of the left outside the great, empty, shambling relics of European Social Democracy. (See 'Where are we when you need us?' - September 3.) Since 1989 that organised left has to include the remnants of the communist parties that are still in shock following the collapse of the USSR in 1989, but which have remained semi-active - albeit often leaning on their legacy of outworn formulas from their pre-1989 history.
The political left, now including the CPs, and the various groups that have tied themselves in the past to Trotsky, has either become, or as in the case of Britain, remained, marginal to the mainstream of politics and society - especially in Europe - for the last 65+ years.
In the course of 65 years every political tactic, from 'entry' into Labour Parties, to the creation of new anti-capitalist parties, to unity of all the left groups and every possible tactical variation in between, has been tried by one or other of these formations. They have all been designed to allow said group, party or league 'to fill the vacuum' left behind by social democracy as it has collapsed to the right and become, at best, a modernised version of a second rank, ruling class party. Sadly, 'the vacuum' has not been helpful enough to suck up any of these left organisations into the political space now apparently deserted by what were once seen as the main mass parties of socialism. There are of course partial exceptions for limited periods. The Dutch left are a still a powerful force. Rifondazione and Izquierda Unida in Italy and Spain have had their moments - inheriting what remained of the left base of the defunct mass communist party tradition in those countries.
From time to time left organisations do play a leading role in what genuinely become mass campaigns - even in Britain. The Anti-Nazi League and the Poll Tax rebellion were two such moments.
But notwithstanding these valuable efforts, the fact is that even in the western European countries with a mass communist party tradition - let alone countries and continents where there are popular upsurges (Venezuela, parts of Mexico, parts of North Africa,etc,) - none of the old formations of what we have known as the organised left play a significant role in mainstream politics.
Why?
Some of it is undoubtedly self inflicted. An old comrade said in a meeting recently. 'Britain may have a shortage of socialists, but no shortage of Lenins ...' Behind the joke is a sad sectarian, not to mention ego-centric truth. More broadly most of the left outside Social Democracy is organised around the idea of transformation of society which owes everything to the extraordinary example of the Russian Revolution. This triumph for humanity teaches much - but not necessarily in its types of political organisation, or the permanent nature of the revolutionary classes of the time. These are the features of the situation of the least importance to revolutionary theory and practice 100 years later. In the 1960s and 70s some of the left in the west and Latin America turned to China, to the the peasantry, to rural guerrilla warfare and to Cuba. They wanted to repeat their version of the Cuban example. Same mistake. The genius of Cuban revolutionaries was to find their own way - starting from addressing the very concrete needs of the Cuban people.
In Britain and the US we see another feature of this dependence on interpretation of revolutionary history - just as religious scholars discuss the meaning of verses in their holy books. There is a vision of the forces that will carry forward the change of society which owes more to nostalgia than anything else. The global transformation of the working class, demographically, culturally, politically has bypassed the now traditional left. It is ignored or denied.
But these mistakes only hint at the problems the traditional left face.
What do we learn from Lenin after he 'hit the books in 1914 and 1915?' (See above.) Start from the beginning. What was needed to change the world? Where had the international contradictions created their weakest link? Russia. What sort of change was needed in the Russian Empire? The overthrow of Czarism and feudal relations in the country. Which Russian classes would actually be prepared do that? A peasant revolt supported by a worker's revolt in the cities. How could they be joined together? A workers and peasants government. Which class would lead? That would be decided in and by the revolution itself. From that moment onwards the Russian revolutionaries studied and supported, in the minute detail, every movement, every change, every flicker of life in the struggle of the classes that they had identified. The concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
How were mass parties of labour formed in the West, in Africa, in Latin America? They were not summoned into existence by abstract declarations. They were part of a tremendous upheaval (of the sort we have all witnessed in the last 25 years) in the fundamental organisation of the working class. By the 1880s and 1890s a series of countries, mainly in western Europe had created vast new concentrations of labour, with regimes of labour discipline and contracts to match. Trade unions went from being the expression of collaborationist skilled groups of labour defending their relative privileges from dilution, to mass formations, representing all who laboured, industry by industry. The new Labour Parties were an integral part of that process - of basic organisation of newly organised layers of a newly recognised working class. In some countries the parties formed the union federations. In Britain it was the reverse. But the parties were an organic part of a huge new development inside the working class. They gave a certain political expression to that new reality.
Where is any sense in the left today of how it fits in with need to renew basic organisation of the class that it aspires to lead? Where is the reflection on the weaknesses in size and role of traditional trade unionism and proposals and action to reach out to newly 'proletarianised' people? Where is any sense of how social transformation fits into the modern world; how it will come about; which social classes will lead it?
Next: some suggestions about a new 'concrete analysis of the concrete situation.'
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