The 1992 August issue of the SOCIALIST STANDARD, “Official journal of the Socialist Party”, referred to the Socialist Labour Party of America as “our political cousins in the USA” It is additional evidence of how far the Clapham based organisation has departed from the principles sand policies of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which, at its foundation in 1904 and for many years afterwards was in total opposition to the American S.L.P. and its main spokesman Daniel De Leon. The article “What Next in Yugoslavia”, dealt with the communications problem the Yugoslavian government faced because of the existence of different groups of the population speaking different languages and described how the Tito dictatorship handled the problem. The article had this to say:
“Interestingly enough, our political cousins in the USA, the S.L.P. grappled with this problem in trying to spread the Socialist message amongst Balkan immigrants…so. perhaps forty odd years before Tito’s similar efforts…a parallel development was brought about by the voluntary efforts of mostly self-educated working men and women”.
What brought the S.P.G.B. into active conflict with the American S.L.P. at the beginning of the century was that, two years before members of the Social Democratic Federation left it to form the S.L.P., other members had left to form, in Scotland, the British S.L.P. modelled on the American party. Two issues prominent in the opposition of the S.P.G.B. to the American S.L.P. were their support for reforms and their eventual opposition to political action after having at first supported it. In 1905 the American S.L.P. supported the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and later broke away to form another industrial organisation. At the I.W.W.’s first convention Daniel De Leon, editor of the S.L.P. journal THE PEOPLE, and the author of several pamphlets sold by the two S.L.P.’s, stated the party’s position:
“It does not lie in a political organisation that is a party to take and hold “the machinery of production”.
And further:
“The situation in America…establishes the fact that “taking and holding” of the things that Labour needs to be free can never depend upon a political party”.
(For further information on the SLP’s opposition to political action see the SOCIALIST STANDARD, November 1930). The policy of the S.L.P. in the USA and Great Britain was dealt with in the S.P.G.B.’s MANIFESTO (second edition 1911, page 6), from which the following is an extract:
“In trade union matters the S.L.P. have blindly followed the lead of the American S.L.P. Contradicting their original teaching that political action was all-sufficing for the emancipation of the workers, they now try to found a British branch of an American Industrial union. They hold that Socialism will be achieved by “direct action” on the part of such a union. This is an Anarchist deviation. They do not accept the Socialist position of Marx and Engels that “the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy”. The position of the S.L.P. is, in their own words that “the Socialists will not first “come into power” and then gain possession of the means of production; they will gain possession of the means of production through the Industrial Union and their “power” will result from that possession”.
Then there is the question of programmes of reforms or “immediate demands”. When the British S.L.P. was formed it had such a programme. Following criticism by the S.P.G.B. it was dropped, but the American party continued theirs. It had a list of 15 “Social demands” and a further list of six “Political Demands”. The first list included a demand for the Federal Government to nationalise “railroads, canals, telegraphs, telephones and all the other means of public transportation and communication”. It also included a demand for “the united states to have exclusive right to issue money”. The second list demanded among other things, “municipal self-government and proportional representation”. The aim of these 21 demands was “with a view to immediate improvement in the condition of labour”.
The platform of the American S.L.P. opened with the following high-fallutin waffle:
“The Socialist Labour Party of the United States, in convention assembled, re-asserts the inalienable rights of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. With the founders of the American Republic we hold that the purpose of government is to secure every citizen in the enjoyment of this right; but in the light of social conditions, we hold, further, that no such right can be exercised under a system of inequality, essentially destructive of life, of liberty, and of happiness” (A HANDBOOK OF SOCIALISM W.D.P. Bliss, 1907, pages 141-2).
For the Socialist Party of Great Britain formed in 1904 there was no doubt or ambiguity about its total opposition to the S.L.P.’s anti political policy and reformism, as shown in the S.P.G.B.’s DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES. It contains no list of “immediate demands” and it states in Clause 6 the need for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local.
The people who now control the Clapham based Socialist Party have changed all that. It was spelled out in the SOCIALIST STANDARD (May 1990) in an article headed “An American Marxist”, which reviewed a book on Daniel de Leon by Stephen Coleman. The author of the article says of De Leon that he stood for the principle “of Socialism and nothing but”, forgetting to mention the long list of immediate demands that De Leon campaigned for on the S.L.P.’s platform.
It says too that De Leon’s “distinct brand of Marxism and party organisation is still extant today”. His and the S.L.P.’s brand of “Marxism” were certainly “distinct” since it repudiated Marx’s insistence on the need for political action for the conquest of political power, as set out in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
“The first step in the revolution of the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy”.
Note
“If any individual is elected to office upon a revolutionary ballot that individual is a suspicious character. Whoever is returned elected upon a programme of labour emancipation; whoever is allowed to be filtered through the political inspection of the capitalist class; that man is a carefully selected tool, a traitor to the working class, selected by the capitalist class” (SOCIALIST STANDARD, November 1930).
De Leon and the S.L.P. backed up their anti-political attitude by claiming that Marx said: “only the Trade Union is capable of setting on foot a true political party of labour and thus raise a bulwark against the power of Capital”. They were challenged repeatedly to say where Marx is supposed to have made this statement, so out of keeping with the published attitude, but failed to answer the challenge (See SOCIALIST STANDARD January 1930). It should also be observed that the S.P.G.B was not “set on foot” by a trade union.
The article in the SOCIALIST STANDARD (May 1990) said that the contribution to socialist thought of Daniel De Leon has been neglected over the years “and that he influenced he founders of the S.P.G.B.). What contribution did De Leon make to socialist thought unless his to-ing and fro-ing over political action and his repudiation of Marx on political action can be regarded as a contribution? The article makes no mention of the numerous articles in the SOCIALIST STANDARD analysing and criticising De Leon and the S.L.P. the notion that a man and the Party, muddled, contradictory and reformist “platform”, could have influenced those who drew up the lucid, compact, informative and logical S.P.G.B. DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES is laughable.
The article in the SOCIALIST STANDARD (May 1990) then lets the cat out of the bag by disclosing what the Socialist Party is now putting in place of the Marxist Socialist policy of the S.P.G.B.’s founders. It is “Socialist Industrial Unions”, the policy of the two S.L.P.s. De Leon is quoted:
“He asserted the need for an economic wing of the socialist movement and put forward a three-stage theory of revolution: socialists winning the battle of ideas, victory at the ballot box, and socialist industrial unions supplying the economic might to enforce electoral victory and worker’s power
”. It will be observed that this is like the policy of the British S.L.P. outlined earlier in this article, in the quotation from the S.P.G.B.’s MANIFESTO; but with a difference. In the British S.L.P. version victory at the ballot box will not come first. What will come first will be that socialists will first “gain possession of the means of production through the industrial union”.
These views were discussed at length by the founders of the S.P.G.B. who realised the impracticality and dangers of the idea of industrial organisations attempting to seize control in the face of the agents of “law and order” including the armed forces. Industrial unionism is now presented in the SOCIALIST STANDARD as if it was something not considered and rejected by the founder members.
It presents a problem for the Clapham-based Socialist Party. Logically they would need to adopt a new Declaration of Principles, particularly Clause 6. What about adopting the American S.L.P. platform quoted earlier, with its nonsense about “The Founding Fathers”? But they do have an alternative of carrying on as they have been doing for several years; that is keeping the old DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES unchanged but in practice behaving as if it did not exist.
