SWP’s Serbian Section Splits From IST
This is our statement explaining our decision to disaffiliate from the IST
We write to resign from the Socialist Workers Party and the International Socialist Tendency. We disagree with the leadership; it is taking us in the wrong direction.
From its foundation in early 2008, Marks21 orientated towards the politics of the IST. So it is with deep regret that we have decided to resign.
Some of our current members have been members of the SWP since the 1990s and are proud of the work they did with the party to oppose imperialist intervention in the Balkans and pose the Balkan Socialist Federation as the alternative to the nationalist wars of the local ruling classes. The anti-war work around the Kosovo War was a precursor of the Stop the War Coalition, the party’s most important united front initiative of the 2000s.
Regrettably, the recent turn in the SWP’s politics away from the united front approach makes it impossible for us to continue in the IST. While the Tendency is not run on the basis of democratic centralism, and we respect the work of many of its sections, it is clear the mistakes of the SWP carry enormous symbolic weight. The SWP is the leading political force in the Tendency.
The successes of the the Left Party in Germany, Left Front in France, the Left Bloc in Portugal, the United Left Alliance in Ireland, and, most spectacularly, Syriza in Greece, where the prospect of a united left government terrified the capitalist ruling classes of the European Union, are clear evidence of the opportunities a united front approach offers revolutionaries today.
Instead, the SWP defended the New Anti-Capitalist Party’s refusal to join the Left Front in France and Antarsya’s refusal to join Syriza. This is a recipe for sectarian isolation; it is not revolutionary good sense. Working with these parties carries real dangers, but not doing so carries still greater dangers. The rise of the far right Golden Dawn in Greece should be a warning to us all. The IST has a proud record of fighting fascism and racism but it should also be fighting for a united left alternative to the system that breeds fascism.
Similarly, the SWP’s effective withdrawal from the Stop the War Coalition has damaged its anti-imperialist credibility in Britain and in the Middle East. In the case of Syria, there has been a clear tendency to downplay the role of imperialist intrigue, the key question in imperialist Britain given the Libyan fiasco.
It is clear that the SWP has over-reacted to the failure of Respect, the left electoral coalition that grew out of the anti-war movement. Since then, the SWP has retreated to a sectarian comfort zone based on orthodox party-building, abstract propaganda and an economistic emphasis on industrial struggle.
This sectarian approach has resulted in a stifling party culture and regime. Contrary to the traditions of the IST, new ideas and methods are often rejected to uphold existing tradition. Emphasising the limitations of the internet as a tool for revolutionaries at a time of ‘Facebook Revolutions’ and international ‘Occupy’ movements is a case in point.
The scandal involving allegations of rape and sexual harassment against a member of the party’s Central Committee has shocked and angered us. It has exposed the dangers of the current turn. The fact that a full-time party worker was not allowed to continue in her post for raising similar complaints of sexual harassment against the said CC member speaks volumes, as do the expulsions of comrades who raised their voices against the leadership’s handling of the matter. This is conduct that reflects bourgeois management techniques, not the revolutionary socialist struggle for women’s liberation.
We resign, but we will continue to apply classical Marxism to the realities of our times and build a new left in Serbia, in the spirit of the IS. We will work with others on the left, whether or not they are members of the IST, whenever and wherever we believe this will advance the interests of the working class and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
January 11, 2013 at 1:47 pm
[...] Grumpy Old Trot [...]
January 17, 2013 at 7:43 pm
[...] in the International Socialist Tendency (IST). In the wake of the SWP conference, there was a public announcement by the IST organisation in Serbia that it no longer wished to be part of the t…. They pointed to what they saw as “a stifling party culture and regime” inside the SWP, and [...]
January 18, 2013 at 3:57 pm
[...] Serbian section splits from international grouping (Grumpy Old Trot) * recommended [...]
January 18, 2013 at 7:10 pm
Not sure if you’ve seen it but Gilad Atzmon put out a piece today that essentially says that ‘Comrade Delta’ was framed. See:
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/sax-offender-vs-progressive-rapists.html#entry32575889
What a tangled web we weave.
B
January 19, 2013 at 12:15 pm
A friend pointed me at Atzmon’s post…what a poisonous piece of filth! I don’t suppose the party loyalists will be too chuffed at his support…
January 19, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Atzmon’s vitriol is matched only by the kind of vitriol the left reserves for its own ergo l’affaire ‘comrade delta’. It also reveals a much deeper malaise of the left, one embedded in its Imperialist roots.
Gilad has such scorn for the left and with some justification unfortunately. And now he seems to have lost the plot completely, which is a real shame.
So for example, all those long decades the left in its many guises, dallied and danced around with successive Labour governments, blowing hot and then cold like a jilted lover. But these were successive Labour governments as deeply imperialist and reactionary as its so-called political adversary, the Tory Party. But this didn’t stop the left from supporting labour governments just to keep the Tories out. What a joke!
It made no difference which party was in power, except for minor differences and, over the long run, successive Labour governments opened the door for successive Tory governments to succeed in rolling back the gains of the postwar period. A dance macabre that now is unraveling at a fast rate of knots.
But these were gains made effectively at the expense of Britain’s colonial/post-colonial subjects. The working class that the left was heralding as the harbinger of a socialist revolution, was in reality an imperialist working class, was being the operative word. But those ‘good old days’ only lasted for perhaps twenty-five years before Thatcher began the job of dismantling the postwar consensus between capital and labour, made in order to save capitalism. But the left seems not to have cottoned on to this sea change, yet it insists on calling on trade unions as if they still belonged (if they ever did) in the ‘vanguard’ of the revolution. And besides that? Well it’s students, immigrants and the poor. But what about the rest of the people?
The people who call the shots on the left, both its theoretical and practical leaders had better wake up, or perhaps move aside and make room for some new thinking?
I find it all too depressing, but l’affaire comrade delta, not at all surprising. But the simple fact that influential people on the left spilled the beans, is a new departure. It’s at this point that the left normally closes ranks, given its experience at the hands of the mass media. After all, wasn’t that the entire purpose of the internal ‘court’, to keep it out of the public eye? All that guff about ‘bourgeois law’ just makes it all laughable given the gravity of the accusations.
This is where Gilad has got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely; it’s not about whether ‘comrade delta’ is guilty or innocent or even that it was a frame-up as Atzmon asserts in his loony piece. It’s about the SWP deciding to try its own and then making a complete hash of it. Red faces all round as Private Eye would say.
January 19, 2013 at 3:56 pm
[...] ongoing with SWP members resigning publicly, SWSS groups condemning the conference decision, the Serbian section of the International Socialist Tendency (the SWP’s international grouping) leaving the [...]
January 25, 2013 at 5:13 pm
[...] ernst overschrijdt intussen de landsgrenzen. De Servische IS-groep heeft intussen haar lidmaatschap van de IS Tendency, en daarmee haar banden met de SWP, opgezegd. [...]