THE SLP : A Reply

From Socialist Studies #42

Dear Mr Plant,

Cyril May, General Secretary of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, has given your letter to the Editorial Committee for a reply. Obviously your letter is too . long for publication in Socialist Studies but we hope our reply covers the issues you raise.

In your letter you raise two points: first, the description of the US magazine, Discussion Bulletin, as an anarchist publication and, second, the impression given by an arti6e in Socialist Studies No 3 that the Socialist Labour Party of America continued with reforms or immediate demands when, in fact, the"10th National Convention in 1900 removed them from the SLP's programme.

1. Discussion Bulletin

We are aware of the De Leonist background of Discussion Bulletin and of the various groups who appear on its pages. However, the legitimate question we ask of these organisations is what are they there for to discuss? As you rightly say, it is not the Socialism advocated by the Socialist Party of Great Britain with its stress on conscious political action by a Socialist majority through parliament to capture the machinery of government.

The majority of the groups either cited in Discussion Bulletin or who take part in discussion on its pages are supporters of various forms of direct action, including the Clapham Socialist Party with its new idea of "imaginative non-violent direct action", whatever that means.

We also draw your attention to the statement on the inside front cover of Discussion Bulletin which officially declares that: "the DB is affiliated with the Industrial Union Caucus in Education" and that it is a forum for "the real revolutionaries of our era: the-non-market, non-statist, libertarian socialists". Anti-statist is an anarchist/Bakunist slur 4* Marxism, and libertarian is simply a modem term for anarchist.

The SPGB has long commented and criticised various forms of direct action. In an article, Marx, Lenin and Direct Action, we said that: "The SLP position led logically to Anarchism, for if politics was a shadow and a reflex only, as they claimed, and if the real power lay in the industrialfield, why bother with shadows, and why not go in for the substance of economic action. And that is just what happened." (The Socialist Standard, November 1930.)

Three months later another article, "Industrial Unionism", appeared in the Socialist Standard. The article reviewed a 19-page letter from a Mr Clausen, an ex-Socialist Labour Party member criticising the SLPs political "gymnastics". The article in the SS (January 193 1), among other things, commented on:

"De Leon's anarchistic utterance that the emancipation of the workers must be achieved by workers "Through an economic organisation of the working class without affiliation with any political party". (The quotation is from Mr Clausen's letter.)

The writers in Socialist Studies who referred to Discussion Bulletin as an anarchist journal, therefore, were writing in the tradition of the Party that saw the logic of the De Leonist/SLP position as that of being indistinguishable from anarchist programmes of direct action. Both articles are enclosed for your information.

2. The Socialist Labour Party

With regard, to the article in Socialist Studies No 3, you misunderstand the background in which it was written. The Clapham-based Socialist Party published an article in their party publication (August 1991) that referred to the SLP as "political cousins" of the SPGB. "Cousins" refers to the respective offspring of brothers and sisters of common parentage. As a metaphor this is used to try to establish the point that the SLP and the SPGB, from thA start, had much in common - implying that an alliance could be established now. This we dispute. As a historical fact, when the SLP was established in Britain in 1903, it adopted a list of "immediate demands" (The Socialist, July 1903). The following year, when the SPGB was founded, the SPGB rejected that reformist line (see SPGB Manifesto, preface to fifth edition, 1911, p 5).

The issue has been resurrected by the Clapham-based Socialist Party, as they seek to legitimise their rejection of the SPGB's position and move towards alliances with libertarian and direct action groups (see Non Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed M Rubel and J Crump, pp 48-53). To achieve this, they are having to re-write the Party's history, and deny the fact that, from the start, the SPGB opposed the SLP for its reformism and later, for its industrial unionism. The key point at issue is (and was) the De Leonist and SLP insistence on industrial unionism rather than class-conscious, democratic political action as advocated by the SPGB from 1904 onwards.

De Leon's legacy has been conveniently summed up by Frank Girard (DB 108). He writes: 'The revolution will be carried out by the mass organization of the working class - the socialist industrial unions, which will enforce the victory at the polls by the real revolution, the occupation of the worAplaces and their conversion nto social property ... As the IWW put it, "We will build the new society in the shell of the old". And as the SLP slogan of the 1930's and 1940's, put it, "All Power to the Socialist Industrial Union" (pp 28-29).

The point of the article in Socialist Studies was to point out indicate that when he SLP was established it did have a reform programme prefixed to its object but when the SPGB was established in 1904 it did not. So how could they be cousins? The unique revolutionary characteristic about the SPGB in 1904 was hat we drew up an Object and Declaration of Principles that aimed at socialism and nothing but Socialism.

Another criticism of the SLP and De Leon was iheir insistence that Marx had Tiven textual support to industrial unionism. The SPGB constantly asked the SLP for evidence of where Marx gave his support (see The Socialist Labour Party Runs Away, Socialist Standard, January 1930). We are still waiting for he evidence.

The SPGB, at its formation in 1904 was highly critical of the Socialist Labour Party and early Socialist Standards carried articles opposing Industrial fJnionism. The SLP was also criticised in the SPGB's Manifesto (second edition 1911, page 6). In the passage quoted in Socialist Studies No 3 the zriticism levelled against the SLP is not at their immediate demand programme )ut at their strategy of direct action, which, incidentally, is described as "an Anarchist deviation". The author of the article in Socialist Studies No 3 also quotes from A Handbook of Socialism by W D P Bliss, written in 1907. It is in this book that the 1896 Socialist Labour National Platform with its immediate demands is cited. Unlike the SLP in Scotland who dropped their "social andpolitical demands" after 1904 under pressure from the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Socialist Labour Party in the US continued their demands for another four years until 1900.

We are well aware of the SLP's history. There was no attempt to deceive. Perhaps, in retrospect, the time frames in which the writer was discussing the two parties could have been more explicitly stated. However, the issue addressed by the article was not the history of the SLP but to show that there was no kinship between the SLP and the SPGB.

Dear Mr May:

When I received Richard Lloyd's "reply" to my 6 June 2001 letter to you on the subject of the SLP my first reaction was: "Who is he trying to kid? I hope that it is not me?" My second reaction was one of feeling very dispirited by its failure to acknowledge any meaningful deficiencies in the articles on the SLP in Socialist Studies that I had brought to your attention and by its smug and insular sectarianism.

After receiving issue #42 of Socialist Studies I now realise why Lloyd's "reply" was so peculiar: It was not a reply at all, but was intended for publication as one more exercise in a campaign of one sided knocking of the SLP and De Leon. Publishing your "reply" without publishing the letter that it was fireplying" to may be your idea of a public debate and exchange of ideas, but it is not mine.

A Kafkaesque situation. The "court" gets to hear the charges and the "prosecutions" case against the SLP (your original articles). It then gets to hear the "prosecution's" final summing-up (the item in the current issue of yourjournal). The "jury" (your readers) then have to decide on the merits of the case without ever hearing the intervening case for the "defence" (my 6 June letter). Seeing the way your "scientific socialist" organisation works I do not now have any misgivings about not dignifying Lloyds piece of hack work with a response at the time that I received it.

Yours sincerely

J. Plant