I’ve included below three letters, the first two of which have appeared in the Weekly Worker (www.cpgb.org.uk/worker), a newspaper specialising in debates on the left, and the final one that I have just written and will hopefully appear in this week’s. The first letter was written by me, arguing for proportional representation (PR) rather than hierarchies of committees (soviets) as the form of democracy under a future socialist society. The second letter is a reply by John Pearson of Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance, and the third is my reply to his letter.

 

 

 

Letter by Steve Wallis (Glasgow), published as “Good PR” in December 14 issue:

 

It was good to see Nick Rogers criticise “the classic Trotskyist model of indirect democracy - workers elect their local factory committee, which then elects a district committee, which in turn elects a city-wide committee, all the way up to a supreme soviet” (Weekly Worker November 23).

 

This, I think, is what the SWP says it stands for in every issue of Socialist Worker: “a workers’ state based upon councils of workers’ delegates and a workers’ militia”. (Incidentally, proposing a “workers’ militia” in a country where guns are hated so much after atrocities such as in Dunblane is a policy hardly likely to win mass support; instead, it suggests that a minority would have to use force to stop a majority from overthrowing the “workers’ state”.) It is also what the Socialist Party in England and Wales, which I was a member of from 1990 to 98, means by “workers’ democracy” - a term it uses fairly often, but hardly ever elaborates in its publications. Both of these parties describe themselves as “Trotskyist”, but I wouldn’t call this a “classic Trotskyist model”, because it is based on the “soviets” which took power in the October 1917 Russian Revolution - others who call themselves Marxists (including Stalinists) advocate that too.

 

I strongly agree with Nick’s point that a hierarchy of workers’ committees (soviets) is “eminently open to bureaucratisation”, in both allowing bureaucrats (of whom some may be potential ruthless dictators like Stalin) to rise up such a hierarchy and enabling them to stay in positions of power once they are there. Those bureaucrats may constitute a ruling class like in the USSR and eastern Europe before the collapse of Stalinism, or they may be infiltrators from conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business, such as the majority of the leadership of the SWP. The main flaw with such hierarchies is that it is mainly only people on the same committees as the bureaucrats who know that they are not genuine and what they are up to, making those bureaucrats much more powerful than in less hierarchical organisations or societies.

 

Nick goes on to say: “If we are to fight in the minimum programme for direct elections to parliament and the right to directly recall MPs, we can hardly expect workers after the revolution to tolerate less influence over national political affairs - and an arrangement that is eminently open to bureaucratisation.”

 

This is a point I have made myself, with the modification that socialists should and often do argue for proportional representation, not just because that is fairer than “direct elections to parliament” by first-past-the-post, but because it makes it easier for socialists to gain a foothold in parliament. Also, I don’t think I agree with “the right to directly recall MPs”, because I don’t know how that could work under PR: calling for annual elections is far more practical and would render the recall of the odd MP pointless. Of course, even with annual elections, a mass movement could force an entire government (that breaks an important manifesto pledge, for example) to resign, and it would be desirable to have some mechanism for the recall of the entire government and fresh elections without waiting for the year to be up, probably triggered by a petition signed by a fairly large proportion of the population.

 

If it hadn’t been for the Tommy Sheridan defamation trial and subsequent split in the Scottish Socialist Party, it would not be out of the question for the SSP to win a large number of seats on Glasgow city council in May 2007. Those elections will be conducted for the first time using PR by single transferable vote (which eliminates the need for tactical voting, because you can indicate preferences for your vote to be transferred to). Unfortunately, only three or four councillors will be elected in each ward, creating a large threshold to get anybody elected and thereby favouring the major parties.

 

I will be arguing for the SSP to stand a candidate in every Glasgow council ward like Sheridan’s new party, Solidarity - Scotland’s Socialist Movement. With STV, standing against each other shouldn’t harm the prospect of socialists getting elected, unlike with the inferior form of PR being used for the Scottish parliamentary elections, where each voter can only place a cross opposite a single party in a constituency and likewise for a regional list - the prospect of wasting their votes is likely to influence many to vote for a mainstream party (particularly the SNP, since it is being dubbed the ‘independence election’).

 

PS I realised after writing the above letter that it would be better to try to get the SSP and Solidarity to reach agreement not to stand against each other in the local elections in Glasgow. Given the current state of relations between the two parties, it is unlikely to happen however. Although theoretically under STV, everybody giving their first preference to the SSP can give their second to Solidarity and vice versa, not everyone will do this, partly because voters won’t be accustomed to the new voting system.

 

 

 

Letter by John Pearson (Stockport), published as “Whose parliament?” in January 4 issue:

 

Nick Rogers (Weekly Worker November 23) and my Democratic Socialist Alliance comrade, Steve Wallis (Letters, December 14), will have to marshal some more convincing evidence to support their shared contention that what Rogers calls “the classic Trotskyist model of indirect democracy - workers elect their local factory committee, which then elects a district committee, which in turn elects a city-wide committee, all the way up to a supreme soviet” is “eminently open to bureaucratisation”.

 

Nick can only cite the case of Cuba and speculate as to the fate that might befall a worker who raised the demand to recall Fidel Castro. Conveniently for his argument, he fails to mention that the workers’ councils in Cuba have only a consultative status and are subordinate to a bureaucratic state with a leader cult. This is a serious omission, in light of the fact that his declared target is the clause in the CPGB’s Draft programme which proposes: “Supreme power in the state [my emphasis] will be in workers’ councils, composed of delegates who are elected and recallable at any time.”

 

I would have thought it self-evident that bureaucratisation is more likely in workers’ councils that have been powerless from the outset than in ones which exercise supreme power in the state following a working class revolution. Nick offers us nothing to support his assertion when applied to the latter scenario.

 

As for Steve, I think he shoots himself in the foot twice with his illustrations of his strong agreement with Nick: “Bureaucrats (of whom some may be potential ruthless dictators like Stalin) [may] rise up such a hierarchy” and then stay in power once they are there, and other such risers may include infiltrators on the side of the capitalist class, he suggests.

 

But Stalin did not reach his position as dictator and tyrant by moving up the hierarchy of soviets. He did so via a career path in a bureaucratised Bolshevik Party, following a devastating civil war. Likewise the notable example of a ruling class infiltrator in the Russian revolutionary movement, Malinovsky, did not rise through soviet structures, but was appointed by the party to lead the Bolshevik group in the duma, a pseudo-parliamentary structure. Slightly ironic, I think, in view of Steve’s (and Nick’s) expressions of preference for laying hold of and reforming the parliamentary institutions bequeathed by capitalism.

 

Interestingly, Steve goes on to describe the practical difficulties that could exist in trying to exercise instant recallability over representatives elected to a parliament by proportional representation. He makes some valid points. However, there is no such difficulty, as the CPGB Draft programme recognises, in building in the principle of instant recallability to a constitution based upon workers’ councils.

 

The DSA’s current draft programme, People before profit, describes socialism as “the working class organising to liberate itself from the rule of profit and creat[ing] its own democracy, abolishing the privileges of managers and officials”. We do not restrict ourselves to a perspective of laying hold of and reforming what capital has created.

 

The best guard against bureaucratisation is that the working class remains engaged with those democratic institutions it has itself created. Of crucial importance here is a point that Mike Macnair has emphasised: the need for socialisation of information. Steve too recognises this point, when he comments on the danger that only committee members truly know how other committee members behave. The most meticulous reporting of the proceedings of workers’ councils is essential to overcome this and other problems and here our class’s daily newspapers are crucially important.

 

Finally, none of my arguments contradict Steve’s emphasis on the importance of pursuing democratic demands in relation to bourgeois parliaments - PR, annual parliaments and the principle of elected representatives receiving no more than an average worker’s wage are some of the most important of these demands. The fight for these demands is vital in training our class to become the ruling class.

 

What is seriously mistaken though is for revolutionaries to insist that such reformed parliaments must be the instrument of the class’s self liberation. In doing this, they contradict the very concept of self-liberation.

 

 

 

New letter by Steve Wallis (that will hopefully be published in the January 11 issue):

 

John Pearson (Letters, January 4) criticises the point made by Nick Rogers (Weekly Worker November 23) and backed up by myself (Letters, December 14) that what Nick calls “the classic Trotskyist model of indirect democracy – workers elect their local factory committee, which then elects a district committee, which in turn elects a city-wide committee, all the way up to a supreme soviet” is “eminently open to bureaucratisation”.

 

John criticises my use of Stalin as an example of someone who has risen up such a hierarchy, pointing out that he “did not reach his position as dictator and tyrant by moving up the hierarchy of soviets” but “via a career path in a bureaucratised Bolshevik Party, following a devastating civil war”. After doing some browsing of the internet, I concede this point, but Stalin did reach a position of influence long before the Bolshevik Party became bureaucratised. He was co-opted onto the party’s central committee and became an editor of its newspaper Pravda in 1912, and was appointed Commissar of Nationalities by Lenin in November 1917. I do remember hearing, probably from a TV programme, that Stalin did rise up a hierarchy, but that hierarchy may have been within the Bolshevik Party rather than the soviets.

 

My criticism of hierarchical structures is largely based on my experience of such structures in this country. I have generally found a much larger proportion of hostile members, particularly at high levels, perhaps infiltrators from conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business or right-wingers acting alone, in deeply hierarchical organisations than in less hierarchical organisations such as anarchist ones.

 

John suggests “the most meticulous reporting of the proceedings of workers’ councils” as a solution to the problem that I raised that generally it is only people on the same committees who know who the dodgy people are and what they are up to. This is a good point, but I’m unconvinced that it would totally solve the problem especially if it is limited to the uppermost committees for which reports would be suitable for appearance in “our class’s daily newspapers”. I would support some degree of workers’ control of industry, in as non-hierarchical a manner as practicable, but not as the overall form of government – and allowing workers a more direct say in how their industry is run, rather than indirectly via delegates, would allow them to respond more effectively to newspaper reports.

 

There is a parallel between today’s Marxists (such as John) arguing for proportional representation under capitalism but advocating soviets under socialism, and the Bolsheviks in Russia calling for a Constituent Assembly when the capitalist Provisional Government that came to power after the February revolution in 1917 failed to hold such elections, but some Bolsheviks led by Lenin arguing for “all power to the soviets”.

 

The Constituent Assembly was more proportional than the soviets, since the latter were deliberately set up to give the working class more power than a much more numerous peasantry, and the abolition of that Assembly when the Bolsheviks lost the election has caused socialists and particularly those calling themselves “communists” to be widely regarded as undemocratic ever since. The result has been nearly 90 more years of world capitalism. I don’t regard that as a mistake, but a deliberate ploy by infiltrators within the Bolshevik Party on the side of big business such as Lenin and Trotsky. [At other points in their lives, one or both of them could have been overwhelmingly genuine, but at that point, and for Trotsky when he brutally led the Red Army, I am convinced that they were not.]

 

Right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries won the Constituent Assembly election due to large landowners being better organised in the countryside. I have long argued that the Bolsheviks should have let them show themselves up in practice, and that the excuse that the Bolsheviks would suffer massive repression doesn’t stand up bearing in mind that the working class led two revolutions in one year and would surely defend them. Even better, after the October revolution but before holding a Constituent Assembly election, the Bolsheviks should have gone into the countryside and formed a unified socialist party involving both workers and peasants who supported the October revolution, which could then have won that election.

 

Marxists often talk about the working class taking power, but in my view it is the entire population that should really take power. It is clearly massively undemocratic to deny middle class people a say in how society is run, or give them less of a say like the peasantry in Russia. In a pre-revolutionary situation in Scotland for example (more likely than the UK as a whole due to people in Scotland being more left-wing and there already being a form of PR for elections to the Scottish Parliament), there would in my view be far more people who support the idea of socialism but agree with PR than those (mainly of a Marxist persuasion) who would advocate all power to the soviets. Marxists would then have a choice of trying to force, using “workers’ militias”, the will of a minority on the majority, or implementing a PR-based form of socialism.