Since I don't think that your article on the SWP and the Labour Party helped explain the differences between Socialist Action and the SWP, I welcome your offer allowing me to try and clarify these differences for your readers.
What I think Cde Rodney's article failed to do was to spell out a number of hidden assumptions about the Labour Party. It is these assumptions I wish to focus on.
To begin, we should ask ourselves the question: is the LP a bourgeois party with a working class support, or a workers party with a degenerate (or deformed) leadership? Without actually saying so in so many words, it is the latter view of the LP that your article puts over.
You say, for example, that the LP was 'born out of the struggles of the unions, that 'it remains the political arm of the trade union movement & inal lu munon workers continue to vote for it'.
While nobody can deny these facts, you use them to imply Labour is a workers' party. Therefore, you see a need to 'struggle against its bureaucratic leaders. It would follow from your assumptions that socialists shoula join this party to change 1es degenerate leadership. This is what you see as the way forward for the labour movement'.
BOURGEOIS The SWP sees the LP as a bourgeois party with working class support. But by what criterion should marxists decide the class nature of a political party?
First, it is not according to who votes for it. Munons or workers vote Tory, probably greater numbers than any other class, yet this does not make the Tory Party a workers' party. ship. Perhaps the majority of NF members are working class in origin but this does not make the Ni a workers party.
Instead, marxists need to consider the nature of the party's politics in order to understand its class nature. In this respect, it is the politics of those with real power in the party rather than the latest recruit which is crucial.
TRENDS The two major political tendencies in the LP are liberal-imperialism & reformist socialism. These strands are represented on the leading bodies of the party, the NEC, the PLP, among the Party leaders and within the trade union leadership. The right-wing are liberals, not socialists. They support social reform and welfare (if we can afford it) at home, while abroad they support US and British imperialism (e.g. Vietnam, Ireland, Iran).
The left reformists are more difficult to pin down. On one hand, ideologically, they do argue for socialism and do articulate the discontent of workers. But politically, they are also influenced by capitalist thinking. For example, they see the state machine as an instrum. ent for achieving socialism. Marxists therefore have always warned of the dangers of left-reformism. In power, it can provoke a violent reaction from the ruling class, yet it does not prepare te working class politically how to deal with such a reaction. Allende was a tragic example of left reformist socialism in practice.
DOMINANCE Right-wing dominance is built into the structure of the Labour Party. ‹ ne rederal consutanon of the wade unions' bloc vote and the independence of the PLP was designed to ensure that, while the rank-and-file might nave a Dig say al annudi coll
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