Possibilities of AFTER much deliberation I have decided to quit the Labour Party, which I have belonged to these past two years. No longer does reformism and the parliamentary road hold any future for the working class.
Labour is in complete disarray and is ideologically directionless despite the efforts of small groups of radicals and socialists, notably the Independent Labour Party, the Labour Co-ordinating Committee and the 'Militant' (I was a supporter of the ILP for a while).
My politics have developed towards Trotskyism, leaving me with no faith in Labour as a party of social change. Even the 'Militant' group's own brand of after split and so on.
against our real enemy...capitalism! brought together Committee! "Trotskyist' politics presents no alternative while remaining in But upon leaving I find myself presented with numerous groups claiming to represent the revolutionary alternative, ranging from the SWP and WRP through to the IMG, WSL and then a number of diminutive groups, like RCT, SL/B, etc...
Chaos, there's no other word for it! Like many others I cannot bring myself to join any group because of the history of internal intolerance that heralded the mushrooming of small left-wing groups through split We must learn how to reconcile the differences that exist on the far left so that greater unity may be achieved in action We need a single party with a tolerant leadership (i.e. allowing full discussion without resorting to expulsions and splits -except perhaps under exceptional circumstances — whatever they will be I don't pretend to know). Then the many isolated militants could be Perhaps Socialist Challenge could re-open its columns to another concerted effert for socialist unity. Perhaps your Battle of Ideas could be revamped this time for contributions and discussion among the rank and file instead of vast ramblings from the Central HOWARD J FULLER, London SE15 tract you printed seems to suggest.
Moreover, for purely practical reasons, workers may well decide to ban certain parties participating in the democratic process .of a workers' state. Would we, I01 Islance, be in favour of allowing fascist parties, who on programme of destroying all forms of workers' power, to participate in principle No; if they posed a real threat - as they invariably would - we would be in sigh. of relief - the Beyond the Fragments conference was a 'failure', , a 'retreat from politics'. But of course what can you expect from 'non-Leninists'?
Unfortunately, these sentiments fail to explain why 1,400 people feel disillusioned enough with the practices of the left to attend such a conference. It seems to me that the debates around Beyond the Fragments have demonstrated how closed in fact the International Marxist Groun reallv is to examining both its history and its practice.
This type of attitude is very evident in Valerie Coultas's article in International, where she fails to take up in any concrete way the criticisms thathave been made of the style and practice of the left.
It seems as if every article written by the. IMG on the subject ends up with the assertion that we must smash the state I agree, but that is not an end in itself. It is merely a means to establishing a socialist society - undoubtedly the determining factor, but it is idealist to assume that the means used to smash the state will not matter once it is smashed, hence the importance of prefigurative forms of struggle In my opinion, Beyond the Fragments has tentatively begun to elaborate a more effective understanding of an advanced capitalist state than any analysis I have sech, trom lue Icvolutionary left. It has begun seriously to ask how community workers, doctors, nurses, , and so on who work for the state car struggle against it.
But perhaps the IMG is no longer interested in winning these 'pettybourgeois' lavers to the side of the revolution. It is our own loss if so.
Bolshevism is for me still relevant but it can no longer be sutticient. To believe it can be is to disarm ourselves theoretically and politically in the face of a Tory government which understands full well the complexity of the society we live in.
LONDR VA
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Bolshevism is not enough SO we can all breathe a