Michael Rosen writes an open letter to the SWP concerning recent events in that organization by which he, like many others, was appalled. Towards the end of the letter he draws some conclusions from recalling the attitude of his parents towards the Communist Party.
I often used to ask my parents about why they stayed in the Communist Party for so long, why they left, what they considered valuable about having been part of it… and so on. In these long discussions, one aspect that is relevant here, I think, is the point my father made about why he went on defending the CP and the Soviet Union even when he ceased to believe that it was right to do so. He said that that was because he felt that there was only one interest involved in attacking the CP and the Soviet Union: the ‘bourgeoisie’… So, he said, even as he might sometimes have felt that the CP or the Soviet Union was in some way wrong, he couldn’t admit it or do anything about it, because to do so would make it easier for the enemy (bourgeoisie, ruling class, the bosses, international capitalism, etc) to survive and win. So, he shamefully admitted, he and our mother supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary because otherwise the enemy would move into Hungary and take over.
I am not going to claim that this is your Hungary moment. The fate of millions of Hungarians – and indeed of the whole eastern bloc (as was) – is very different from a few thousand of us on the left in Britain being worried, concerned or fed up. However, I’m going to draw one analogy, no matter how inappropriate it appears at first. It concerns the state of mind my father described that went on justifying the CP and the Soviet Union even when he knew it was wrong. It seems to me that throughout this whole affair I’ve seen aspects of this state of mind when reading what SWP loyalists have written. That’s to say, ‘if we concede that we’ve got something wrong with this Comrade Delta affair, this will only bring comfort to the enemy… so even though something’s not right, loyalty comes first’. Or put another way: ‘if the Daily Mail are saying that we got it wrong, we’ll have to say that we’re getting it right’.
All I can say is that there comes a point at which this kind of view – if indeed I’ve typified it right – is not only unhelpful, it becomes dangerous. No, I’ll put it another way: it brings ideas and views that I think are valuable and necessary into disrepute. Yes, I think that international capitalism can only offer inequality and war. It can develop ‘production’, it can develop ‘the economy’ but only by enriching tiny minorities, while dividing and impoverishing millions of others.
There comes a point. Notice how late that point appears to have come, according to Michael’s own account of things, for his parents. They felt the CP and the Soviet Union were ‘in some way wrong’ at the time of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, when the show trials, the purges, and the millions of victims of Stalin’s rule were already long established facts; but refrained from criticism nonetheless because criticism could only benefit… the interests of the bourgeoisie. One can only agree with Michael that to cede your own judgement to others, especially perhaps a party leadership, on matters of great moral import, is dangerous. That he should have been able to see in the SWP, an organization that continues to proclaim its vanguard-Leninist credentials, a valuable political ally is perhaps the more surprising in the circumstances. The danger Michael detects is not unrelated to that lineage.
For any mature member of the left, the point that duly arrives, in other words, should arrive rather earlier than when some self-styled socialist outfit is beginning to imprison and kill people; it should arrive on the first day it usurps the autonomous judgement of conscientious political activists. Equally, no one should ever sign up to the thesis that you can’t criticize organizations you support because to do so will give ammunition to their enemies.
Note also in passing here Michael’s observation that ‘international capitalism can only offer inequality and war [etc]’. Yes, what did the Romans ever do for us? If he were to re-read some Marx he would find material to contradict this ludicrous statement, as he also would by taking a look at the real world.