struggle, requires a serious, principled approach to revolutionary unity.
Related to this is surely the question of the internal life and structure of the socialist party. J am certainly not advocating that the party should be a sort of parliament of the present revolutionary groups, with their strong sectarian Trotskyist traditions. We have had some experience of this in the recent past, with fairly disastrous consequences. What 1 am arguing is that the structure of a party should be open enough to allow wide-ranging discussions and real influence of the membership before important decisions are taken. I am arguing that the permanent political leadership of the party should never (save perhaps in the conditions of complete illegality which are not relevant to Britain in the foreseeable future) be only in the hands of a small group of full-timers. 1 am arguing that the structure should allow individuals from different areas, industries and fields of activity, with varying experiences, emphaSCS and views. to be elected to and participate in the permanent policy-making bodies of the party Why is it necessary to insist on these sorts of principles, which used to be common ground in IS but are no longer? Not because of an abstract commitment to the ideals of democracy, although I would point out that socialism has always claimed to fight for and develop the fullest possible democracy, and that no socialist before Stalin argued that there should be a systematic limitation in principle of the democracy within a revolutionary party. Nor because of a determined antiBolshevism: I should not even go so far as to say, as Duncan Hallas did a few years ago, that "In the very different conditions of late 20th century capitalism arguments for or against Lenin's position of 1903 are not so much right or wrong as irrelevant.'"! (Although there is a very important grain of truth in that.statement.) I would point out, than the members of combined are as you did a few years ago, that in the Bolshevik party important differences of opinion were often expressed, and even led to differences in action, without constant expulsions. Zinoviev and Kamenev openly opposed, and thereby gave away, the plans Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. This was surely the most important single decision ever taken by the Party, and yet they survived in its leadership until Stalin's purges.
What this shows is that in a revolutionary socialist party which really includes the vanguard of the working class, those who are actively fighting for socialism, and which leads substantial sections of workers, there must be room for quite a range of major differences. These will be differences of theoretical ideas, on important aspects of strategy, and on tactical questions both major and minor; it may not always be easy to reconcile them in practice at any one point in time. But these differences are the lifeblood of a living socialist movement This was true in Russia, and it is even more true in the much more complex circumstances of the working class in a country like Britain today. Tens of millions of workers, white-collar as well as manual, skilled and unskilled, in services as well as productive industry, in public as well 'Far more important for a future socialist party all the other groups the many thousands of active as private employment, black and white, working women as well as housewives, not to mention students, let alone the independent middle class: a socialist party is needed to overcome the unevenness between them, and surely it must also be able to have democratic feedback from its activists in all these groups? A working class used to parliamentary democracy, to a wide range of civil rights however precarious, and to democratic practice in a multitude of its own organisations: how can it be won to a party which does not have a very full and open democracy in itself? Will it believe in a fight for a socialist democracy led by a party which shows few signs of it in its own workings?
I have quoted several times from Hallas's article in Party and Class; 1 could have included great chunks of it, together with similar portions of the earlier articles by Tony Cliff and Chris Harman which were also included in that excellent volume, now sadly out of print. I think it is evident that you have changed your minds pretty drastically about the way in which socialist party will be created in this country. I, and many others, would like to know why. Is there a short cut, call it the SWP or what you will, which can overcome simply by vigorous intervention and resocialists and trade unionists who look to the Workers Party just a change of name? Can the ideas of International Socialism, which helped us to create the most significant revolutionary organisation in Britain for 50 years, still contribute to the development of an open, democratic, mass socialist part of the working class? Or is our tradition dying together with the name by which it was known?
Yours fraternally, MARTIN SHAW FOOTNOTES N 1. Martin Shaw and Richard Kuper, Political problems of revolutionary socialism today: the choices facing the International Socialists, IS internal discussion document 1976.
The connection with the ideas of our docu ment can be seen by comparing it with my discussion article on "Élections', IS 93, Nov/De asro. wnien is su me ony autemor wilnin tre SWP to produce a comprehensive political rationale electoral strategy revolutionary IBrE IRIS -ancie aloued 1o 'consistent, imaginative and non-sectarian campaigns'; it is unfortunate that it did not spell the revolutionary left, as this is undoubtedly the way in which an electoral strategy will have most success 3. See Paul Foot, should be a socialist: the case for the new Socialist Workers YOU Partv. 1977. and some recent issues of SW 4. Duncan Hallas, Why we are the Socialist Workers Party', SWP Bulletin, No. 1 February 1977 5. Hallas, in Hallas et al, Party and Class, Pluto Press n.d. (1971), pp.24-25.
• Mallas Why we are the Socialist Workers Party' Ibid IDIO Ibid.
'Alan Jones', Intro. to Problems of the East supplement to Red Weekly, No. 4, Jan 1977. 11. Hallas in Party and Class, p.15
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power in October 1917... and yet they survived in its leadership until Stalin's purges.'
'Zinoviev and Kamenev openly opposed, and thereby gave away, the plans for the Bolshevik seizure of
revolutionary left... and yet are repelled by its disunity.?