This is the main motion that was passed at the relaunch conference of the Socialist Labour Network on September 14th.
Against Neoliberalism!
We need a new movement and political party that fights for the interests of the working-class and all those who are oppressed and exploited, against capitalism and imperialism. Workers’ social gains have been under determined attack since the 1970s in a decades-long capitalist offensive. Capitalist control of the media has been a key component of this. Public services have been cut, privatised or abolished entirely. Because of the anti-trade union laws, unions have been rendered relatively ineffective. Capital’s power over working class life has been massively increased. Our democratic rights and right to protest have come under systematic attack.
The capitalist system is suffering a historical decline of profitability and this is manifested in both attacks on the working class at home and in the Global South.It can only rectify this decline by attacking workers’ living standards and social gains to enrich itself. The bureaucracy of the trade unions has, in general, passively allowed this to happen to many millions of working-class people, their members. Social democracy both at home and in Europe has collapsed into authoritarian neoliberalism and has been a full participant both in attacks on workers’ standards of living and imperialist wars.
The Labour and social democratic left has been totally ineffective and in practice has also accepted the ‘logic’ of neoliberalism.
The concept of social-democratic parties as a ‘broad church’ has meant in practice that these parties have accepted the logic and dictates of capitalism. Because of this, they have never opposed the logic of neoliberalism and confined their demands to limited renationalisation and increased taxation rather than workers’ control of the means of production. Today’s left must start with opposition to neoliberalism with its privatisations of the public sector.
Against Imperialism!
Our fundamental principles are:
(1) Unconditional opposition to Zionism and support for the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation, along with defence of the struggles of other peoples in Western/South-Western Asia and elsewhere against US imperialism, e.g., Iraq and Syria.
(2) Opposition to NATO, AUKUS and all imperialist wars and proxy wars. Those being waged or threatened in Eastern Europe against Russia and its population, and similar threats from the United States’ ‘pivot to Asia’, which means accelerating threats against China. We also oppose the lack of peoples’ democracy in e.g. the present Chinese and Russian regimes.
We understand that there is considerable room for disagreement about some of the details of these situations, and we are aware that many of those on the left have different interpretations. Debating such differences is healthy, but we must never lose sight of the basic principles of anti-Zionism, anti-imperialism and hostility to imperialism’s armed forces and warmaking instruments. We cannot accept those who support Zionism, NATO or similar bodies whose aim is to defend Western dominance over the global South, which now includes Russia and China.
We are also opposed to imperialism’s client neo-colonial regimes which operate as the agents of imperialism. Without for example the complicity of the corrupt and repressive Arab regimes, there would not have been genocide in Gaza.
Against the Manifold Social Oppressions generated by Capitalism
We recognise that capitalism does not just oppress exploit working-class people in economic terms, but oppresses other layers of the population, often defined by characteristics that cross class lines. Women are oppressed in class society because women are essential to the reproduction of the working class and thus perform essentially free labour in the family. Workers also benefit from the crumbs of imperialism and its ideological expression in the labour movement is hostility to and discrimination against migrant workers and refugees, particularly those whose origins lie in countries which we colonised. There is also the oppression of sexual minorities and those who don’t fit neatly into the ‘family values’ ideology of the ruling class: LGBT people most notably.
We have also seen the ruling class wage a ‘culture war’ in which the working class and others suffering from oppression and exploitation are co-opting into supporting the values of capitalism and thus their own oppression. Thus, we see workers who oppose abortion on religious grounds, workers who look to immigration controls as a panacea, homophobia and transphobia.
We must draw the line against those who use these issues to promote imperialism or attacks against any oppressed group. We must be the advocates of full democratic rights for oppressed groups. Our job is to become a tribune of the oppressed, and part of the road to that is full democratic debate of these issues, especially where there is a clash between di#erent oppressed layers. We cannot yield to any form of identity politics whereby those who identify with the ruling class claim to be oppressed.
For full freedom of debate to develop policies and organisational forms that can take us to socialism, overcoming the failures of social-democracy and the bureaucratised ‘communism’ of the old Stalinist bloc.
All the above implies the need for a movement and a party that acquires its cohesion through freedom of debate and programmatic discussion. Within the parameters and limits laid out above, the watchword of any new party should be ‘freedom of criticism, unity in action’. This goes right beyond the limits of the present democratic-socialist and social-democratic parties and the bureaucratised ‘communist’ parties and ‘Trotskyist’ groups, where dissent is seen as a challenge to their leaderships. Working class democracy is not an optional extra, it will be the most effective weapon for building such a party.
We in the SLN cannot declare ourselves to be such a party. But we can advocate unification of the various forces that have been driven out of the Labour Party by its authoritarian and neoliberal decline, together with other socialists, to come together as a network, on the same basis as ourselves, to deepen collaboration and lay the basis for such a Party. We need a convention of the Left to be convened on a broad basis to begin this task.
