The announcement by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana of their intention to form a new leftwing party in Britain and the collection of more than 800,000 signatures from people wishing to take part has naturally opened an intense debate in the British labour, trade union and socialist movement on what sort of party we want and need.
Zarah Sultana has made her own views clear both in her New Left Review interview and in her interview with Novara Media (from 17:55 in the linked video).
Activist forums, including the well-supported Your Party Supporters Facebook group are passionately debating the party’s structure and mission. There have been numerous proposals, including an extensive proposal for a Constitution that has drawn supportive and critical comment.
This blog exists to promote the strategy, perspective and programme of Marxism, which is a revolutionary doctrine advocating the ‘forcible overthrow of all existing conditions’. Encouraged by our founders to ‘disdain to conceal our views’, we have decided to set out here our thoughts on the structure that the new party should adopt. We chose to do so without wrapping up our intentions in evasive phrases, knowing hints or the maddening confection of academic bullshit.
So here is our suggestion. It is for a party structured not for constitutional routine, but for combat.
A proposal for the structure of the new party
The structure and constitution of a new party should flow from its mission.
Our mission is revolution
The mission is to transform society, eliminate class distinctions and build a socialist system in which the fruits of our common labour are shared equally by all.
As the British ruling class, like every capitalist class, is a small minority of society, to maintain its rule it relies not on democratic methods but on a tightly controlled media, rigged institutions, manipulation of the structure of the labour and trade union movement, repressive policing and ultimately brute force.
The extreme violence of the British ruling class overseas — from Africa and India to the Middle East and Ireland — is just a taste of what they would unleash at home if a mass movement challenged their rule. We saw a glimpse of it in the great miners’ strike, in the anti-poll tax movement and in the repression being meted out today to the Palestine solidarity movement. The simple fact that the system of austerity applies to everything except the Royal figurehead and the military is a promissory note from the ruling class to deal violently with any rebellion.
Therefore, if we take our mission seriously, we must understand that no majority in parliament, no peaceful mass movement, no majority of the population can unseat the British ruling class without force. That means revolution, the forcible dissolution of the capitalist apparatus of repression and its replacement with the rule of the working class through our own democratic councils of delegates and our own defence force.
We can win
Let no one be in any doubt that this is entirely possible. Why? Because at last we have a mass party of our own coming into formation: a working-class party with scores of thousands of members and the expressed sympathy of at least 800,000 people.
This is an historic moment because such a party in Great Britain can build the numbers and influence to give leadership to millions of workers, to direct a social revolution. On one condition: that it understands its task and organises accordingly.
That means the structure, democratic processes and rules of the party need to reflect that it will not be predominantly a constitutional parliamentary party, but a combat party—a party of action in the workplaces, on the streets, on the estates and in the council chambers. A party structured to:
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- lead mass popular campaigns of direct action
- win the trade unions to a coordinated programme of strikes and occupations
- defend itself and defend the people by convening a working-class People’s Defence Association: combining professional teams to deliver legal defence, specialist cybersecurity, media and counter-disinformation operations, and the physical defence of our party and people against harassment by the state and far right gangs.
A combat party of this type must be able to combine legal and illegal work, not fearing to defy capitalist laws when they are unjust.
What does this mean concretely for our structure?
The party cannot be controlled, like capitalist parties, by its elected parliamentary representatives. Nor can its executive be selected from above through behind-the-scenes manoeuvres. Every member has an equal vote.
This means that the party must be structured in such a way that the opinions of individuals genuinely matter and that everyone is engaged in a mature process.
In the age of virtual meetings and digital votes, there is enhanced possibility for involvement, discussion and debate. But this comes with risks. A digital plebiscite, in which a real meeting of officials draws up proposals and a passive membership simply approves it online, cannot empower hundreds of thousands of members and runs the risk of reproducing the bifurcated structures of mass labour and social democratic parties.
The only answer, the only genuine alternative, is to build the widest number of local and industrial branches, each anchored in a district or a workplace. These branches should have the widest open debate on the outlook, perspectives, programme and mechanics of the party. They should then democratically elect delegates to regional or cross-industrial councils bringing together representatives of a wider number of branches.
They should also elect delegates to the sovereign body of the party: an annual congress comprising one delegate for every 1,000 members.
The congress will be empowered to effect changes to the constitution and programme of the party. All votes will take place on a simple majority basis. The congress will take place in public so long as security and legality allow.
The congress will elect delegates to a national council which in turn shall elect a national executive. All of these delegates shall be subject to recall by the bodies that have elected them and trusted them as representatives.
The national council shall meet at least bimonthly and will be sovereign between congresses, and the weekly executive will be sovereign between meetings of the national council. The executive may elect a secretariat that sits in permanent session, and which is sovereign between the weekly meetings of the executive.
All delegates shall be instantly recallable by the organisations that elected them.
So that political debate is meaningful, so that it is possible for people to persuade and be persuaded, so that the democracy of the party is a living process and not merely an accounting mechanism, delegates may not be mandated to vote in a particular way by the bodies that elected them, but may be recalled at any time if those bodies are unconvinced that their delegate continues to reflect their views.
To prevent a caste of public affairs professionals and other careerists undertaking corporate entryism in the party, no official of the party shall be paid more than the average wage, all administrative posts shall be rotated and all posts will be subject to re-election on an annual basis.
To ensure the fullest and freshest expression of dissenting views, the party will permit members to organise themselves in exclusive groupings reflecting adherence to a particular viewpoint, into platforms and slates aiming to amend the party’s programme or to replace the party’s leadership in whole or in part and into caucuses to promote and defend the interests of oppressed groups including: women; national minorities; black, Asian, and other racially and ethnically oppressed groups; lesbians, gays and bisexuals; trans and all gender non-conforming people; disabled people; people suffering from physical and mental disabilities; people disadvantaged by the social treatment of their physical or neurodevelopmental status; and young people.
In addition to internal caucuses, the party may create externally facing mass women’s, youth and other organisations to build support in society, as well as to organise the party’s most supportive demographics (renters, migrants, claimants, pensioners, disabled people, occupational groups).
The party will organise its working members into industrial departments with the aim of organising within the trade unions to promote class struggle, to campaign for industrial action with the trade union officials where possible and without them where necessary and to aim openly to stand candidates for the leadership of the unions.
The party organ will be a central digital multimedia hub disseminating information through an accredited website and blog, regional and special interest blogs, streams on key social media platforms, email, and downloadable and if necessary sustainably printable publications. The national council shall elect an editorial collective for the digital hub.
The programme of the party will not be a credo to which the members swear fidelity, but an active guide to the practice, principles, and fighting goals of the party. It will link the practical steps to be taken in pursuit of the interests of the workers and oppressed today with the necessary forms of organisation and struggle needed to bring about a revolution.
All members shall be obligated to promote and strive to implement the programme of the party, whilst maintaining the right to clarify, criticise and seek to change the programme of the party through frank and open debate.
A combat party must avoid the risk of a chasm developing between a layer of official activists and a passive, inactive membership along the lines of reformist and social democratic structures. Therefore, a member of the party will be someone who accepts its programme, pays a regular subscription to the party as set by the party itself and who participates in a branch or other authorised organisation of the party.
Unions, campaigns and existing socialist parties and currents should be permitted and encouraged to affiliate to the party, on condition that affiliation confers no special rights or privileges beyond the preservation of existing rights to organise themselves and to have rights of representation on the national council in proportion to their size. All individual members of the party’s affiliates will have no more and no less in the way of rights than those enjoyed by the party’s individual members at large.
As internationalists we are just one part of a global movement of class struggle in every country, so we will regularly convene and participate in international conferences of like-minded parties and currents with a view to forming a world union of socialist parties.