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Joonas Laine of the Finnish publication Revalvaatio interviews Murray Smith on socialism, the European Union and the perspectives of the European Left. (Via Links )
December 12, 2013 -- Revalvaatio -- Murray Smith is a Scottish socialist who has been involved in leftist politics in various Western European countries since the 1960s. Since 2009 he has lived in Luxemburg, where he takes part in the activities of the left party déi Lenk and was elected to be the party’s representative in the European Left Party’s executive bureau in 2010.
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Perhaps it’s not possible to generalise, as traditions and practical party policies in different countries may be different, but what is your opinion on what the relation of these three types of parties "should” be? I’m referring to the issue of unity here. Do you think there should be attempts to get together into one big left/workers party?
Murray Smith: I think that as far as parties are concerned the main dividing line is not ideological – communist, social-democratic, etc. – but practical. In the face of the neoliberal offensive there are parties that have basically gone over to the neoliberal order. That is the case with all of the social-democratic parties in Europe, with varying degrees of conviction or reticence. That did not start with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet bloc, though the removal of an alternative to capitalism accelerated and facilitated the process.
For the Communist parties of course the shock and effects of these events were much greater. Even the parties that had taken their distance from the Soviet Union were profoundly shaken by the collapse into capitalism, because the Soviet Union was nevertheless part of their history and had remained for them a reference. (One could say something similar on a lesser scale about the effect on the far Left, the Trotskyists certainly. It was not so much the collapse of the Stalinist or post-Stalinist regimes that destabilised them. It was the restoration of capitalism. That was not supposed to happen. What was supposed to happen was an anti-bureaucratic revolution).
In the first category the parties tended to be characterised by a rather uncritical balance-sheet of "real socialism”, by not very democratic internal regimes and by a tepid to say the least attitude towards unity with other political forces. And also by an attitude towards Europe that as a rule simply rejected the EU in the name of national sovereignty. That is a generalisation, of course, not equally true for the different parties. Among the parties which are situated in this category most are rather small, with little influence on the political life of their countries. The big exceptions are the KKE and the Portuguese Communist Party. The KKE, which plays an extremely sectarian and divisive role in Greece, is playing an active role in trying to regroup the "orthodox” parties. At the moment this seems to be leading to the creation of a mini-International consisting of the KKE and some mostly very small and marginal groups. The PCP, while maintaining Marxist-Leninist references, is much more flexible in its practice. The distance between the two parties appears to be widening. The parties which fall into the second category are in general part of the EL or close to it. They are characterised by a much more unitary attitude, greater internal democracy, more emphasis on the dimensions of feminism and ecology, a critical balance sheet of Stalinism and a commitment to democratic socialism. The biggest ones are the French and Spanish parties. These parties, along with parties such as the PRC, Bloco and Synaspismos formed the basis of the European Left Party.
To come back to where I began. The dividing line is not primarily ideological, it is very concretely between those who accept neoliberal capitalism and those who don’t. That being the case we should seek to unite those forces which want to resist really existing capitalism and try to work towards a common perspective for doing so and for going beyond capitalism. Some of course refuse to be united, (although we should keep trying to convince them). In the first place that is the case for a series of communist parties, as mentioned above; in the second place, some Trotskyists and other far-left forces. Just as there are CPs which refuse to be part of a broader European Left, there are also Trotskyists who do. What they have in common in my opinion is that they think that their own political tradition is a sufficient basis for building a party and for political action. Of course it is possible that some people in the EL also think that, but in practical terms they don’t let it get in the way of possible unity.
JL: A general question on the European Left Party. It was founded about ten years ago. What does it does do? What does the cooperation of the member parties amount to in practice? Are you satisfied with what the ELP is doing and how it’s functioning at present?
MS: The EL was founded in Rome in 2004 and had its first congress in Athens in 2005. It was the outcome of discussions going back to the 1990s, and initially involved mainly parties from the pro-Moscow communist tradition. Personally I didn’t accord too much importance to it at the beginning, though I did recommend that the SSP send someone to Athens. I had myself been involved as a representative of the SSP in the early stages of the creation of the European Anticapitalist Left. An article by François Vercammen , one of the key people in launching the EACL, on the Rome meeting commented on the absence of references to capitalism or socialism in the Manifesto that was adopted. And that was typical of the early phase of the EL. That is not the case today, there has definitely been an evolution. I will come back to that later on. Vercammen also remarked that in an atmosphere of consensus the only real debate at the congress was on the question of the condemnation of Stalinism, where there was some friction, some parties of the East being at least reticent on the question. I think this is still a potential problem.
The EL now occupies most of the space to the left of social democracy or social liberalism in key countries in Europe. What happened to the EACL is instructive. When it was launched in 2000 the intention was to bring together new pluralist anti-capitalist political formations such as the Left Bloc and the RGA. It was specifically intended not to be a collection of far-left groups, the LCR being in a sense the exception, because of its representativeness (it had at the time two MEPs) and also its well-established democratic practice. The fact that there was a need for such a regroupment, prior to the EL being founded, was indicated by the participation of parties like Rifondazione and Synaspismos. It began to become superfluous once the EL was formed: it could only justify its existence by taking a position on the far left, and it effectively ceased to function after 2006. Subsequent anti-capitalist meetings have in fact been essentially the collections of far-left groups that the EACL was meant not to be. Founding members of the EACL like the RGA and the Bloco are now very active members of the EL.
What does the EL do? First of all, it functions by consensus. This has some disadvantages, but it does not only have disadvantages. It can also make it possible to go forward, to adopt positions and to take everyone with you, even if it takes time. There has been progressively developing "a common understanding of events and tasks”, to use a well-known phrase of Trotsky. Not on everything in the world, but certainly on Europe, the nature of the European Union, on how to combat neoliberal Europe. There are also functioning working groups on specific themes, made up of people from different countries. We should also mention the Transform! Network, made up of national research foundations such as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany, Espaces Marx in France, the Nicos Poulantzas Institute in Greece, etc. Transform! is not formally part of the EL but works very closely with it, organises seminars and conferences, as do the EL itself and its member parties. It also produces a magazine in several languages. Both Transform! and the EL were seriously involved in the Altersummit process. The attempt to use the European "Citizens’ Initiative” to conduct a campaign for the creation of a "European Fund for social and ecological development” failed not because it was not seriously undertaken but because of a veto from the EU. Am I satisfied with what the EL is doing and how it is functioning? Well, I’ve only been involved with EL since the Paris congress at the end of 2010. It could certainly function better, but that’s always true. But it seems to me that it is going broadly in the right direction, both in terms of its political evolution and in terms of its functioning. And there is no doubt that, with the inevitable ups and downs, the influence of the parties of the EL has been increasing steadily – and even sometimes spectacularly, as with Syriza.