It is in many ways last-chance saloon for the unions to retain some control over the Labour Party on a national scale, and somewhat strangely, to break free of the constraints the Party has placed on them regarding political affiliation.

I must be honest and say that I believe the Labour Party (in its current state) is beyond redemption. After 12 years in power and in bed with big business and the media, the problems within the party are only going to get worse in my opinion.

However, compared to the Tories they are still without a doubt the lesser of the two evils. It is hard to compare them to the Lib Dems because it’s difficult to know quite how many Lib Dem policies are serious and how many are simply made to gain or strengthen support from voters, since the likelihood of them gaining power is so small.

Also, a short point on the imminency of a genuinely left-wing mass party; there is currently something of a vacuum in the political sphere. People do not trust any of the major parties, and at the moment this is playing into the hands of right-wing populists simply because the left is too weak and disjointed. There are myriad reasons why, but the bottom line is that the left in the UK needs to recognise that ‘rival’ left-wing organisations are still on their side, so to speak, in the fight against neo-liberal capitalism. In the situation we find ourselves in, our enemies’ enemy is indeed our friend, because in-fighting, debate and an overly-introspective mentality do not help to raise social awareness of class struggle or create powerful organisations to fight against the overwhelming forces arrayed against us.

On my point 4, your argument seems to assume a party will just grow straightaway and carry on growing. That is obviously ideal, but there are plenty of parties who claim to be democratic centralist at the moment who are stuck at a few hundred or a few thousand members. I accept your point that there may be ways in which their democratic centralism is insufficiently democratic, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that if they fix that they will immediately grow and continue growing.

I suppose you’re right about a vanguard; my opposition to the term is more about the way some people seem to view “being the vanguard” as having power to tell the working class what to do. If a vanguard can be conceived in a way which is not elitist, then ok. The trouble is that once you conceive of yourself as the vanguard, I’m not sure you can avoid setting yourself apart from the class in general.

My point 5 was more about people who aren’t members of a party, but active in autonomous movements who share our views on many issues.

Your point 2 really requires a discussion of what sort of society we think will emerge, which in turn hinges on what sort of society we have now.

If we’re aiming for a dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the traditional Marxist view, then we need to ask a) what that means in terms of organisational requirements and b) what the aim of such a ‘dictatorship’ is.

Elements like a democratically planned economy will still involve democratic centralism, one would think – because there are competing interests to resolve between workers as producers, workers as consumers and the objective needs of the economy as a whole. Debates would be had by workers, decisions taken and representatives appointed to carry them through.

I am entirely open to a different conception here, however.

Point 3, I don’t find particularly convincing. Every new member of every political party I’ve ever come across is anxious to throw themselves into political work, which, at the beginning, is just whatever the party is doing. They’ll already have some opinions and these will be further developed through conscious political discussion and practice.

If they wind up disagreeing with practice or theory, they should be encouraged to say so. The one thing I don’t think any individual member should ever be encouraged to defend is a “party line”. Members should encouraged to think and say what they want – the only time the collective judgment outweighs individual sentiments are in action, i.e. in what form of agitational work is undertaken and when appointed as representative for a collective decision to some other body.

On point 4, not really sure what you mean. So long as the party is continually open to new members, rather than adding a few hundred and then stopping, the general direction of the party will be self-correcting, in the sense that opinions will have to be put to the membership and constantly agreed upon and challenged.

What I would vigorously attack – in any party – is the development of self-identifying intellectuals, whose written works would take precedence over any other party member’s contribution. I don’t regard that as democratic, but rather the first step towards the development of the sort of elite you suggest.

You mention a vanguard; but presumably any political party is by nature a vanguard?

On point 5; surely one of the conditions of being a member of a political party is actively participating in the political work decided upon by the whole? For example, if one is an SWP member, one helps out with UAF work. Only by participating does one really develop the right to critique – and if some people feel themselves above participating, even while violently attacking the form of activity, then they are holding themselves above party and class.

The only way not participating can be justified, so far as I’m concerned, is if the activity is not the democratic will of the membership – it is imposed from above, or imposed via a bureaucratic procedure rather than a democratic procedure. Some small organisations are guilty of this sheerly by the moral authority of their more longstanding members – but all it really takes to begin shaking that is someone prepared to voice arguments to the contrary.

If that process happened with a number of the biggest unions, I suppose the Labour Party would be forced to change its rules about not allowing a union to contribute to another party if it is affiliated to them.

I would be very worried about the lack of information that local union branches have about some CLPs. In some cases, where union branches have switched off from Labour because of national politics, CLPs still retain some potential – either they are left-wing, working class or in some cases both. I’d be very concerned about how we make sure that union branches don’t base decisions on poor information.

Let’s not throw away what we have already – however flawed. I don’t see why unions couldn’t maintain notional affiliation at a national level, even if the funding was done much more at a local level.

2) I agree that democratic centralism is probably the only model for ensuring workers’ control. Most other models underestimate the unity of action necessary to defeat capitalism. (Although it should be pointed out that unity of action doesn’t necessarily mean we all do the same thing; it does however mean we need to act in complementary ways and with some kind of co-ordination.)

However, it’s probably not the method by which we would choose to organise society post-capitalism. This is problematic for a few reasons. If new forms of organisation come out of struggle, this process may be hampered by a rigid form of organisation like democratic centralism which doesn’t allow for much evolution by its nature. It’s also a bit of a disconnect to be offering an alternative to capitalism but then maintaining a hierachical structure which, although necessary to defeat a highly organised foe, may not allow for the kind of freedom we are fighting for.

3) Similar to 2), democratic centralism may not be the most attractive organisational method to new members, and that may hamper building a mass movement that can defeat capitalism. When people first join a party they are unlikely to have fully-formed views – they may not understand the necessity for unity of action and be unwilling to submit to one another in the extreme way that full-blown democratic centralism requires.

4) Again, flowing out of 3), democratic centralism may not be the best way of organising a small party, even if it is a good way of organising a large mass party. Large mass parties are almost certainly going to be small parties at some stage, so this is a relevant concern. But the attempt to preserve a general ideological direction in a small party which is vulnerable to wild shifts with recruitment of only a few hundred members – that attempt is likely to result in some form of vanguardism or at least the formation of cadres which can easily turn into elites who act in parallel to the democratic structures of the party.

5) Finally, there are almost certainly going to be those who aren’t willing to submit to democratic centralism, but who are still basically on our side. It’s a big challenge to work out how we can work together with them now, how we can complement each other and how we would accommodate each other rather than merely take control in a post-capitalist situation.

I can only go by what I see.

What I see are new district trades councils springing up under the initiative of groups outside Labour, that where a recovery is being made in trades unionism (and it is very much early days) it is happening outside the Labour Party.

This is reinforced by the clear indications from the most militant sections of the working class that they want little to do with Labour – the RMT and the FBU being cases in point; each of whom have donated, though not systematically, to other organisations. The CWU looks a likely follower.

Meanwhile, within Labour, the single grouping of the socialist Left – the LRC – is extremely limited in its reach. I can’t for the life of me think why, except either that the LRC’s budget doesn’t allow for agitational work amongst Labour members (which is worrying of itself) or that the composition of Labour has changed to such an extent that there has been no echo for the agitational work to feed on.

Essentially all collective internal life of the Labour Party seems to have ceased; the only connection between branches are those well-to-do souls who, coming from the big regional centres and London, form the backbone of the think-tanks like Compass, who publish their work online and run meetings which individuals from the regions can attend.

Conference is the one exception and it is essentially powerless.

So what material are we starting with, if we’re working within Labour?

This problem is compounded because for every day, for every week, for every month and for every year that we fail – for all our patient work – the disaffection, caused by the attitude of our leaders, grows and creates a Left outside Labour with which we find it hard to work, either because of the attitudes of the some of the unions or because the rules of the party forbid working with groups that promote candidates against Labour.

Yet such parties and candidates have as much legitimacy as any Labour member, and many of them are to the left and better grounded in the local labour movement than the Labour Party members I know.

That was one reason why I was enthusiastic about the Convention of the Left. Were district trades councils, Left CLPs and the other socialist groups to become involved, we would have a network of what amount to local soviets which could collectively reach out to workers. Yet no action was taken, for all the wonderful things said (based on second hand accounts) at the original CotL, or its lacklustre successor at Brighton this year.

Edit: PS, I know our posts are somewhat off-topic here, Paul – the original post, after all, was aimed at validating democratic centralism as an organisational notion – but there is a link: whether local ‘conventions of the left’ or local ‘socialist alliances’, the transition from a lot of fragmented parties to a wholesome party of socialism will operate via democratic centralism – with everyone having their spoke, and then actions being decided upon and followed through. The only difference between limited groups such as this and a full party would be the federal character and initially limited areas of competence.

As you’d expect me to, I’ll home straight in on your contention ‘no change will now come to Labour from within’.

As you know, I still view things in a more positive light; as I’ve said on a number of occasions, I’m not saying that I always will think so, but I still believe that on balance the Labour Party remains the most likely source of (and infrastructure for) a mass party of the type you would wish to see.

But you are right to set out the scale of the challenge facing the Labour left, and to say ‘I have yet to see a competent exposition of how that will change.’

Indeed, nor have I, but that is what I have in mind for my 4th part of 6 series (yes, i know time draws on, but it’s a long write). It is, I suspect, the main challenge that Tom Miller may seek to address in his (promised?) reply.

But as I’m here, let me try to set out the framework for my pending exposition, though some of it is still half formed in my head (and this reflects some of the complexity and uncertainty). I will do so, given time constraints today, without the ‘opportunity cost’ analysis that really needs to go with it i.e. what other left grouping options might offer us but will not be taken up if resources are devoted to work within the Labour party.

As with your piece, I would want to set my argument in historical context, but (and again this will not surprise you) my main reference point is what the British Left achieved, and failed to achieve, in the 1970s/1980′s, because I think therein lies some of the answer to what we should and shouldn’t do this time around. This is not, by the way, any nostaligic personal account, as I wasn’t involved in politics in any way during this period, as I was busy down the pub; any political awakening I have had came much later.

On the plus side, the left up and down the country took over in their entirely many CLPs and local party infrastuctures, including many Labour groups and therefore control of council budgets. At this remove it is easy to underestimate the scale of that success, and the level of grassroots organisation that went into it in all the places people are familiar with – London, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool etc (I will not focus here on the differences).

But just as it is easy to underestimate the level of effor that went into taking control, and the scale of achievement in doing so, there is a tendency to overestimate the ‘real world’ achievements. By and large they were limited to the world of the local authority, though housing developments were an important aspect of that, and confronting capitalism in the workplace (or in the ‘reserve army’ of the 1980s) was not something that was tackled, for all the rhetoric, because the links between party and unions were either insuffciently developed or frankly fraught, with the unions of that time still the bastions of the Labour right, all the way down to local level.

In addition,and relatedly and as I’ve set out in other places, the ideological undrpinnings of the local Labour left was often dragged away from the fundamentals of work with and for the working class, and towards the more nebulous identity politics which had arisen from post-Marxist thinking in the 1960s and 1970s. I won’t do Laclau and Mouffe again here, though.

The challenge this time around is to emulate the success of the 1970s and 1980s Labour left activists in taking control of local Labour party infrastructures, but then not to close in on themselves. Instead, local branches/CLPs will need to open out towards unions/trade councils etc.

This was difficult in the 1970s, for the Labour right reasons identified above. This time, my sense is that while nationally many unions are still held in the grip of the Labour right, at local and even regional level there can be a much greater joining of minds and efforts.

Of course, this is only a first stage; as long as the Labour hierarcy of MPs and paid staffers holds sway, and as long as coference is not the final arbiter on policy, we will not get to far beyond local successes (though these are important).

What promises to strike through this Gordian knot of hierarchical rulings, occasional, erm, inconsistencies in parliamentary selection process, the posiion of MPs as untouchables, and the power of the NEC over and above conference, is that the Labour party is skint, and entirely dependent on the unions if it is not to go bankrupt (with NEC membership personal liability etc etc).

Alongside the take over of branches/CLPs, the other main drvie has to be the disaffiliation of unions from the national Labour party, and their (bigger contributing?) re-affiliation at local (or perhaps initially, regional) level. For the present, this way forward is more feasible because leftwingers in unions are more likely to be able to take power on the basis of this disaffiliation/reaffilitaion platform, and because their mamdate to do so can actually be executed.

The rest follows. With money flowing to local parties on the basis of local commitments, the whole power structure is swiftly reversed; MPs will need to submit their operational proposals to local parties/unions if they are to receive financial assistance, and CLPs can start to make demands not just about MP policy positions but about, for example, how much the MP might need to contribute to funds. The NEC becomes the servant to the party rather than the PLP, and will need as part of that to change the conference rules.

Of course this is a simplistic schema, and life is much messier than that, but this is my initial rising to Dave’s challenge on how the Labour party (with union involvement) re-positions itself as the infrastructure most likely to be the key party of the left for the next fifty years. Sorry it was a bit hurried.