In December 2024, the Prometheus journal published my essay ‘One Big Party? Why partyism in Britain today means building an electoral alliance’.
The piece was a response to the call for contributions on the question ‘what is the party?’
Part 1 is just some context to the ongoing discussion. Part 2 gets into the material basis for two kinds of sectarianism which prevent unity.
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1. Background notes
The period of a revived Labour Left seems to have drawn to a decisive close – within the Labour Party, at least, Corbyism ended in 2024. ‘Corbynism without Labour’ is a mass phenomenon now, with much of the party-political energy flowing from it into Green and independent electoral campaigns.
My Prometheus essay does not go into the details of why left groups in Britain are discussing ‘the party’, but it’s worth mentioning here:
A new British government has formed and the Labour Right has revealed itself to have little in the way of a distinctive or popular programme compared to that of the previous Tory government. Despite winning an overwhelming parliamentary majority in 2024, Labour’s total vote was lower than when led by Corbyn in 2019.
This is what makes the start of 2025 different from the start of 2024. And this is the context which gives a new urgency to partyism in Britain.
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The politics of the class
An advanced section of the working class has undertaken an entirely transactional support for Labour in the general election, despite its meagre offer, to get a failed Tory government out – and some have broken with the party entirely, backing Green, independent, and Workers Party candidates.
The sense among the intermediate layers of the working class that we should ‘wait and see’ what the new government would bring has now turned to disillusionment.
The bulk of workers with advanced and intermediate class-consciousness are going to be faced with ‘which side are you on?’ battles if and when disputes over pay and job cuts take place, particularly industrial action in the public sector which when national becomes part of the official politics of the state with parties taking positions for and against the striking workers.
We are going to get Labour austerity after years of Tory austerity – this will shift opinion as people not directly involved see news updates about strike action and react to disruption with antipathy, apathy, or sympathy and enthusiasm that someone else is making a stand.
Strikes and protests against the new Labour austerity measures will feed into the sense among the advanced workers that either the governing party must change course or it should be challenged at the ballot box in an organised fashion.
For the most conservative section of our class, there exists the possibility of its division of opinion being overcome through the formation of a Tory-Reform alliance at the next general election. This arrangement between the parties will take place on an informal basis at the very least.
The function of Reform is to act as a revival of the Brexit/Boris operation which allowed the Tories to win a majority for the Right – ending their coalition with the centrist Liberals after 2015 – by broadening their base of support by promising “levelling up” investment in deindustrialised town they could win territory previously held by Labour. (The very weakness of Reform is its inability to champion the common-sense reforms backed by its supporters among the masses.)
If the advanced section of the class is unable to extract concessions from the ruling class and the government, and unwilling to coalesce into a political force to Labour’s left, the most conservative section will pull the rest of the class towards it as the intermediate layers of workers become demoralised. The racialised politics of national unity will be in the foreground and the class politics of workers’ unity will be pushed into the background. We can’t allow this to happen.
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Popularity contests, splits
It is worth noting that Labour’s most popular policies – improvements to workers’ rights, for example, or public ownership of the railways – are those which it must implement as concessions to unions, enforced by the capacity of deputy leader Angela Rayner to quit at any time and call for Keir Starmer to be replaced as leader.
The political preference of the unions is typically for an economic programme of reflation through state-led public investment, with the extension of strategic public ownership – contrary to the usual and unpopular demands of the capitalist class for deregulation, the maintenance of structural unemployment, and for the state to allow private investment to determine both the growth rate and industrial strategy.
Genuine populism – economic measures which will be popular and uplift working class people, in turn generating popular support for the government – belongs to the left as a policy agenda. Yet there can be no further moves in this direction without pressure from outside Labour. Mild dissent raised by seven Labour MPs – to the continuation of Tory policies which are demonstrably causing increased child poverty – resulted in the whip being withdrawn.
The Labour Right faction experienced the biggest shock of its existence during 2015 to 2019 when it lost control of the party leadership. Thus the threat of Starmer is to suspend MPs who dissent, a disciplinary move which is far more authoritarian than any previous party leader. His authoritarianism is backed by wealthy donors who care little for Labour’s electoral success but who are indispensable for the Labour Right as a faction.
The scale of the crisis of Labourism seems guaranteed to produce further political splits – this has already happened in local government in many places due to the Labour Right’s policy on Palestine during 2024 and the undermining of local candidate selection processes. Much larger splits will occur if the government’s economic programme does not “lurch to the left” – but it is stopping this lurch which is the Labour Right’s reason for existence.
In the past, splits have not produced an enduring electoral formation to Labour’s left. Some of the reasons for this are structural (the voting system, unions sticking with Labour) but there is the possibility that the organisational model of the left, inherited from the Comintern, constitutes an additional barrier to success: we therefore will need to theorise a multi-tendency party and then practice this theory.
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2. Pluralism or sectarianism
My contention in the essay for Prometheus is that if we begin to practice a form of multi-tendency association and cooperation through an enduring electoral alliance, more people can be won to the theory and a unified yet plural party could emerge as a common-sense response.
Although my essay did not have the space to outline a theory of the revolutionary transformation of state power in any detail, it is implicit in my understanding of partyism that we cannot stand aside from the high politics of government – even if we are in no position to form a new republic and are wary of being drawn into coalition government of the capitalist state. Influence is possible now even if governance is not.
I am heartened by the various moves at regroupment on the left. From the Collective initiative to Forging Communist Unity. These are tentative and limited in scope at this stage.
So far these unity efforts are disconnected developments, set apart both from the considerations of mass membership organisations of the class (not just from the unions but the smaller socialist and communist parties, too).
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Two kinds of sectarianism
These initiatives face a pull in two different directions, each of which has a material basis that gives rise to fears about losing: losing resources, losing support, losing control.
One force is sectarianism – an approach to party-building on the basis of an existing theorist or a novel theory. Its material basis is the requirement that small groups reproduce their operations over time, which creates a party apparatus.
The risk of unity from a sectarian perspective is that instead of an economy of scale being developed in a larger organisation, an existing asset is liquidated. It could be the loss of a party publication with a distinct perspective, and consequently the loss of income or prestige for those working on it, or the fear could be that there may be the loss of a political principle, that unification means liquidation.
The other force is broad-frontism – this is a sectarian perspective of a new type. It seeks to build unions and workers’ parties yet it adheres to bureaucratic centralism which inhibits growth of the movement. Its material basis is the integration of individuals into the constitutional order of the capitalist state by virtue of elected office, a full-time position in a trade union, etc.
The fear of the broad-frontist is that unity with broader layers will be disruptive to electoral or trade union work. This fear justifies the limitation on the open expression of differences of opinion in case things get out of hand. It can also be used to justify prestige and privilege not being challenged in democratic processes. Because, again, things could get out of control.
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Allying fears
The only way to allay the fears which give rise to sectarian and broad-frontist impulses is to enter into alliance with the belief that a tolerable deal is possible for both parties, that principles can be brought into alignment with political practice.
If there’s no faith, there can be no progress. We should choose to believe that the impulse of sectarian purity can have a positive outcome compared to liquidationism – political principles can be retained, minority opinions can be heard.
And we should choose to believe that the broad-frontist impulse can have a positive outcome compared to the tyranny of structurelessness – leftwing politicians and trade union officials are required to advance, and they need not be self-serving to the detriment of the rank and file if processes of accountability exist.
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Alliancism
I am not suggesting that we should have this faith without a good reason:
At the end of the first term of the last Labour government, the Socialist Alliance existed. It didn’t exist for long, of course! But while it did there were a number of significant tendencies on the left who were cooperating on a political response to a Labour Right government.
If it was possible then, is it possible now?
Given the pressures which this Labour Right government faces, we should expect splits by MPs (greater than just Galloway, which led to Respect) and by affiliated unions (more than just the RMT, which led to TUSC).
Road Bloc has affirmed that the road to socialism in Britain runs through a parliamentary majority committed to a left wing programme and the establishment of a democratic republic by a constituent assembly. Central to this will be a party with a mass base of support.
But the starting point for a mass party of the working class, capable of getting us on the road to socialism, is an electoral alliance that surrounds not only the Right in the form of the Tories and Reform but also the Labour Right.
If the left wants to grow in influence, it will have to cooperate beyond the boundaries of the existing small groups, minor parties, and Labour itself.
This is the left bloc strategy: challenging the right wing of Labour, defending its left wing from attacks from the right, allowing the workers’ movement to have independent representation from that which is cultivated and funded by the capitalist class to block the progress of the working class in taking political power and becoming the new ruling class.
An annual motions-based delegate conference is necessary to put this alliance together and sustain it over time, generating the democratic culture which can create a mass party.
These conferences will not include the Labour Left MPs or socialists among the Labour rank and file – not at first! Until such time as the major unions disaffiliate from the party, it collapses in support among its base, and/or the electoral system changes, a new mass party cannot emerge to completely break Labour’s hold on working class political representation and replace labourism with socialism.
We cannot wait for a split by the majority of union leaders, Labour Left MPs, or Labour voters, before taking action and forming the alliance.