The decision of the Corbynite clique, which now rules Your Party, to ban the members of virtually every Marxist political organisation from membership, is the culmination of a long series of oligarchical manoeuvres. Try as it might, this faction cannot conceal its longstanding hostility to thorough members’ democracy: instead, we have the strict leadership of Corbyn and his advisers, a group of persons distinguished neither by their competence nor by their refined political judgment. Thus, have the hunted—those who were banished from the Labour Party by the Starmerites—become the hunters, determined to exclude and expel organised socialists. How Your Party can now be expected to survive, possessing neither the broad appeal of Zack Polanski’s Green Party, nor the devoted socialist cadre of the groups it has banned, is a mystery which nobody has yet condescended to explain.
Of course, there is much to be abhorred in the politics and organisational principles of bureaucratic Marxist sects. But I am far from thinking this would have precluded any effort to discover some modus vivendi between them and Your Party. Any committee entrusted with the task could have produced numerous practicable proposals to that end, whether by dual membership, a system of affiliation, or some other expedient. The building of a functional, pluralist party of the radical Left would have been no easy matter: doubtless there would have been mistakes, trial and error, and warm debate—and all of it would have been quite forgivable. What was not forgivable was for the Corbynites to foreclose all such possibilities by founding a new populist sect under their suffocating control—a sect with very little prospect of success, led by a man who is perhaps known above all in our movement for his utterly deficient leadership qualities.
It is hoped that Corbyn and co. will be asked why they have promised to expel persons with whom they have frequently worked and sometimes vehemently defended, in the course of their political careers. Whether Corbyn has political sense enough to make a coherent argument on this head, I suppose we shall see. It suffices to say that, not for the first time, the pretensions of a bureaucratic coterie have set back the socialist movement. The oppressed in this country and around the world will all suffer in consequence.
