Last week, I attended the Prometheus launch party. I had a lovely time with all involved. While they were cleaning up, as I was one of the last to leave, I found a crumpled letter addressed to the Prometheus editorial board. It is this letter that I have reproduced below:
‘The World Transformed was one of a few moments that gave me hope of communist unity in recent years,’ writes Andreas Chari. “That’s funny,” I thought. “I was there, and I wanted to kill myself.”
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Perhaps it’s my narcissism, because you lot are my friends, but I blame you for the collapse of Your Party. You fucked it. You couldn’t hold it together for four fucking months. You got off on recycling the enemy’s old slanders of Corbyn, and then you joined the Greens. And so did I.
The weaker the leader, the more discipline we need. He may be a dolt, but he’s our dolt. And what’s more, he was right! A loose confederation of local campaign groups could have laid the foundations for a mass party. But you are Trotskyists. You push the ultra-left line, and when it fucks up, you whinge.
They should have recognised the proto-branches. He should have launched the thing himself. I was there in Islington North at the canvassers’ anniversary picnic where, right as Zarah stuck in her oar, he said the last thing he wanted was a new party. It doesn’t bear repeating that he’s feckless. I’d rather impose some self-reflection.
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On LinkedIn, Chris Saltmarsh advertised an article in which he divided the left into three: the bureaucratic (the trade union bureaucracy), the doctrinal (the sects) and the movement. In his helpful schema, which we would be nowhere without, he placed rs21 in the category of ‘the movement’. Nice try, Chris!
rs21 is just the SWP. They’ve rebadged it, you fools. If you buy them a drink, they’ll admit it themselves.
Their commitment to internal democracy is novel, I’ll grant, although they had never been shy of demanding it from everyone else. Cliffites have always been prone to reversing their positions, but the way they go about things has never changed much.
Before the TWT assemblies, I sat quietly as they caucused, seeding themselves among the factions so as best to promote factionalism. We, the disorganised, watched on as they had their fun, miserable.
A faction of nothing is nothing. Democracy is a coward’s sport.
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A church is somewhere you go every week.
I had a soft spot for Organising for Popular Power. Their prose was turgid, and they wrecked with the best of them, but they had the right idea. We ought to have taken the five pounds a month from the however many hundred thousand members and spent it founding political clubs in all the big cities. They should have sold cheap beer and put on decent club nights. They should have let offices and halls at peppercorn rents. Kitchenettes could have batch-cooked nutritionally complete meals.
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The irony is that it was those who operate as a manifold of cocaine and book launches calling for programmatic unity.
God forbid we’d built a Labour Party 2.0, one where we were in charge.
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If I thought I hated myself before I started this, it has nothing on how I feel now. Here I am, penning my piece on how everyone else is a bastard. I am no better than the Weekly Worker. You’re not bastards, I’m a bastard.
I couldn’t run a pub to save my life. I do my bit. I go to demos, I live in a squat. I bet you do yours too. I’m sorry. I’d just got dumped before TWT; that’s why I was sad. Bruno Leipold was a bit rude to me just now, and it upset me. I take too much speed, and it’s making me ill. I’m just cross about the money. We could have been rich!
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Catechism of a Stalinist:
- You are doomed. Whatever we achieve, it’ll hardly be worth the killing.
- It’s best to be told what to do. Find Stalin and do as you are told.
- Go where the work is. Join a community action group. If you can, get a job in the Civil Service or, better, the Foreign Office. Remember, Stalin won because Trotsky couldn’t hack the tedium of the provincial Party committees. So long as one goes on tolling the bell, one remains a monk.
- Make yourself indispensable to some politician. Think Ken. Don’t bother with Galloway, he’s spent. If they ask you for a manifesto, write a suicide note.
- Complain in private. To the people, toe the line. Draw up a list. There will be plenty of time for terror.
- Read all, but talk as though you’re thick. Never miss an opportunity to bully a smartarse. Try not to get a PhD.
- Have one foot in legality and the other in crime. Own a suit and a tracksuit. Shoplift occasionally and take drugs if you haven’t. Introduce your dealer to your MP.
- Promise what’s possible.
- To win, you mustn’t lose.
