What attitude should socialists take to Labor's shift to the right as it prepares for power? And how should we communicate with a range of people who will mostly be voting Labor because they see it as the only feasible alternative to a Liberal re-election? Mitch Glocking writes that the classical Marxist tradition provides us with important intellectual tools to help answer these questions.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks knew that only the success of further revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries could save their fledgling workers' state.

As Lenin wrote in 1918 and again in 1919, "the final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible". So in 1919 the (Third) Communist International, or the Comintern, was set up in order to assist with the building of mass revolutionary socialist parties internationally.

Lenin tried to build an international organization of intelligent thinking revolutionary activists who could respond flexibly to the struggle. This meant opening up a two-way dialogue over strategy and tactics.

In now classic pamphlet Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Lenin aimed to explain how it was possible to build mass revolutionary socialist parties in countries where the mass of workers still looked to reformist Labor-style parties to effect change.

Sylvia Pankhurst

His political arguments in the pamphlet were particularly directed against the “ultra lefts” in the German and British Communist parties who, in their haste for change and their anger with social democracy’s support for World War I, had refused to work alongside members of the much larger reformist parties.

“Clearly,” Lenin argued, “the lefts in Germany have mistaken their desire, their political-ideological attitude, for objective reality. That is the most dangerous mistake for revolutionaries.”

They were not clear about the strategy and tactical manoeuvres needed to close the gap between themselves and the majority of workers who had not yet come around to the idea of revolutionary change and the bankruptcy of reformism.

For example, in Germany in 1919 a few thousand militants split off from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and formed the Spartacus League.

They moved seamlessly from a sectarian policy of abstaining from elections to an ultra-left attempt to seize power without the support of a majority of workers—even in Berlin where it was staged.

The uprising was ruthlessly smashed. Its defeat cost the lives of the two most famous German revolutionaries of the time, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. They had both originally opposed the uprising but participated after being voted down.

In Britain, Lenin criticized the large minority of members in the recently formed Communist Party such as Sylvia Pankhurst, who were opposed to affiliation to the Labour Party on principle.

Sylvia Pankhurst wrote, “The Communist Party must keep its doctrine pure and its independence of reformism inviolate, its mission is to lead the way, without stopping or turning, by the direct road to the communist revolution”.

The British Labour Party had at this time four million members and allowed other organizations to affiliate and at the same time maintain their freedom to criticise the leadership’s policies.

Lenin argued that Sylvia Pankhurst’s position abandoned the workers to the reformist leaders. In order to put a socialist platform to the Labour rank and file, socialists should affiliate—while at the same time being very clear about the nature of the Labour Party.

Labor today

Lenin’s characterised the British Labour Party as a “capitalist workers parties”. In other words, it was composed of workers, but its leadership composed of the “worst kinds of bourgeois (capitalist) elements”.

This analysis more or less holds true today for the ALP as a party rooted in the union bureaucracy and tied to their campaign funding, but committed to running capitalism on behalf of all classes.

This means that Labor can never be transformed into a progressive, leftwing party capable of taming the system.

But millions of workers will still vote for it in elections because it expresses their desire for social reform—even though disillusionment has seen the party lose most of its active working class membership in the past 25 years.

As long as workers hold illusions in the parliamentary system, socialists have to be with them against the institutions of the bosses in order to have radical criticisms of the Labor’s polices taken seriously. This includes taking positions on specific debates within the party.

Issuing denouncements from the sidelines does not tell workers what to do—and can often just re-inforce people’s cynicism.

It might not be practically possible for socialists to join reformist organizations such as the Labor Party or the Greens, because we would not be allowed to maintain the necessary independent presence without being isolated, disciplined or expelled.

But we can and must intervene creatively in the debates and discussions occurring within these organizations whenever possible. By doing this, we will be better able to point the way forward for working class struggle, better connected to build a stronger left, and better trained in the art of communicating revolutionary socialist ideas to a larger audience.