“Some of this has already been covered in previous sessions, and people have already been getting organised and putting it into practice – so I’ll speed through most of it.
“The founding process for Your Party is a farce. Even with the best will in the world, you can’t organise a meaningfully democratic process at this scale in this time frame with the constraints that they’ve set.
“We need to fight this and challenge the process. We need to put forward our own detailed ideas on building a democratic party with a socialist programme and a class struggle organising strategy. Turn up at the assemblies – if they don’t let you vote, force a vote anyway. Go to the conference, whether you’re picked by sortition or not, and kick up a fuss.
“But we should expect to lose these fights – the timescale is too short and the process too undemocratic, but we can stop them from legitimising an undemocratic farce, and we can build a resistance.
“What happens after the conference?
“Leadership have fucked it up enough that Your Party won’t be the hegemonic mass socialist force that we need. The politics will be shit, the internal democracy minimal, the size limited. But not so fucked up it will just collapse. Although who knows.
“So we’re likely to see socialists divided in different local areas between Your Party, the Greens, and independent local groups. Based on local circumstances, not principled political divisions.
“Your Party or the Greens will not be adequate vehicles any time soon. When we say we need a party, we don’t mean the state’s definition of a party as a state regulated legal entity which contests elections in a broad front. We need our own organisation to coordinate across different projects, united on our long term goals and our basic principles, regardless of which electoral coalitions we end up working in tactically.
“I think these assemblies have already demonstrated our points of unity:
- overthrow capitalism and build socialism
- recognise we’re just one front of an international class struggle. Palestine is the vanguard of that struggle, and as socialists in Britain our main enemy is at home – the British capitalist class, and the British state, its repression at home and its active involvement in Imperialism and genocide abroad
- unity of the whole working class – no compromises with chauvinism against trans people, migrants, disabled people, or any other minority
There needs to be an organisation:
- that supports and coordinates the class war across every terrain, workplaces, communities – electoral struggles must be subordinated to the needs of the wider class struggle
- within these principles it needs to be pluralistic, democratic and inclusive with a vibrant intellectual life – we can’t repeat the dogmatism and the sectarianism of the existing Marxist parties.
“The raw materials are here – even in this room. Between existing groups like rs21, Plan C, ACR, diaspora groups like PYM and Young Struggle, and new tendencies emerging around electoral parties, such as Greens Organise, Democratic Socialists, Organising for Popular Power, Democratic Bloc, Orbit, The People’s Front and probably more
“It won’t happen overnight, but we urgently need to forge these into a single united vehicle for class struggle. The basis for unity exists, the necessity exists, and these conversations are already starting to happen, but there’s no guarantees. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes, the hubris, the sectarianism of the leadership of the left from previous generations.”