Old Thinking and New Bottles

EXTRACT: New technology, no matter how marvellous, or invading shops in fancy dress, no matter how enjoyable, is not going to seriously challenge capitalist rule. In her bold ‘new’ thinking and critique of the British far left she is - whether out of sheer inexperience or a definite ideological instinct - giving voice to a deep-seated anti-leadership, anti-organisation prejudice which (inevitably) exists in some parts of society. The most obvious example being the anarchists, fetishising essentially spontaneous political outbursts in the doubtlessly sincere belief that by such methods they can bypass the absolute necessity for mass organisation and democratic leadership and accountability. Such sentiments came to the fore after the November 10 student protests, with the trashing of the Tory HQ in Millbank Tower being hailed as a model that needs to be copied by the wider anti-cuts movement.
Naturally, communists perfectly understand the genuine frustration of activists like Penny - who come up against the bureaucracy and control-freakery of “old left” organisations like the SWP. Plenty of centralism, yes, but precious little democracy. To instinctively kick out against such deadening norms has an undeniably healthy side. Penny is quite right, of course, to castigate the SWP for its conception of “ideological unity” - which in reality means forbidding the open expression of contending viewpoints. Which is to say, the construction of an ideological-confessional sect, whereby all its members have to pretend to agree on a particular historical and theoretical interpretation of the Soviet Union, for instance (state capitalism).
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