revolutionary organisation

In six months time Britain will go to the polls for a general election. The Socialist Workers Party believes we need a serious left intervention in the election.

The first question is whether revolutionaries should bother with elections and parliament at all. After all, we understand that real power does not lie in parliament. It exists in the wholly unelected sphere of the ownership and control of the offices, factories, call centres, transport hubs and so on.

"Dead Russians," Respect MP George Galloway once said, "must be discussed in private." But Lenin and the contested tradition known as Leninism have today become a topic of intense public discussion among many who consider themselves radical opponents of capitalism. Much of the commentary is negative.

Rosa Luxemburg's First World War Junius pamphlet, written in prison and so vividly described by Sally Campbell in February's Socialist Review, was arguably the greatest anti-war statement of the last century.

Its haunting theme, socialism or barbarism, prophetically cast its shadow over the 20th century and continues to do so now.

There has been a shift in the focus of anti-capitalist debate. A decade ago, in the immediate wake of Seattle, Genoa, and Florence, in a climate of popular revolt against capitalism and war, a major question was: party or movement? In other words, were various forms of localised organisation sufficient for what Michael Hardt and Toni Negri call the "multitude" of those oppressed by capital to break the power of the ruling class?

One argument that has gained a new lease of life in the student revolt and the campaigns against corporate tax-dodgers is that the best way to organise resistance to the cuts is through loose, decentralised and "leaderless" networks that allow for the greatest spontaneous expression of activity.

Nearly four decades after the murder of Che Guevara, a new ferment of revolt is beginning to spread across South America. Three governments have been driven out in three years - in Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia - by spontaneous uprisings. In Peru the Toledo government that took office after the fall of the Fujimori near-dictatorship is being shaken by recurrent rebellion against its economic policies. In Brazil discontent with the policies of the Workers Party government of Lula elected just 20 months ago is giving birth to new left currents.

A couple of years ago Paul Foot wrote an article in Socialist Worker arguing that people who were involved in the anti-war movement needed to belong to something more, a political organisation that took up other issues as well. We received two letters criticising his argument. They were from people who argued that they already had a wider organisation, the electoral united front the Socialist Alliance, and saw no reason to be in the Socialist Workers Party.

'We are many - they are few.' With that historic reminder, the poet Shelley ended his furious poem about the massacre of trade unionists at Peterloo. The line has been quoted (well, misquoted really, since Shelley, in self imposed exile in Italy, wrote, 'Ye are many - they are few') a million times since. It reminds the world's exploited masses of their numerical superiority over their exploiters. The line was written nearly 200 years ago, and its simple truth grows more obvious every day.