LPF ‘rules of engagement’

[The following email comprises the first document in the leaked LPF emails. It is referred to in reports to the NC as “the LPF rules of engagement”.]

To members of the Leninist Party Faction:

On the conduct of LPF members in party bodies in the immediate period ahead

Dear comrades,

This circular is aimed at providing some general guidelines on the conduct of members of the faction in the immediate post-congress period, a period in which the DSP will be testing out the political line adopted by the 22nd DSP congress.

The Leninist Party Faction has been formed, as its declaration states, “in order to act in an organised and responsible way to ensure there is unity in action among DSP members in testing out the line approved by the 22nd DSP Congress and to collaborate in an organised way in preparing documents and reports expressing our views for presentation to future meetings of the national leadership bodies of the DSP.”

In order to ensure that there is unity in action in testing out the line approved by the 22nd DSP Congress, members of the LPF are “required to observe faction discipline within” the framework of its platform “within the framework of the discipline of the DSP as codified in the constitution of the DSP.”

The DSP’s constitution sets out the organisational structure of the DSP, the rights and obligations of DSP members and the rules governing their functioning. All members of the LPF should familiarize themselves with these so as to act to the best of their ability in accordance with them. Members of the LPF should set an example to the party as a whole of how a loyal minority functions within a democratic-centralist party.

The refusal of the party majority to reverse the turn made at the last congress to build the SA as a new party and to convert the DSP from a public Leninist party affiliated to SA into a tendency of the SA threatens to undermine the democratic centralist functioning of the DSP. The assumption behind democratic centralism, the assumption behind the willingness of dissident minorities in a democratic centralist party to abide by the majority decisions and carry out the political line adopted by the majority, is that practice will test that line and corrections will be made on that basis, and the party will move forward together. The DSP is a political, not a religious, organisation. Once the test of practice no longer leads to the correction of a line of march that has been proven by practice to be mistaken, the political homogeneity on which democratic centralism is based has been destroyed. The foundations on which disciplined organisation is built up begin to be eroded. An inevitable political logic begins, in which those upholding the mistaken political line start operating in a certain way. They have to start hiding the unpleasant facts that verify the correctness of the criticisms of the mistaken line. They build up a subjective stake in the wrong position, an irrational compulsion to hold on to hat position with a sort of prayer that something will happen to retrieve the situation. Unprincipled combinationism begins to develop, with different interpretations of the line within the majority being accommodated or papered over in order to preserve a majority per se. While comrades in the majority begin to feel that something is wrong, their refusal to recognize that the source of the problem is the mistaken line, leads them to blame the membership, and particularly the critics of the mistaken line, for the failure of their political line to fulfil their hopes. We have already seen this dynamic begin to develop in the DSP during the PCD period.

The fact that there are different trends within the majority bloc and that the reports by the majority leadership to the 22nd Congress paper over different interpretations of how in practice the majority’s political line is to be implemented in practice, will create many difficulties for all DSP members, including members of the LPF, in loyally attempting to test out n practice the line of these reports. Within the branches there will be conflicting views among the supporters of the majority as to how in practice the political line and the many unprioritised tasks set out in these reports is to be implemented.

The basic approach that LPF members should take in the immediate period ahead is not to obstruct or be seen to obstruct (by arguing or voting against) the majority leadership’s proposals for implementing their political line. LPF members on branch executives of course are within their rights to ask the supporters of the majority to provide clear guidelines as to how DSP branches are to implement the political line and the unprioritised, and often contradictory sets of tasks set out in the NE majority’s congress reports. However, this should not be done in an aggressive or confrontational manner, or in a manner that can be portrayed by the majority leadership as attempting to reopen the debate over the political line voted on by the congress.

The LPF is opposed to the majority bloc’s political line of building the DSP and the Socialist Alliance, i.e. its line of continuing to attempt to build the SA, rather than the DSP, as “our party”, but we are not opposed to every proposal made in the reports adopted by congress for the work of the DSP, including its work in SA. LPF members have a right and responsibility to attempt to ensure that the congress decisions that do not contradict the political line or practical proposals for the party’s work that we advocate and which were formally endorsed by the congress (e.g., building the campaign with the Venezuelan socialist revolution) are implemented to the best of the party’s ability.

While we have a responsibility to carry out decisions to implement the political line adopted by the congress, we are not obliged to agree with (i.e., vote for) any specific proposals made by leaders adhering to the majority bloc as to how these decisions are to be interpreted as applying at branch level. However, we should not attempt to oppose the adoption by the branches of these proposals (i.e., vote against them). We should respect the right of the supporters of the majority to decided among themselves exactly how their line will be implemented in practice.

The leadership of the majority bloc will be looking for excuses to accuse the LPF of trying to obstruct the implementation of the majority’s line so as to whip up a factional atmosphere in order to hold their majority bloc together. We should act in a manner that does not facilitate this, that provides excuses for the majority to accuse us of being disloyal or obstructing the implementation of their line.

Our basis approach in branch and other party meetings should therefore be to hang back and allow the majority bloc to fight out among themselves which of their different interpretations of how to implement the majority bloc’s line, particularly their line for building SA, and their new line for building Resistance, will be applied in practice. This means we do not intervene in such discussions, or participate in voting for or against any particular proposals that are put forward to implement the majority’s line. Of course, within meetings of SA or Resistance, LPF members are obliged to vote for the decisions adopted by party bodies.

Within the framework of loyally carrying out the party’s work, as decided by the majority, the key task of LPF members is to maximize their own political clarity so as to enable us to prepare documents and reports for presentation to future meetings of the national leadership bodies of the DSP. While we want to maximize the participation of all those DSP members who agree with the political platform of the LPF and have been accepted into the LPF, we are not seeking to actively recruit new adherents to the LPF from among supporters of the majority line or among comrades who did not commit themselves either way in the PCD prior to the congress. That can only occur within the framework of another period of party-wide written and oral discussion, i.e., PCD.

Finally, all members of the LPF need to be conscious of the fact that there is a law of faction fights that minority facts can act as magnets for comrades who have grievances, real or imagined, against the party leadership. For this reason we must insist on admitting into our ranks only those members of the DSP who are in agreement with the political line that the LPF advocates be adopted by the party, and not simply those who have criticisms of the political line of the majority bloc or the conduct of its leaders. Under no circumstances should anyone who has not been accepted into membership by the LPF by the LPF coordinating committee be invited to attend any meeting of the faction.

If any of you have questions on how to apply these general guidelines to the specific situation in your branch, please write to the CC.

Comradely

Doug Lorimer

For the LPF coordinating committee