tions and mobilisations to dogmatically pre-established 'axes' 'priorities' 'stages' and "impossibilities', which give the would-be vanguard party the right to dictate to the workers not only what they must demand but also what they cannot demand for the time being. The functional character of socialist democracy
The Australian SWP's growing hesitations and retreats with respect to the anti-bureaucratic political revolution have been marked by an increasing opposition to our programme of socialist democracy, such as it is laid down in the theses "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Socialist Democracy, approved by the Eleventh World Congress and definitively adopted by the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International.
The Lorimer report reproaches us for identifying socialist democracy with the existence of party pluralism and insisting on the fact that only when this pluralism really exists can you have real socialist democracy.
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986 we've pointed our Cuba resolution, the ideal situation, the goal we strive for, is not a multi-party system, but a system of peoples power in which the masses parties, but in which revolutionary Marxists seek to win, by persuasion, party? (The Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International, p 44).
And for Percy/Lorimer to accuse us of being 'normative'! (13) True, in an ideal world, where the proletariat is totally homogeneous, where no hostile social pressure is exerted against it, where it is non-stratified economically, where it is continually politically active, where the revolutionary Marxist party is perfect, never makes mistakes and is 100 per cent democratic - in such an imaginary world there would obbe only place for one party dictatorship of the proletariat, since by definition it would represent the whole of the proletariat.
Unfortunately, this world of perproletariat has not existed in the past. It exists nowhere today. Our modest opinion is that it will never exist in the future either. So what is the point of pursuing an ideal' and 'normative' aim we know in advance is unob-
In the real, bad world in which we where we must nevertheless accomplish the world socialist revolution, the proletariat is economically stratified, socially heterogeneous, and politically differentiated (in particular of its traditions, historical past, indeed the origins of its different layers this same real, bad world, social pressure is constantly exerted on the proletariat to which different layers and react in quite ways. Consequently even the best of revolutionary parties will never be but one fraction of the proletariat (certainly it will try to be the majority party but that is scarcely guaranteed in advance once and for all). This same party, far from being infallible, will make a lot of errors. It will never be perfectly democratic but experience the beginnings of bureaucmanipulate the masses establishment and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the initial phase of building the real objective must therefore authentic political representation the proletariat as a whole, which is impossible without the flourishing of pluralism for the masses. This is the precondition for an adequate functioning of the workers' councils, bodies of people's power or soviets. Without this sort of pluralism workers will not be able to really wield power. They will not be able to decide on the big problems of economic, social, cultural and international policy, because all these questions cannot be resolved in the workplace or on a local level. All these questions imply a choice between coherent alternatives on a national level (and even increasingly internationally). When you talk of such coherent alternatives you are dealing with different political platforms, precisely in other words about political pluralism.
So, pluralist socialist democracy, far from being normative, is functional. Far from being some sort of concession to the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie,
Social Democracy, it corresponds to the interests of the proletar iat. It facilitates a better knowledge of the real aspirations and opinions of different layers of workers. authentic needs of the masses and their different fractions can be determined. It enables the better planning of production, bringing closer together working people's genuine preferences the field of productive effort and consumption. It helps possible to avoid political errors and, is inevitable), they corrected as quickly as possible.
In the real world in which live, and not the world of universal harmony imagined by the Australian SWP leaders, political pluralism is a necessary and indispensable guarantee the bureaucratisation of the of the workers' most effective struggle for socialism.
This was the conclusion Trotsky drew after twenty years experience of the history of the Russian revolu-
"The prohibition of oppositional parties brought after it the prohibition of factions. The prohibition of factions ended in a prohibition to think otherwise than the infallible leaders. The police-manufactured monolithism of the party resulted in a bureaucratic impunity which has become the source of all kinds of wantonness and corruption.' (Revolution Betrayed, p 104-5, New Park Edition).
And Trotsky is just as clear concerning freedom of the press:
13. This is not the only case of involuntary irony in Lorimer's report. He reproaches us for not giving enough time to concrete problems of party building of our sections, for going endlessly ideological quarrels. But 95% of his report is devoted to precisely such quarreis.
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