The Socialist Party
The majority in the Militant tendency, led by Peter Taaffe, argued that the Labour Party had become a thoroughly bourgeois party which no longer represented the working class. Militant went on to become Militant Labour and then the Socialist Party in 1997, with Taaffe as general secretary. It campaigns in the trade unions to break the link with Labour and found a new party based on the working class, in contrast to the supporters of Socialist Appeal, who support a policy of work within the Labour Party and the trade unions in opposition to New Labour under Tony Blair.
Internationally, Taaffe won majority support in the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI). The opposition to the Open Turn internationally walked out and founded the Committee for a Marxist International and its In Defence of Marxism website. The CWI later founded a website Marxist resource from the Committee for a Workers' International in part to publish the documents written by Peter Taaffe and others in the CWI about these and other developments and debates, as a contribution to an analysis of what they perceive to be the complexities of the current period, and how to build the path to the working class for the ideas of Marxism.
Taaffe continues to play an important role in the Committee for a Workers' International, writing books and pamphlets such as the History of the CWI, Afghanistan, Islam and the Revolutionary Left (2002) and on the anniversary of the British general strike, 1926 General Strike - workers taste power (2006).
Taaffe's Marxism in Today’s World, (2006) arose from a visit to the CWI's offices in London by an Italian Marxist publishing collective, Guiovane Talpa, who conducted a probing interview with Peter Taaffe and Bob Labi on CWI policy over several days, publishing the transcript in Italian. At the completion of the project the CWI published an additional English version. This book discusses the views of the CWI on war, capitalism the environment and other issues, and is now being published in India.
Read more about this topic: Peter Taaffe
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