The CPGB: a comment on Comrade Turner's article

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II The CPGB: a comment on Comrade Turner's article

The belief that the Communist Party of Great Britain possesses a political significance which outweighs its diminutive size underlies the decision to direct our propaganda against the political positions to which it adheres. That the programme of the CPGB expresses in its clearest and most developed form present day left reformist politics was the primary consideration in this decision. However, this is insufficient; what will give the CPGB a central role in political developments in the working class in the coming years is not so much those points on which it finds agreement with other left reformist strands, but those on which it differs. It will win workers above all through its opposition to wage restraint and cuts in the social services, rather than through its support for import controls. It will be the ability of the CPGB to provide a form of opposition to the attacks of the Labour Government that will put its present relation with the Tribunites in particular under great strain.

The CPGB finds itself in a position of opposing however reluctantly almost all those who share its nationalist view of the crisis. This has to be explained. Why does the CPGB have to oppose wage restraint? Although Tribune by and large takes a similar stand, nevertheless, it frequently qualifies its opposition, arguing Purdy's 'quid pro quo'. But the official line of the CPGB shows no such hesitations, despite its current internal debate. If the CPGB, despite the attempts of Purdy to the contrary, cannot break with its present position on wage restraint, then the consequences for the way in which a potential vanguard will emerge will have to be considered.

Cde PT's article provides us with no understanding of the present significance of the CPGB. The reason for this lies in its method, which whatever it is, is most certainly not Marxist. The abstract chronology of events and ideas tells us nothing about the development of the Party, and the conclusions are just plain wrong. We required a materialist analysis of the development of the CPGB, not one which ascribes it to a more or less accidental conflict of ideas. The inadequacy of the article is evident from the opening sentence:

'To understand the present crisis of world Stalinism and the beginnings of its reflection in the CPGB demands that we understand its history.' (Cde PT, p40)

Is there an entity which can be described as 'world Stalinism'? Is its crisis only now impinging on the CPGB? These assumptions are ahistorical. Why do we need to understand its history if it is the same as it was in the pre-war period? Of course, once these assumptions have been made, it is quite easy to draw the only conclusion possible, but it remains completely uninformative:

'... the strengthening of reformism in the working class has driven the Stalinist parties further than ever from the Soviet Union. Yet for all this, we are speaking only of a tendency and not of a decisive liquidation of Stalinism in the West. Whilst there is no law that says Stalinism must exist, to argue that its liquidation has already taken place, that western capitalism has "won" the CPs from the Soviet bureaucracy, is to underestimate the strength of Stalinism.' (ibid, p88)

After all, Cde PT cunningly asks:

'Would the CPGB today support a military attack on the Soviet Union or any of its allies in the third world?' (ibid, p89)

Satisfied at having asked an unanswerable question, Cde PT goes on to 'answer' in the negative. But it fits entirely with the method of the article that this piece of nonsense should have been included. As Marxists, we presume to deal with concrete questions, rather than indulge ourselves in airy speculations on the future. Whilst happily concurring with Cde PT's belief that there is no 'law' which states that Stalinism must exist, we must point out that there is likewise no 'law' which will enable us to predict what stand the CPGB may or may not take when a certain eventuality may or may not arise. But there is one law of whose existence we are certain: the law that any document which starts with the abstract and meaningless arrives at equally abstract and meaningless conclusions. Cde PT's document is no exception to this.

What is the CPGB?

Cde PT's document boils down to this: the CPGB is still a Stalinist party, and as such, is still subject to the demands of the Soviet bureaucracy. This has manifested itself in several turns by the Party: those of 1939 and 1941 on the world war, the one in 1947 with the advent of the cold war, and one in 1956 which resulted in the explicit adoption of a Parliamentary road to socialism. Since then, happily, no further change has been demanded by the bureaucracy. However, in the meantime, an explicitly reformist trend within the Party has emerged, and is locked in conflict with the Stalinist leadership. This is the reason for the present debate on Socialist Democracy. We have it on Cde PT's word that his history of the CPGB

'... shows how the CPGB has apparently become a party which does not differ in principle from other social democratic tendencies in British politics, and often has more differences with the USSR than for instance the Labour lefts.' (ibid p52, my emphasis)

It would be nice if we were told 'for instance' why the CPGB has so few 'differences' with the Labour lefts. But never mind: presumably the comrade was so upset to find that there was no 'law' which says that Stalinism must exist that he had to spend the rest of the document cautioning us against underestimating its strength. Thus the CPGB, despite its reformist programme, its lack of differences with 'for instance' the Labour lefts, is still, due to the supra-historical strength of Stalinism, a Stalinist Party. The CPGB's reformism is for appearance's sake only: it serves to disguise the Party's dependency on the Soviet Union. But the notion of Stalinism that underlies the document is one that sees it as a dependency on a conspiratorial clique based in Moscow, the ultimate Machiavelli operating independent of the laws of history. Such a view serves the radical left quite adequately, but it will not do for us. The remainder of this article seeks to lay the basis for a Marxist analysis of the development of the CPGB.

National reformism and the Comintern.

The theory of 'socialism in one country' was first advanced in 1924. Its implications for the Communist Parties outside of the Soviet Union were drawn by Trotsky in 1928:

'If it is at all possible to realise socialism in one country, then one can believe in that theory not only after but also before the conquest of state power. If socialism can be realised within the national boundaries of backward Russia, then there is all the more reason to believe that it can be realised in advanced Germany. Tomorrow the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany will undertake to propound this theory. The draft programme empowers them to do so. The day after tomorrow the French Party will have its turn. It will be the beginning of the disintegration of the Comintern along the lines of Social Patriotism.' (The Third International after Lenin, p72)

The defeats of the 1930s in Germany and Austria, and the decimation of other parties of the Comintern, particularly in France, provided the conditions in which 'socialism in one country' became the political property of the whole Comintern, not just mediated through the national interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. Social Patriotism became the official doctrine of the Comintern at its Seventh World Congress, setting the seal not only on the fate of the Comintern, but also on the hegemony of the CPSU over the world Communist movement. The pursuit of national roads to socialism, which was a necessary consequence of the decisions of this last Congress of the Comintern could not presume automatically an identity of interests between the various Communist Parties. Reviewing the situation in 1938, Trotsky wrote:

'Ten years ago it was predicted that the theory of socialism in one country must inevitably lead to the growth of nationalist tendencies in the sections of the Comintern. This prediction has become an obvious fact. But until recently, the chauvinism of the French, British, Belgian, Czechoslovak, American and other Communist Parties seemed to be, and to a certain extent was, a refracted image of the interests of the Soviet diplomacy ("the defence of the USSR"). Today, we can predict with assurance the inception of a new stage. The growth of imperialist antagonisms, the obvious proximity of the war danger, and the equally obvious isolation of the USSR must unavoidably strengthen the centrifugal nationalist tendencies within the Comintern. Each one

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of its sections will begin to evolve a patriotic policy of its own account. Stalin has reconciled the Communist Parties of imperialist democracies with their own national bourgeoisies. This stage has now been passed. The Bonapartist procuror has played his role. Henceforth the Communo-chauvinists will have to worry about their own hides, whose interests by no means always co-incide with the "defence of the USSR".' (Writings, 1938-39, p72)

The Soviet bureaucracy could no longer 'dictate' policy to other Communist Parties in the way it could in the Third Period. It was no deus ex machina which could impose its own will on the laws of history. The growing reliance of the Communist parties on their own bourgeoisies could only reduce their dependence on the Soviet bureaucracy. It is unfortunate that Cde PT subscribes to the views of orthodox Trotskyism which still sees the Soviet bureaucracy as some magician, conjuring 180 degree turns out of the Communist movement at the drop of a hat.

Several myths have been constructed on the basis of this idealist standpoint. The most pervasive of these relates to the turn of 1939. From 1934, the CPGB had enthusiastically endorsed national defence against the 'Hitlerian menace'. The outbreak of war followed immediately after the signing of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. This occasioned a new turn in the political line of the CPGB. However, this change did not mean that the CPGB adopted an anti-war line, as Cde PT or orthodox idealism suppose. A symptom of the political development of the CPGB was the fight that took place within the leadership over the change, which led to Pollitt's departure from the General Secretaryship. The Comintern, or the ghost of it, issued a proclamation that the war was an imperialist one, and urging pacifist opposition on those parties whose ruling class was participating in the war. Initially, the Central Committee of the CPGB opposed the Comintern line, supporting Pollitt's explanation that

'We have to face facts. Labour cannot form a government that can win this war on its own. My personal opinion is that you can't win this war unless you have in the new government not only representatives of Labour, but men like Lloyd George, Eden, Churchill and Duff Cooper: all imperialists. But we have to win this war and to win it with people who are going to be ruthless.' (Quoted in John Mahon: Harry Pollitt - A Biography, p251.)

The reversal came in October 1939. However, the CPGB interpreted the Comintern line according to its own nationalist framework; it is summarised in a Manifesto issued in mid-1940:

'The interests of the people require the speediest ending of the war, not by surrender to fascism at home and abroad, but by the strength of a free people organising their own defence and leading the way to peace and unity with the working people of all countries... Forward in active campaigning to secure ... a People's Government in which no friend of Fascism or enemy of the working class movement has a place. Such a People's Government alone can secure from the people the unity and unbroken will to victory that can guarantee the defeat of both the Nazi menace and of the danger which also threatens from the British representatives of fascism. Such a People's Government, in whatever grave situations that may confront us, can defend the lives and homes of the people and achieve the preservation of a free and democratic Britain.' (Quoted in Montagu The Traitor Class, L&W, 1940, p124)

In the final chapter of this book, entitled 'National Salvation', Montagu, who was a leading member of the CPGB at the time, explains who is to be regarded as the 'traitor class', and who were the real patriots:

'Everybody knows that these measures summarised here: conscription of material resources, purging of the friends of fascism, mobilisation of the initiative of the people, unity with other peoples on a basis of their own determination of their fate, albeit revolutionary: would infinitely fortify the defensive power of the British people, infinitely weaken the power for conquest of Hitler. Hence, anyone who obstructs these measures, is working against these aims, is a traitor to the interests of the people and the independence of the nation. But the ruling class, because of their class interests, cannot fail to oppose these measures.'

The CPGB did not abandon the call for a People's Government which it had adopted in 1934. Its establishment was now seen as the prerequisite for peace:

'If a People's Government came to power in this country, it should immediately make its proposals for peace to all Governments and to all peoples.' (We fight for Life, CPGB Pamphlet, November 1940, p22.)

But of course:

'Pending the reaching of peace, the People's Government in Britain would take all the necessary measures for the defence of the power of the people against all enemies at home and abroad.' (ibid, p23)

In essence, this is no different from the naked chauvinism of the 1930s. It has just been given a pacifist gloss. The option of support for a 'democratic' war was left open. Once the Soviet Union had been forced into the war on the side of British imperialism, this option could be taken up. The coalition government now became the 'People's Government' that the CPGB had been demanding, since it was now formally allied with the Fatherland of the working people. The programme that the CPGB had outlined for such a 'People's Government' could now be implemented, and the betrayal of the British working class consummated.

The events of this period show that the Soviet bureaucracy no longer had unlimited powers to deal with foreign Communist parties. The official slogans sanctioned by the Comintern denounced the treachery of the social democrats, and were summarised by the appeal: 'Down with the Imperialist War'. But the CPGB 'adapted' it to prevailing national conditions, and thus rendered it more 'moderate'. The CPGB could not escape its past history at the behest of the Soviet bureaucracy. Its adaptation to the British state since 1934 had left a deep imprint, as the course adopted by Pollitt shows. It was now unable to escape the logic of its past naked nationalism. In the period from late 1939 to June 1941, it undoubtedly gave this nationalism a radical twist. But this was as far as it was capable of going in responding to 'orders' from the Comintern. It did not oppose the war in the way the Soviet bureaucracy demanded; it posed its opposition in terms of the way the war was being conducted, not because the war was an imperialist war. Once the Soviet Union had entered the war, there was no obstacle to the expression of the nationalism of the Party. It was the growing dependency of the Communist Parties on their national bourgeoisie which reduced the significance of Soviet intervention in their internal affairs, not as PT puts it, 'the physical impossibility of intervention' (ibid, p69).

The CPGB in the post-war period.

Another myth of orthodox idealism is that the CPGB carried out the so-called left turn of 1947 on the orders of Stalin. It is noticeable that these people never explain exactly when this left turn ended. Since it was precisely at this time that the British Road to Socialism was committed to paper, one can only presume that the CPGB is still in the midst of this turn (and, of course, still obedient to the orders of Stalin's successors!).

The 'turn' was explicitly chauvinist in content. Post-war reconstruction could not proceed without massive aid from American imperialism on the one hand, and more severe attacks on the working class on the other. In this context, the Cold War was not a particular policy which imperialism chose to pursue, but a necessary expression of its interests. It was part of a political attack on the working class movement. At the beginning of 1947, the British economy was in a severe crisis, with over two million workers temporarily laid off. Working class discontent with the Government started to appear. The CPGB could not remain unaffected by this. By the end of 1947, it had adopted a strident anti-American chauvinism, as it was forced into a more militant opposition to the Labour government.

What prompted the change in the Party's orientation to the Labour government was not an edict issued from Moscow. It was its relationship to the British working class that had forced it to take a new stand. The CPGB did not need any assistance from luminaries in the Soviet bureaucracy to point out that the domination of American imperialism was a threat to any programme which envisaged a national road to socialism. The Party was quite capable of following its own chauvinist nose on

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this score. With the US producing half the annual global output, and investing heavily in Western Europe through Marshall Aid, any self-respecting patriot could see how Britain's national sovereignty was threatened. Now of course the Soviet bureaucracy had to respond to the more aggressive standpoint of world imperialism. But the formation of Cominform was not an attempt to set up a new structure by which the bureaucracy could assert its hegemony over the world Communist movement. That the response of the CPGB could meet with the approval of the CPSU was not because the latter had commanded such a change. It was because the CPGB, given its relation to the British working class, had similar interests to the Soviet Union in adopting a more militant position. As Pollitt summarised:

'Therefore the fight for peace, against the war preparations and subservience to America, is also the fight against the economic crisis, and must be linked with it in all our campaigns.' (Pollitt, Report to the 21st Congress of the CPGB, 1949. Our emphasis)

What came first for the CPGB was the economic crisis of British imperialism, and its consequences for the British working class. To this could be 'linked' the issue of peace and the fight against American domination. In 1948, the Labour Government instituted its first incomes policy as an essential step in reconstructing British capital. Living standards fell as inflation soared with the start of the Korean War. Opposition within the working class mounted, and reflected itself in conflicts inside the trade union bureaucracy. The CPGB became the spokesman for those sections of the bureaucracy which opposed wage restraint, since it had now achieved many leading positions in the official leadership. The Party played a significant role in bringing about the defeat of the incomes policy when the TUC rejected it in 1950.

It was during this period that the finishing touches were made to the British Road to Socialism. The programme agreed at the 21st Congress was as follows:

'1. To raise wages and extend social services, and so increase the purchasing power of the workers. It would be fatal to the present and future interests of the workers and the trade union movement if they succumbed to the propaganda of the capitalists and the right wing Labour and trade union leaders that "the crisis demands wage freezing" and "cuts in real wages are essential to lower production costs". To make concessions to the employers in a period of capitalist slump means to involve the workers of Britain in a starvation contest between all the workers of the world, for the capitalists in every land are making the same efforts to reduce nominal and real wages, and this can only result in reducing the purchasing power of their own home markets and thus intensifying crisis it is supposed to resolve. Such a policy not only means increased hardship for the workers: it rapidly intensifies the slump and hastens the development of mass unemployment on a gigantic level. 2. To develop our trade with the Soviet Union, the People's Democracies and the New China. 3. To end the present criminal and wasteful military expenditure, and contribute in this way also to solving the balance of payments problem and raising the standards of living of the people. 4. To take over in a new form of nationalisation, those essential industries whose directors are likely to panic and intensify the crisis. Such measures, and the fight for them, and not appeasement of the big monopolies, are the way forward for the working class in the period of deepening crisis.' (Communist Policy to meet the Crisis. Report of the 21st National Congress of the CPGB, pp15-17, 1949.)

This similarity with today's 'Counter-crisis Programme' is clear. In these conditions, underconsumptionism expressed the opposition of those sections of the trade union bureaucracy who rejected state control of free collective bargaining. Since it also expressed the belief in national self-sufficiency in building socialism, the interests of the CPGB and this part of the labour leadership co-incided. The CPGB became the organisational expression of opposition to incomes policy: it was this that ensured it would maintain its independent existence. It is therefore the case that the CPGB cannot revise its opposition to incomes policy; to do so would imply its dissolution.

Returning to Cde PT, we find him suggesting that the 'left turn' ended for him in 1956, when he believes that the CPGB explicitly adopted the parliamentary road to socialism:

'Whilst the idea of "peaceful" and "democratic" transition to socialism was implicit in the plans of 1945 and "The British Road to Socialism" of 1951, to locate the beginnings of the "Parliamentary Road" as early as this is to misunderstand its significance. Thus even in 1954, we could read that "no socialism could be built by utilising the existing capitalist state". (The British State, CPGB 1954).' (ibid, p79)

But even today we can find this:

'The working class must establish a new socialist state to defend the new social system from opposition...' (The British Road to Socialism, p47)

The CP does not argue at all that socialism can be brought about by utilising the existing capitalist state. It is a typical radical left slander that they do. Of course, in practice, this is what their programme amounts to. But to imply that their view of the state is less subtle than it in fact is will only lead us to be regarded as typical ultra-left sectarians. What is most unfortunate for Cde PT is that he did not look at the pamphlet he quotes with proper care, since he would have found this:

'Under the facade of "democracy", this constitution is reactionary and anti-democratic to the core. The Labour movement, under the leadership of the Communist Party, has the task of defending the hard won democratic rights of the people and eliminating all the relics of caste, privilege and reaction from our national institutions. This can be achieved by strengthening the Communist Party, returning more Communists to Parliament, and above all, by the unity of all democratic forces in the country in a great popular alliance to transform Parliament and to bring to power a government which will act in the interests of the majority of the people.' (The British State, CPGB, 1954, p20)

And in the 1952 edition of the 'British Road to Socialism'?

'The enemies of Communism accuse the Communist Party of aiming to introduce Soviet Power in Britain and abolish Parliament. This is a slanderous (no less: RD) misrepresentation of our policy ... the British Communists declare that the people of Britain can transform capitalist democracy into a real people's democracy, transforming Parliament, the product of Britain's historical struggle for democracy into the democratic instrument of the will of the vast majority of her people.' (The British Road to Socialism, 1952, p12)

Thus Cde PT's whole assessment of the post-war development of the CPGB is wrong. When we assess the development of any Communist Party, what is of primary concern to us is its relation to its working class, not to the Soviet bureaucracy. Cde PT just ignores this aspect. For him, since the CPGB does not express overt hostility to the Soviet Union, things are pretty much the same as they were in the 1930s. The point is that since the Second World War, the CPGB has expressed a specific brand of reformism. What determines its programme is not a relationship with the Soviet bureaucracy, but its relation to the British working class. Stalinism in the international Communist movement expressed the dependence of the Communist Parties on the Soviet bureaucracy. It was a material dependency, which expressed itself ideologically as a commitment to socialism in one country. But the reverse is not true: that a commitment to building socialism in one country equals Stalinism. That is idealism. This underlies the statement in FR's article that:

'The starting point of the Stalinist movement is the subordination of the Comintern to the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. Today Stalinism appears as a "polycentric" movement containing conflicting interests. Today's result should not be confused with the starting point of Stalinism.' (The Capitalist Crisis and the Official Communist Movement, p27)

Stalinism is seen here as an ideological question. It is wrong to conclude:

'To understand the development of Stalinism internationally requires an analysis of the way the tension between Moscow's policies and the national considerations of the CPs work themselves out.' (ibid, p27)

In analysing the development of communist parties since the second world war, their relation to, or more accurately, attitude towards the Soviet Union, is a secondary question. What is

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primary is the analysis of their relation to their own working class. It is this that will give the reasons for the change in their attitude to the Soviet Union. The Communist Parties are not Stalinist: they represent specific forms of reformism. This differs from country to country: the PCI, the PCF and the CPGB are now as different from each other as the Italian, French and British Socialist Parties. This cannot be explained by supposing they are still Stalinist.

The CPGB and the boom.

Cde PT comments:

'The many profound changes in the politics of the CPGB in the last 20 years have above all rendered a change in the CPGB's notion of "democracy", and consequently in its relation with the USSR.' (ibid, p84)

From this, Cde PT supposes that the current debate on Socialist Democracy concerns the relation of the CPGB with the Soviet bureaucracy, and that it raises

'... the validity of the strategy of the CPGB itself: the parliamentary road to socialism.' (ibid, p87)

This is completely wrong. The parliamentary road is not questioned by any of the participants in the debate. In fact, its essence has been summarised quite succinctly by Fergus Nicholson, a leading Frenchite in the Party (after Sid French, Secretary of the Surrey District of the CP, the uncrowned king of the so-called Stalinist trend in the Party).

'Most of the serious disagreements in and about our Party can be resolved into one question: what do we mean by the leading role of the party, and are we for it anyway.' (Letter to Comment, 1.11.75)

The leadership has already provided its own answer to the question:

'To win the alternative programme in our resolution calls for mass struggle on an ever-widening scale. Comrades have referred to the key importance here of the policy of left unity, and in bringing this about, our party has a vital role to play, a leading role. When I say this, I want to make it clear that we Communists claim no special or exclusive position within the movement.' (Chater: Reply to the discussion on the main resolution at the 34th Congress of the CPGB: 'The Crisis, Left Unity and the Communist Party', in Comment, 29.11.75)

Thus the leadership expresses the logic of the British Road to Socialism. The struggle for socialism requires the construction of a vast anti-monopoly alliance, headed by the working class. The first stage in building this alliance is to establish working class unity around the programme of the CPGB. This unity, 'left unity', will involve sections of the Labour Party and the trade union leadership. These left sections, notably the Tribune group, will have to overthrow the existing right-wing reformist leadership of the Labour Party. One of the political components of the turn of 1935 by the Comintern was the characterisation of the leaderships of social democratic parties as reformist, with the implication that the left wing were revolutionary. Logically, this would mean that if such parties were won to a left position, they would be capable of playing a progressive role. The inherently capitalist nature of such parties was thus denied. Their bourgeois character was defined in terms of their present corrupt leadership, and not in terms of their origins and political development within the imperialist epoch.

However, if it is established that social democratic parties can be won to the cause of the working class, then the Communist Parties could no longer aspire to a vanguard role; this would amount to sectarianism. Instead, they would have to work alongside such left dominated reformist parties, offering perhaps fraternal criticism, but certainly not aspiring to an 'exclusive' position. A Communist Party could not 'lead' a Labour Party which subscribed to exactly the same programme. This presents further problems. Parties exist to lead social classes. In the case of a party based on the working class, it either attempts to lead the working class to its emancipation, or to its continued subordination to capitalism. There is no other reason for its existence in the long term. Thus the CPGB finds itself in a dilemma; for the more it re-assures its allies in 'left unity' that it seeks no exclusive position in the movement, the more these allies demand that the Party renounce its independent existence. The Party's reply is characteristically lame:

'(The Communist Party) is the only party that has charted the strategy and tactics for a road to socialism in Britain which takes account of British traditions, history, class structure and institutions, as well as of the basic tenets of scientific socialism, of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. It is by our creative use of this body of theoretical work that we are able to make our distinctive contribution to our movement.' (Resolution on the Crisis, Left Unity, and the Communist Party, in Comment 29.11.75. Emphasis added.)

As other sections of the labour bureaucracy formally adhere to the programme to which the 'creative use of this body of theoretical work' gave rise, so as a distinguishing feature, it becomes more and more irrelevant. The question is: what conditions necessitated the re-assessment of the role of the Communist Party? Pollitt was quite happy to write in 1949:

'If as these struggles develop, we constantly and consistently carry out our Marxist explanations of the nature of capitalism and the need for the workers themselves to seize power we can lead them forward from these immediate struggles against the various aspects of the capitalist system to the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and for the seizure of power by the working class.' (Pollitt: Report to the 21st Congress of the CPGB, 1949, p3[illegible], my emphasis.)

A few years later:

'The Communist Party is the vanguard, and its vanguard role is precisely that it is enabled to see the whole line of march and not merely the immediate issues.' (Britain Arise, CPGB 1952, p40)

And again:

'Neither the socialist propaganda nor leadership of the present struggles can be successful if out of these do not arise the steady building and strengthening of an organised Communist Party, rooted amongst the masses in the factories and areas, capable of leading the people from the immediate daily struggles to the struggle for political power and the building of socialism.' (The Role of the Communist Party, CPGB 1955, p12)

However, in the late 1950s a shift in emphasis took place. On the one hand, it became necessary to spell out that the CPGB did not wish to dominate the trade union movement:

'We emphatically deny any intention to dominate or control the trade union movement, and we recognise and respect its organisational and political independence.' (Quoted by Cde PT p79)

On the other, the attitude towards the Labour Party started to change. In a pamphlet in 1959, Gollan wrote:

'We do not pose our development against that of the Left in the Labour Party. Both are needed. Our case is, however, the stronger the Communist Party, the stronger every left development in the Labour Party.' (Which Way for Socialists?, CPGB 1959, p16)

and argued that the history of left movements:

'... shows the indispensable need for the Communist Party alongside and as part of any leftward development of the Labour Party.' (ibid, p15)

Pollitt, writing a little earlier, placed a slightly different emphasis on the role of the Communist Party:

'But the building up of the left, and the continuous political activity throughout the country which is essential to the defeat of the rightwing leaders and the Tories cannot be carried out except by the organised work of the Communist Party.' (The Communists and the Labour Party, CPGB, 1956, my emphasis.)

Pollitt sees the work of the Communist Party as a precondition for the development of a left trend in the Labour Party, whilst Gollan poses the question in terms of 'fraternal assistance'. The conflict this expresses, between the notion of the Party as a vanguard party, and the logic of the reformist politics of the Party matured during the boom, and has been resolved with the onset of the crisis.

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The social basis of the Communist Party is that section of the bureaucracy which opposes state control of wages. The trade union leadership has turned to the CPGB to express opposition to policies carried out by various Labour governments which threatened to erode its independence. It is part of the contradiction that the bureaucracy finds itself in that it cannot allow itself to become a mere appendage of the bourgeois state. This would entail a complete separation from its working class base; it could only occur under a fascist regime, for it would entail the complete destruction of independent working class organisations. However, the extent to which the Labour Party had been integrated into the state machinery during and after the Second World War had rendered it too insensitive to working class pressure for the safety of the bureaucracy. The latter has been obliged to use the CPGB as a safety valve.

It is the role of the CPGB as a representative of sections of the trade union bureaucracy which oppose state integration under a Labour Government which has ensured its post-war independence. This role is expressed ideologically by its underconsumptionist view of the crisis. This in turn flows from the belief in the sufficiency of a home market for building socialism.

With the onset of the boom, incomes policy receded in importance as a political issue facing the movement. Regardless of how frequently the CPGB cried wolf on a forthcoming crisis, and the imminence of wage-cutting, capitalist production steadily expanded. In these conditions, the CPGB became isolated, and this tendency was reinforced by the ideological attack of the Cold War. It was actively ostracised by the trade union bureaucracy through a series of bans and proscriptions. Although this ensured that it would maintain its independent existence, the price it paid was an erosion of its political influence. To this may be added the effects of 1956, and the ETU election rigging scandal of 1960. Party membership, amongst the working class and in the official leadership, steadily declined.

Given its reformist nature, the Party could react in only one way: by adapting. This took the form of revising its pretensions to an 'exclusive' role in the labour movement, by abandoning its pretensions as a vanguard party. Although its isolation allowed it the occasional luxury of deriding the Labour left:

'The countless left movements over the years inside and outside the Labour Party were always supported by our Party. We always played an active part in connection with them. By their very nature, however, they have been transient, have played an important part at a particular time, only to subside and eventually make way for new movements.' (Report to 27th Congress of CPGB, 1962, p15)

But at the same time, it had to recognise that the CPGB alone was incapable of leading the working class to socialism:

'Today it is becoming increasingly clear that the struggle opened up by Scarborough (The venue of the 1960 LP Conference which rejected the amendment of Clause 4 in 1960: RD) must be carried forward to the final elimination of right wing capitalist influence and leadership in the Labour Party. This could bring about the victory of a united Labour Movement, in which the Communist Party, as the political party of the working class struggle for power and socialism will fulfil its role in comradeship and partnership and agreement with all the advanced sections of the organised working class.' (ibid, p21)

Thus the conditions of the post-war boom placed new pressures on the CPGB. The net result was the growth of a tendency towards further adaptation to the existing level of the movement. The awareness that it could no longer pretend to the leadership of the working class only became official policy with the onset of the crisis.

The CPGB and the boom [sic: this heading is repeated from p53 in the original]

The re-emergence of the CPGB as a significant political force depended on the policies that the Labour government had to pursue in the years 1964 to 1970. The relative weakness of British capital in the world market was becoming more evident, and its declining profitability demanded the implementation of the first overt attacks on working class living standards since before the boom. It was for this reason that the Labour Party made incomes policy a main plank of its election manifesto, stating that it was the only party which could get the necessary co-operation from the trade union movement.

Its Prices and Incomes policy took effect from April 1965, initially on a voluntary basis; it was approved by a majority of 6.6 to 1.8 millions at a TUC Special Conference of Union Executives. However, a speculative attack on the pound in July required further action by the government. It responded with a deflationary package at the end of the month, which included cuts in state expenditure, and the first statutory controls over incomes. The limitations to which the TUC General Council agreed required notification of all wage claims to the government, which could then refer them at its own discretion for consideration by the National Board of Prices and Incomes. These were approved at the TUC Congress in September but with a much narrower majority (5.25 to 3.3 millions). Thus even in the earlier days of the Government, a substantial opposition to incomes policy existed in the ranks of the trade union bureaucracy, which grew when the policy took a statutory form.

Within the Labour Party too, a diffuse opposition to incomes policy appeared; this was centred on the Tribune group of MPs, which formed themselves into a 'caucus' in 1964. The group soon realised that incomes policy was to be a central issue for the government, and that if it were to survive as a left ginger group, it had to take a stand on the issue. In December 1965, Tribune rejected its earlier support for control over incomes, and came out for the first time in editorial opposition. In this, it was following behind a core of about 20 to 30 MPs who had already expressed some verbal opposition.

It was in these political conditions that the 29th Congress of the CPGB met during December 1965. The Congress resolved the conflict which had built up over the post-war boom by ending all illusions about a vanguard role for the Party. The main resolution advanced proposals for 'left unity' a concept which replaced the previous one of 'working class unity'. The basis for this 'unity' was a nine point programme which included opposition to incomes policy. In line with this programme, the Congress decided to bury the Daily Worker, organ of the Communist Party, and raise in its stead the Morning Star, newspaper of left unity. These changes were to be set down in a new edition of the British Road to Socialism, which was commissioned for the next Congress. This is the present edition.

The next major pamphlet of the Party, The Case for Socialism in the Sixties, summarised the new line. The fragmented left in the Labour Party of which Gollan had been so derisive in 1961, was a thing of the past:

'The left in Parliament and the Labour Party is emerging more strongly, the Communist Party is still more active in its leading, pioneering and organising role.' (The Case for Socialism in the Sixties, CPGB, 1966)

No longer would the CPGB attempt to woo the left away from the Labour Party:

'We do not think that the left forces will break with the Labour Party in this way, and nor do we think they ought to.' (ibid, p72)

and finally, just in case anybody missed the point:

'We Communists in Britain do not stand for a one party state.' (ibid, p75)

In this way, the Party defined a new and closer relation to the labour bureaucracy, in particular with those elements who were predisposed to oppose state control over wages. The Communist Party proved a capable organiser and mouthpiece of this opposition. Its first important gain was in 1967, when, following '... an unprecedented coalition inside the union of Communists and left Labour activists', Scanlon was elected president of the AEU in opposition to John Boyd, the right wing's choice as successor to Carron' (Panitch: Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy, p148). The Party also managed to head the movements of opposition to the Labour Government in the rank and file, through the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. And when the government floated 'In Place of Strife', the CPGB's influence reached its apogee as 'left unity' embraced the whole of the trade union movement, and the majority of the Parliamentary Party.

Thus the first years of the crisis brought the Party out of its

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isolation, as the trade union bureaucracy resisted a certain form of state integration. But this was at the expense of further adaptation to British imperialism. It is this that has set the scene for the present conflicts in the Party.

The CPGB and Tribune.

The relation of the Tribune group to the CPGB can now be assessed. Although still somewhat disparate, nevertheless there is a fairly coherent core of about 30 MPs who constitute the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The assertion by the radical left that the social base of the Tribune group is the trade union bureaucracy, particularly its left wing, is wrong. It cannot explain why the heated exchanges between Mikardo and Jones should have taken place at the 1975 Labour Party Conference. Nor does it explain why this year in April, when Tribune MPs presented a motion to the NEC calling for an emergency conference of the Party, they were voted down by the trade union representatives, the most vocal opposition coming from Alex Kitson, a prominent left official in the TGWU.

In fact, the only audience the Tribune MPs have is that of the Communist Party. Thus the pages of Labour Monthly, a magazine of 'left unity', although edited and produced by the CP, are filled with Tribune contributions. This is why regular contributions to the Morning Star are made by Tribune MPs, or why they are the star speakers at events like the Unemployment Assembly, or the November lobby of last year. But the point is that it was the Communist Party alone which provided the mobilisation for these occasions.

Thus the Tribune group is entirely dependent on the CP for support for its opposition to the Labour Government. But it is important to understand that the Tribune group is inseparable from the Labour Party. It is above all a Parliamentary opposition, and it is thus electorally dependent on the Labour Party. Tribune MPs are elected to Parliament, not because they are lefts, but because they are Labour candidates. Without the Labour Party, they would be nothing, although without the Communist Party, they would not be much either. Although capable of making gestures of opposition to the Government, its dependency in the Labour Party sets the limits on how far it can move against the government. The mildest threats are sufficient to ensure that Tribune toes the line: witness the support for the vote of confidence which followed the Government's defeat on economic policy earlier this year, which was brought about by Tribune abstentions.

That Tribune cannot separate itself from the Labour Party gives its relation to the Communist Party a contradictory character. Its left image is dependent on the political and material support provided by the Communist Party. Yet the organisational independence of the CPGB signifies the possibility of a future rupture between the two organisations. Such a break would bring into question Tribune's radical reputation. It seeks to overcome this contradiction through periodic attacks on the Communist Party. By questioning the need for a separate Communist Party, or by criticising democratic centralism as a means for suppressing free speech. Tribune seeks to obtain political compromises from the CPGB which will bind it closer to the Labour Party. Thus it is not surprising that when the CP offered up its nine point programme for left unity in 1965, Tribune argued editorially that it could only be realised when the CPGB dissolved itself into the Labour Party. Recently, Eric Heffer returned to the theme:

'On the question of the Communist Parties in Western Europe, my view of the Communist Party in Britain is that it really ought to consider its future as a Party. The British party is only a small organisation. And, rightly or wrongly, it is considered by many people in the labour movement to be a mouthpiece of the Soviet Union, without any independent views.' (Morning Star, 20.8.76)

For its part, the CP does not wish to break with the Labour lefts at the moment. The links with Tribune symbolise the future possibilities of the policy of 'left unity'. It certainly cannot dissolve itself as Tribune fondly imagines; as the spokesman and organiser of the left union bureaucracy, it must maintain its independence. But the past ten years shows the extent to which it has had to compromise itself to build up the unity, particularly now in its determination not to offer any criticism of the Tribune MPs. How far this unity will be maintained depends on developments within the working class movement; it must be recognised that the possibility of conflicts between the two is inherent in their different origins.

The conflicts within the CPGB

We are now in a position to assess the conflicts within the CPGB, what the different factions represent, and what course the struggle is likely to take. There are three obvious tendencies: the leadership, the Frenchites, and the liberals. What separates the first two is their attitude to the leading role of the party. The logic of the position adopted by the liberals would be to dissolve the Party altogether. Dave Cook, Party National Organiser, presented the dilemma of the centre in the discussion preceding the last congress:

'Our long term objective of reaching a position where the left is able to present a single working class candidate (with Communists amongst them) in selected constituencies certainly requires that we draw closer to the left wing in the Labour Party and the trade unions ... However, we also need to lay emphasis on presenting the party as an independent force: for the success of both our immediate and longer term perspectives. We need to challenge the widely held belief that the Party's main role is as a "ginger group", servicing the left in the unions and the Labour Party.' (Comment, 1.11.75, emphasis added)

The adaptation by the CPGB which led to the strategy of 'left unity' now raises the question as to whether the Party should maintain its independent existence. That it should appear as a 'ginger group' is no accident; in its role as organiser of the left labour bureaucracy, this is how it is called on to act. As a reformist organisation, it could not be anything else.

The liberals draw out the logic of the leadership's position, a logic that is very fitting for their class position. Purdy's 'quid pro quo': a socialist incomes policy for more public control: would destroy the Party. It is not surprising that this trend has developed over the past few years. The growing representation of the petty bourgeoisie within the Party (in 1959, 15% of Party delegates at the national congress were white collar workers or students; at the last congress, it was 30%) has strengthened the tendency towards liquidation; it is the petty bourgeoisie which provide support for the likes of Purdy. The importance of this tendency for us is that it expresses the present consciousness of the working class. Its belief that wages are a considerable factor in the inflationary process is shared by the mass of workers, together with the consequences of wage restraint. The inability of the leadership to defeat the petty bourgeoisie expresses the Party's inability to create an opposition to the Labour government. In this, it is entirely dependent on the spontaneous anger of the working class, since it itself is incapable of explaining to workers why they should defend their living standards. However, the liberal tendency in itself is not important. Once the working class starts to move against the Labour government, and the Communist Party is forced to place itself at the head of such a movement, the petty-bourgeoisie will call it a day and scurry into safer niches.

The Frenchites are a more significant political force. They contend with the leadership for the allegiance of the trade union base of the CPGB. They stress the independent role of the party, and criticise the 'left unity' strategy of the leadership. They attack the leadership for its political compromises, and recently have had a field day over the Morning Star. This followed a report on the declining sales of the Star given by its editor, Chater, to the Executive Committee in May. It was written up in Comment, and generated a very critical correspondence. There was almost universal condemnation of the report, from the standpoint of the Frenchites. Letters to Comment argued that the bourgeois reportage should be dropped together with the 'Womanwise', gardening and children's features. Instead, they argued that there should be more in-depth analysis, more articles raising broad political issues. They also argue for introductory articles on questions of Marxist theory. In other words, they seek to turn the Star back into an organ of the Communist Party.

The differences have appeared in the debate on socialist democracy. The leadership approaches the question from the standpoint of its adaptation to the British state. Its view of socialist democracy complements its abandonment of the idea of

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the CPGB as a vanguard party. If it cannot aspire to an exclusive position in the struggle against capitalism, then it equally cannot expect an exclusive position within socialism. Thus the notion of the multi-party state: a rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This rejection is implicit in the British Road to Socialism; its present significance is its association with the abandonment of the leading role of the Party. As one member put it:

'This critical ideological approach to the Soviet Union has its effect on our party in many ways ... (it results in): The non-acceptance of the leading role of the Communist Party.' (Letter to Comment, 1.11.75, p355)

The Frenchites see the defence of the Soviet Union as inseparable from the real issue at stake: the leading role of the Party. They counterpose their notion of the independent interests of the working class to the compromises of the leadership. Thus they support the purges of the 30s, since they defend the use of working class terror, and reject the leadership's bourgeois democratic notion of individual dissent. The problem that faces the Frenchites is that they can use concepts such as the leading role of the party only in a formal sense, since they accept the political premise which necessitated their revision: the national road to socialism.

How this conflict develops depends on the response of the working class to the Labour government. The Party has a particular role to play when sections of workers start to resist cuts in their living standards. As the representative of the left bureaucracy, it will place itself at the head of such movements; it cannot allow itself to be outflanked by them. It will then seek to keep them within the framework of bourgeois legality, to prevent them escaping the political and organisational domination of the bureaucracy and Labour Party as a whole. In other words, it will try to reconcile such disaffected workers with the Labour Party and the TUC. The Kautsky wing of the SPD played a similar role in 1916-17, before it split to form the centrist USPD. In those years, the majority of German workers had become disaffected from the straightforward chauvinist leadership of the SPD. Kautsky refused to split with them until he was forced to through mass pressure; he argued that the unity of the German working class had to be preserved at all costs, even with the outright chauvinists. Lenin analysed Kautsky's role as follows:

'But the danger of Kautsky lies in the fact that, utilising the ideology of the past, it endeavours to reconcile the proletariat with the "bourgeois labour party", to preserve the unity of the proletariat with that party and thereby enhance the latter's prestige.' (Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, CW 23, p119)

The CPGB also seeks to 'preserve the unity of the proletariat' with the 'bourgeois labour party'. It expresses this in its belief that the Labour Party can be won away from right wing capitalist influence towards progressive policies. This is the significance of abandoning the vanguard concept of the party, for it reinforces the notion that, despite its present leadership, the Labour Party must be considered as a legitimate vehicle for the historic interests of the working class. In fulfilling this role, however, the party is caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, it will be pushed by mass pressure from the working class away from its allies in the Labour Party. On the other, it has to maintain that link. This contradiction will reflect itself internally in the development of the antagonism between the Frenchites and present leadership. The former will mediate the pressure from the working class, reflecting a spontaneous hostility to the dominant reformist leadership of the working class. The criticisms it makes of left unity or the concept of the party held by the leadership will become a rallying point for workers within the Party. Although the leadership will manoeuver and try to accomodate the two opposing pressures, the limits to this are set by its social base. To a certain extent, these conflicts are already being expressed:

'Left unity as projected by our party at this moment in time is seen by many people in the labour movement as the CP increasingly prepared to compromise on matters of Communist principles and quite blatantly watering down policy on some very crucial issues merely in order to give an image of acceptance and respectability to certain allies in the movement... What of our partners in this "unity", how do they view the CP? A recent editorial in Tribune made reference to groups and political parties who operate democratic centralism merely as a means of suppressing dissent and free speech. If this is unity, it is shallow unity indeed.' (Letter to Comment, 1.11.75, p352)

The debates within the Communist Party are the debates going on amongst advanced workers. That between Purdy and the trade unionists within the Party represents the current one on the social contract. Purdy's views are those of the vast majority of workers. The leadership's inability to defeat Purdy expresses the frustration of workers who cannot see how the social contract is to be fought politically. This debate expresses the current state of the movement, but it obscures what will be the more fundamental debate, when the question will be not whether to oppose the social contract and cuts in living standards, but how. At present, the Frenchites and the leadership are in a fragile unity in opposition to Purdy. But when the working class itself gives the answer to Purdy, the basis for that unity will no longer exist. Then the conflicts between the Frenchites and the leadership will come into the open. In these conflicts exists the possibility of a split, with one tendency moving in a centrist direction.

The debates in the Communist Party will focus on the new draft of the British Road to Socialism, which will appear in January or February 1977. This will be a most significant debate for advanced workers. We have to be prepared to intervene in it.

Over the past months, we have understood that the CPGB is important in that it expresses in the clearest and most developed form left reformist ideas. We have posed the question: why can the CP fill this role, and we have provided our answer, not by starting with the relation of the CPGB to the Soviet bureaucracy, but by looking at its relation to the British working class and its leadership. We see the relation to the Soviet Union as an entirely secondary question. The measure of the academic method of Cdes PT and FR is that they do not provide an answer to anything.

R Dornhorst 1.11.76.

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Editorial note on restorations

Five passages present on the page were missing from the whole-issue OCR and are restored here from the images:

1. p51, the Manifesto of mid-1940: its opening sentence ("The interests of the people require the speediest ending of the war, not by surrender to fascism at home and abroad, but by the strength of a free people organising their own defence and..."). 2. p51, in the same quotation: "the unity and unbroken will to victory that can guarantee the defeat of both the Nazi menace and of the danger which also". 3. p51: "which led to Pollitt's departure from the" General Secretaryship, without which the sentence about the 1939 leadership fight loses its subject. 4. p51: "The official slogans sanctioned by" the Comintern. 5. p53, the over-inked block from "It is by our creative use" to the Pollitt 1949 citation, recovered at 520dpi and 900dpi magnification. The page reference in that citation remains illegible.