Our Tasks and Methods: the founding document of the RCG

Editorial note. Transcribed by hand from the scan. Misprints are kept as printed and marked [sic]; [illegible] and a bracketed query mark words that cannot be read with certainty. Footnote numbers are printed as superscripts and are given so; the notes stand at the foot of the page that prints them. Page headings give the printed page numbers.

Printed page 3

Our Tasks and Methods: the founding document of the RCG

This document represents our political starting point. It is a statement that is the outcome of a process of political discussion and clarification. The contradictions of the world economy – and within it, Britain – are deepening: this presents revolutionaries with serious tasks. As the existing political strategies of groups on the left prove inadequate to these tasks, other comrades will be forced to ask the questions we have had to face. We feel this document raises issues which are relevant not just to us, but to the whole revolutionary movement.

Why we formed the RCG

The major problems forced upon the working class by the present crisis of capitalism demand a clear assessment of the tasks of revolutionaries. For us, a revolutionary party is defined by its programme, its assessment of the objective conditions and the strategy it proposes for winning the working class to the struggle for state power. We need to develop such a programme today: to do this we have to build upon the accumulated theoretical gains of the Marxist movement so that we can draw up a balance sheet of developments since the Second World War and develop a scientific understanding of the present period. We believe that none of the groups on the left have carried out this task and, consequently, they find themselves unable to relate to today's conditions. Any revolutionary organisation must be judged by how it measures up to the tasks of today. The first of these is the development of a revolutionary programme.

The development of a revolutionary programme is inseparable from our other tasks. The objective conditions and the pressing problems facing the class demand that we both develop a programme and of necessity intervene in the struggles of the class before such a programme is established. Our general theoretical assessment of the present political situation provides the basis for this work. Because of the worsening crisis, the basic struggles of the working class to defend its conditions are beginning to collide with the barriers of reformist ideology. Under these conditions some sections of the class are beginning to break in a fragmented way from bourgeois ideology, and are being driven by the pressure of objective events to look for alternative political solutions to the problems they face. These sections constitute a potential vanguard in the working class. If the working class is to play its independent revolutionary role, a vanguard in the class, free from the domination of bourgeois ideology, must be created. The potential vanguard, which is searching for political solutions to the problems facing the class, can become a vanguard capable of leading the struggle to overthrow the bourgeois state only when it is armed with an independent working class programme. Unless this potential vanguard adheres to such a programme, it will be drawn into various centrist currents and be diverted. One of the central tasks of revolutionaries today is to train this potential vanguard around a revolutionary programme, for only through winning this vanguard will it be possible to go on to win the mass of workers.

These tasks, of developing a programme and winning the potential vanguard, must go together with the development of a revolutionary organisation and the training of a revolutionary cadre. Only a democratic centralist organisation of committed revolutionaries can develop such a programme and fight to win the potential vanguard to it. It is to carry out these threefold tasks that we have formed the Revolutionary Communist Group.

Our group began its life as the Revolutionary Opposition in the International Socialists and from its beginning was involved in a political fight to defend the basic principles of Marxist politics. We argued against IS's abandonment of the materialist basis of Marxism, which was signalled in its rejection of the concept of the imperialist epoch.¹ We also showed the political consequences of this – its adaptation to trade union militancy and its utopian socialism. We argued that revolutionaries had to adopt a transitional programme which, on the basis of a struggle to defend existing living standards and conditions, could bring the working class to see the necessity for revolution. The emergence of our group in IS was not accidental. With the accelerating crisis of the 70s, the weakness of localised trade union militancy and economistic politics began to be revealed. IS, having plunged itself most deeply into the currents which adhered to these methods of struggle, was necessarily amongst the first to be confronted by this weakness. Our

1. See the article on 'The International Socialists and Centrism: the Re-emergence of Economism' in this journal for a full discussion of IS's rejection of the concept of the imperialist epoch.

Printed page 4

development in response to the crisis within the workers' movement, of which IS was symptomatic – a crisis of leadership which was prompted by the re-emergence of inter-imperialist rivalries and the growing disruptions of world economy – was thus not an isolated phenomenon; on the contrary, as the crisis intensifies, so other groups treading the same path as IS will themselves be racked by internal dissensions and splits.

In order to fight for their politics in IS, the members of the Revolutionary Opposition formed a group, which, because of the restrictions on internal democracy and the factional manoeuvres of the leadership in IS, necessarily had to remain secret. Eventually the witchhunt came to a head and the bulk of the members and supporters of the Revolutionary Opposition were expelled from IS. At this point, the document 'What We Stand For – A Revolutionary Opposition in IS', which summed up the main positions we fought for in IS, was issued. While we stand by the central theses of that document, we feel that it neither followed through the logic of its conclusions, nor clearly spelt out the tasks of revolutionaries in Britain today. Following our expulsion from IS, a debate about the way forward for the Revolutionary Opposition occurred, which eventually led to a split. This resulted in a section of the former Revolutionary Opposition following through the logic of its earlier positions and taking the necessary steps to face up to the tasks confronting revolutionaries by forming the Revolutionary Communist Group in March 1974.

The rest of this document falls into three sections. Firstly, we locate our tasks in the context of the imperialist epoch. Secondly, we explain what our political orientation should be at the present time. Thirdly, we discuss the organisational form we have adopted to enable us to fulfil our tasks.

The tasks of revolutionaries in the imperialist epoch

Though the Revolutionary Opposition stressed, quite correctly, the importance of understanding the nature of the epoch as the transitional epoch, it did not fully draw out the practical consequences of this. This is revealed most clearly in its attitude to the party. The section on 'What kind of party' in the 'What We Stand For' document treats the necessity for the party primarily as the need for a particular form of organisation – democratic centralism. It quite correctly indicated that:

'The IS leadership simply took over what they considered to be "Leninist organisation", while continuing to reject the central core of Lenin's conception of the party of which the organisational forms are no more than a secondary expression.'²

But it failed to point out what this central core is. For the authors of the document, Lenin's view of the party is located not in the objective necessities of the imperialist epoch, but in a series of general truisms:

'The party could not just be the organisation of the most advanced and audacious members of the working class. The significance of the party was not just that it organised the class, but that it organised it for a certain strategy on the basis of a clear programme. Given the uneven and atomised nature of the working class under capitalism, the party has the function of seeking to bring unity, coherence, and direction to the class struggle by organising around a particular strategy, tactics, slogans and demands. It has to seek to generalise the struggles which capitalism works to diversify.'³

This view of the party as 'generalising the struggles and overcoming the divisions in the working class' is all too common on the left. The 'uneven and atomised nature of the working class under capitalism' is hardly a profound observation. We can deduce nothing from it but the difficulty of uniting the class. Were it the case that capitalism worked primarily to diversify the struggles of the working class, there would be no basis for the socialist revolution, and the revolutionary party would be reduced to a utopian sect. In fact, capitalism has developed the productive forces to the point where the material basis for socialism exists. The division of labour has assumed international dimensions, so that the maintenance of the restricted boundaries of the nation state conflicts more and more with capital's requirement for a world market. Capitalism not only establishes the material preconditions for socialism, but gives birth to the revolutionary class capable of overthrowing it. Far from isolating workers from each other, it brings them together in large factories. Far from atomising the working class, it tends, historically, to break down all local and parochial divisions between town and country, between crafts and trades, through eliminating all personal and individual ties between workers and particular employers. This is not to deny, of course, that the capitalist class attempts to work against these tendencies by setting sections of the class against each other (along narrow craft, racial and sexual lines) and workers of one country against those of another: nor to deny that these attempts find support in certain appearances of capitalism which provide a basis for such divisions in the class. But the deficiencies of the everyday struggles of the working class are not simply the result of these divisions.

The central weakness of the spontaneous struggles of the class is not just their lack of unity, but their domination by bourgeois ideology, of which this lack of unity is itself a reflection. The spontaneous struggles of the class focus on the improvement of its conditions of existence within capitalism, upon the achievement of a fair day's wage, rather than on the abolition of capitalism and the wages system. However much trade union consciousness becomes generalised, it remains under the domination of bourgeois ideology. The task of the party is not simply to generalise these struggles, but to redirect the spontaneous revolt of the working class from the path of reforms within capitalism to the fight for state power. Of course unity is important in the class struggle, and the party strives to unite the class; however, it does this not simply by linking up various isolated battles, but by decisively reorienting these towards the struggle for state power. It is this which makes a unified and centralised leadership of the working class essential. If the working class has not achieved the highest degree of unification and organisation, it will be unable to take power from the bourgeoisie. Before the bourgeois revolution, the

2. What We Stand For – A Revolutionary Opposition in IS, p55.

3. ibid.

Printed page 5

bourgeoisie was able to gradually develop a position of economic dominance. The working class has no such opportunity: it must first seize power before being able to abolish private property and lay the basis for a planned economy. The party must weld the proletariat into a tightly organised force against the might of the bourgeois state. Thus it is the task of the party both to bring to the working class a true consciousness of its own interests, and to organise and lead the struggle for state power.

In order to do this the party must set itself the highest theoretical standards: it must wage a constant fight to defend the principles of Marxism and to develop an adequate understanding of the real conditions of society. Without this it will have no compass to guide its activity, but must of necessity respond pragmatically to every new development in the workers' movement, and thus inevitably fall prey to bourgeois ideology. It is simply wrong to see the task of the party as generalising the existing working class struggles. The central tasks of the Leninist party are to independently work out a programme for the working class, to strive to win the mass of the working class away from the domination of bourgeois politics and to organise and lead the struggle for state power.

It is in the imperialist epoch that the necessity for the Leninist party arises. We will discuss the role of the party in the imperialist epoch first at an abstract level, dealing only with the most general tendencies of the epoch. Only later will we go on to deal with the post-war period, where certain features of the imperialist epoch were suppressed, and where it appeared that capitalism could provide long-term improvements in the material conditions of the working class. In the imperialist epoch, which began at the beginning of the twentieth century, capitalism is no longer able to regularly and systematically develop the productive forces. Capitalism, through developing and socialising the productive forces, has laid the material basis for the reorganisation of production on the basis of a planned economy. The further development of the productive forces comes into conflict with the existing social relations of production, and any further systematic development of the productive forces depends on the overthrow of the capitalist relations of production. The level of development of the productive forces shows the possibility of socialism, while the conflict between the development of production and the existing social relations poses, through a deepening social crisis, the necessity for revolution. In the imperialist epoch capitalism suffers from a deep and prolonged crisis: a crisis which can only be successfully resolved if there exists a revolutionary party capable of winning the mass of the class to its programme. The maintenance of capitalism rests not on its material foundations – for these are in decay – but on the immaturity and backwardness of the working class and its leadership. The various sharp political turns and alternations of periods of revolutionary advance with periods of reaction spring, not from changes in the economic base, but from impulses of a purely superstructural character. In this epoch the outcome of the crisis rests on the subjective factor: the understanding, organisation and determination of the revolutionary party.

This is not to say that the task of the party is to march directly to the seizure of state power, for their [sic] will have to be many detours and manoeuvres on that road. It is to say that the party must place at the centre of its programme a strategy for winning the masses to the struggle for power. In the period which preceded the imperialist epoch, the problem of organising the seizure of state power did not occupy a major place in the discussions of either the Marxist or revisionist wings of the Second International. This period was characterised by the gradual organic development and strengthening of the working class movement and the numerical growth of the proletariat in line with the regular development of the productive forces. There were whole periods in which the actions of the party focussed on winning improvements in the conditions of existence of the class and reinforcing the organisation of the proletariat. This was both possible and necessary as the regular development of the productive forces gave capitalism a fundamental stability in this period. The seizure of state power was thus only presented as a necessity in occasional situations where the bourgeois state was particularly weakened and where there was a grave economic crisis – for instance, France in 1871, Russia in 1905. Some sections of the Second International adapted to these circumstances and subordinated their activities to fighting for what was possible within capitalism. They developed what became known as the Minimum-Maximum' programme, which effectively divided the activities of the party between the day to day struggle for social reforms within capitalism (the minimum), and making propaganda for socialism (the maximum). The day to day struggle was separated from the final goal and confined within the limits of bourgeois democracy. For these sections, the gradual accumulation of reforms would lead to the growing over of capitalism into socialism, and thus it was unnecessary to prepare and organise the class for the struggle for power.

In the imperialist epoch, however, where there is no possibility of achieving any general and systematic reforms, this necessarily led to the reformist parties sacrificing the interests of the working class to the needs of capital. In the imperialist epoch, the dominance of this reformist leadership in the labour movement and the ideological dependence of the working class on the bourgeoisie become the central pillars of capitalist stability. The whole epoch is characterised by a deep crisis of proletarian leadership: the objective conditions make revolution an imminent necessity, yet the consciousness of the mass of workers and their leadership lags behind the development of the social crisis springing from the objective conditions. The revolutionary party must overcome this crisis by leading the masses from their everyday situation, through their own experience, to the point where they see the bankruptcy of reformism and the necessity to struggle for state power The party must advance a transitional programme which, starting from the present consciousness of the masses, takes them through struggle to grasp the need to overthrow the capitalist state.

Printed page 6

The party does not simply announce its right to leadership and call on the masses to rally round, nor does it stand aside from the struggles in which the class is engaged. It intervenes in all areas of the life of the proletariat, and attempts to draw all sections of the class and its potential allies into a struggle around transitional demands. The transitional programme is based on the premise that in the conditions of decaying capitalism, while even the most basic aspirations of the masses cannot be consistently fulfilled, the working class is by no means convinced of the practical necessity of revolution. The aim of the transitional programme is to outline a strategy for the defence of the existing gains of the class: a strategy which is in conformity with the objective conditions and consequently leads the class to engage in struggles which force it to realise the urgency of revolution.

It is important to understand that, though the struggle for transitional demands leads on to the conquest of state power, these demands are defensive in form. It is the fact that the defence of the existing conquests of the class collides with the downward slide of decaying capitalism which lends the transitional demands their educational character and revolutionary significance. Thus the revolutionary party does not simply denounce the reformist leadership for its betrayals: it advances an independent programme for the defence of the basic needs of the class, and thus demonstrates that the reformists are unable to advance an adequate strategy and are unwilling to take up and fight for demands which bring them into conflict with the bourgeois state. In this way, the party fights to win the leadership of the class from the reformists by bringing the consciousness of the class into line with the objective conditions and thus to the brink of the seizure of state power.

Such a transitional programme must be based on a concrete examination of the fundamental tendencies of capitalism in the present period. It must, drawing on the accumulated theoretical gains of the Marxist movement, demonstrate anew that the prerequisites of socialism have been established and that the problems facing the working class pose the necessity of revolution. Trotsky's Transitional Programme of 1938 drew up a balance sheet of the developments of capitalism and the struggles of the class up to that point, and, on the basis of the existing crisis in society, advanced a strategy for the class. In the same way a transitional programme adequate to today's conditions must carry forward this analysis to the present period and show how the struggles of the class must now be developed. In the imperialist epoch, where the world economy dominates the development of national capitals, the laws of motion of capital can only be understood from the standpoint of the world economy. Thus, the strategy, which a national party proposes for the working class in its country, can only be fully adequate to the latter's requirements if it is based on an international programme for world revolution. Such a programme must be constructed by a revolutionary international – a disciplined organisation which is centralised on a world scale and whose sections extend and apply this programme in their particular fields of battle. It is because of this that the development of a revolutionary party in one country can only proceed along with the development of a revolutionary international. While we cannot as yet say whether this will mean rebuilding, reforming or recreating the Fourth International (and this must clearly be a priority for our group to determine), it is clear that the struggle for a transitional programme is inseparable from the struggle for a revolutionary international.

Our general political orientation

In the previous section we attempted to outline the tasks of revolutionaries in the imperialist epoch; in the rest of this document we intend to discuss what our general political orientation should be, and what precise steps we are taking in establishing an organisation.

Our orientation has to be based on a thoroughgoing materialist analysis of the development of capitalism on a world scale since the Second World War. The political and economic conditions which prevailed in Europe and America after the immediate post-war period threw the Trotskyist organisations and the Fourth International into disarray The expansion of capitalist production and the stabilisation of political regimes in Western Europe appeared to contradict all their forecasts and hopes, whilst the strengthening of the reformist parties weakened their position in the working class. To this day they have been unable to analyse and comprehend these developments. The Revolutionary Opposition began to undertake and develop an analysis of this process. It is an awareness of the necessity of such an analysis – and of the relevance to this of a scientific understanding of capitalism as developed in Capital – which distinguishes us from other organisations on the left. Though this task has yet to be completed, we alone recognise its importance and have begun to set about fulfilling it.

We argued that though the period of stabilisation and expansion of capitalism in Western Europe after the war did, indeed, contradict the immediate perspectives of the Fourth International, this did not signify a fundamental change in the character of the epoch, nor did it call into question the theoretical gains of the Fourth International. As early as 1928, Trotsky had conceded the possibility of a new phase of capitalist expansion, though he considered this totally improbable. In The Third International After Lenin, he stated:

'Theoretically, to be sure, even a new chapter of general capitalist progress in the most powerful, leading and ruling countries is not to be excluded. But for this capitalism would first have to overcome enormous barriers of a class as well as an interstate character. It would have to strangle the proletarian revolution for a long time; it would have to enslave China completely, overthrow the socialist republic and so forth. We are still a long way from all this. Theoretical possibilities correspond least of all to political probabilities.'⁴

In the years following the Second World War, although capitalism was not restored in the Soviet Union and capitalist property relations were overthrown in China and Eastern Europe, these enormous barriers of a class as well as an

4. Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder Press, 1970, p81.

Printed page 7

interstate character were eventually overcome. The defeats of the working class at the hands of fascism and Stalinism raised the class barriers, whilst the dominance of US imperialism over the world economy smashed through the interstate barriers: both ushered in a new period of capitalist accumulation.

By 1939, the criminal policies of the Stalinist and reformist parties had led to immense defeats for the working class throughout the world, and to the triumph of fascism in large parts of Western Europe. The politics of direct class collaboration, initiated during the war, were to lead to the slaughter of some of the best elements of the working class movement under the banner of their own imperialist powers. The Stalinist and reformist parties continued with these policies in the immediate post-war period: in those countries in Western Europe where the normal procedures of bourgeois democracy had been destroyed by the war they participated in the restoration of bourgeois governments, whilst elsewhere they gave full support to governments of capitalist reconstruction. Though the fact that the countries of Eastern Europe remained in Soviet hands – leading eventually to their transformation into bureaucratic workers' states – did represent a real gain, this was accompanied by the strengthening of the grip of Stalinism over the European proletariat and by defeats for the working class in other countries. The catastrophes suffered by the proletariat, and the class collaboration of its leadership, met with little opposition in the labour movement: this laid the basis for raising the rate of exploitation, a necessary condition of a new period of capitalist accumulation. At the same time, the war left the USA in a position of unrivalled supremacy as the leading power of world imperialism. It had suffered least from the war and found it easiest to take advantage of the demand generated by post-war reconstruction. A significant feature of this period was the unprecedented willingness of the US government to provide massive loan and aid capital to the industries and governments of Western Europe, and to restore European production and international trade. Though it was essential both to preserve capitalism in Western Europe and to open foreign markets to American corporations, this aid eventually was to build up Europe as a challenge to the domination of American capital itself.

We should state clearly that credit and aid could not by themselves have led to an increase in investment and an expansion of production unless a newly enlarged market and a rate of profit higher than that in the previous period were possible. The destruction of the war created the first condition. The second was made possible by the introduction in Europe of the new technology which had been developed before and during the war, primarily by the USA. This second condition itself depended upon the 'co-operation' of the working class – a co-operation provided for by a series of defeats of the class, and reinforced by the politics of class collaboration pursued by the Stalinist and reformist parties.

Though capitalism was able to go through a period of renewed accumulation after the war, this was only at the expense of adopting further 'socialist' forms of the organisation of production. Despite the fact that the immediate tendency towards crisis had disappeared, the basic tendencies of the imperialist epoch – the internationalisation of capital, the concentration and centralisation of capital, increasing state intervention and so on – did not. One key feature of capitalism as it emerged after the post-war period was the increased role played by the state in industry. State intervention proved necessary to the rationalisation and reorganisation of production after the war, in order to maintain those essential industries and services which could no longer be profitably run by private capital. The state passed from simply safeguarding the general conditions of capitalist exploitation to taking an increasing role in production and employment, via nationalisations, subsidies and the expansion of the social services. As this increased role of the state in the national economy has played a large part in maintaining capitalist stability, it is important to understand the limits and contradictions of this intervention. It is this set of contradictions which has dominated the capitalist economy since the fifties and which finds a growing expression today in international inflation. A detailed scientific analysis of this phenomenon is set out in other documents of the RCG.⁵ Here, space only allows us to say that without such an analysis – without in fact a fully materialist understanding of the post-war expansion – it is impossible to grasp the full extent and significance of the problems confronting capital today, and thus the developing international crisis. It is as Marxists that we say that, without understanding this, it is impossible to develop an adequate strategy for the working class.

One further feature of the post-war period should be noted. While the dominance of Stalinism and reformism in the labour movement provided the conditions necessary for the post-war expansion, this itself, together with the growing role of the state, strengthened the basis of reformism in the labour movement. With the new phase of capitalist expansion, it appeared possible for the basic aspirations of the working class to be met within capitalism simply by the gradual extension of the influence of the labour and trade union leaders on the state. The increased role of the state in the economy lent strength to the view that capitalism could wither away through the extension of the 'welfare state', and, of course, the reformists took full advantage of this by pronouncing the birth of the mixed economy and the demise of capitalism. At the same time, the reformist leaders found themselves increasingly drawn into the councils of the state, since the co-operation of the working class was essential if the rationalisations which were needed to increase profitability were to go through.

Today this period is coming to an end. The general trends of the imperialist epoch are reasserting themselves. The objective barriers to further regular capitalist expansion find their expression in increased inter-imperialist rivalries, attempts to restrict the further expansion of state expenditure and mounting inflation. The working class is faced with

5. see D Yaffe, 'The Crisis of Profitability: a Critique of the Glyn-Sutcliffe Thesis', New Left Review, 80.

Printed page 8

the necessity of adopting an independent programme if its interests are not to be sacrificed to the interests of the bourgeoisie. Sections of the class are beginning to be faced with the limitations of reformism: they will be driven into struggle with their own reformist leaders and will increasingly become open to revolutionary ideas. Yet, today's conditions find the working class politically disarmed and the revolutionary movement in disarray. In the post-war period the objective tendencies of the epoch as a whole did not present themselves directly and could only be grasped through a rigorous theoretical analysis of developments since the war.

The Trotskyist movement did not prove adequate to this task. It is important to see the nature of the task that should have been carried out. The post-war stabilisation of capitalism, the emergence of Stalinist parties as the leading organisations of the class in France and Italy, the growth of the Stalinist states in Eastern Europe, and the renewed strength of reformism, provoked a deep internal crisis for Marxists. The immediate task facing the Trotskyists was to reassess these developments in relation to the previous analyses of Trotsky and to undertake a rigorous examination of the period. This process of theoretical accounting of past positions and of re-evaluation of political strategy in terms of the objective conditions never took place.

The Fourth International failed to analyse the material conditions of the post-war period adequately and failed to develop a political strategy resting on an understanding of these conditions. The result of these failures was the development of two one-sided political tendencies. Some former Trotskyists, such as the IS, simply abandoned the Marxist standpoint in favour of an empirical adaptation to the pressure of bourgeois society: they made persistent attempts to reject and revise the fundamentals of Marxism, and in particular those fundamentals presented in Marx's Capital. The usual way these attacks were combatted was by a stale 'orthodoxy', a rigid appeal to dogma. Accordingly, it was maintained that capitalism was as usual in continual crisis, and, indeed, that the more things had changed since Trotsky's writings, the more things had stayed the same. Optimistic predictions about the coming collapse of capitalism were intoned with monotonous regularity. The leader of the Fourth International, M Pablo, wrote in 1949:

'Compromised by the revival of competition, by the antagonism of the participants, the . . . [Marshall] . . . Plan is moving towards its inevitable collapse.'⁶

The ritual chanting of old orthodoxies which flew in the face of reality could only be asserted by putting forward a theory of 'objective processes'. Somehow (and it was never explained how) Trotsky's forecasts would come true automatically. This elevation of objective processes to ahistorical laws is best exemplified in the conception of permanent revolution held by George Clarke, then a prominent leader of the Socialist Workers Party:

'The most heartening and gratifying aspect of the rich and varied post-war experience has been the positive verification of Trotsky's famous contribution to Marxism, the concept and strategy of permanent revolution. It is not decisive for Marxists that this process is not yet openly recognised by the Yugoslav leaders . . . What is decisive is the actual process itself.'⁷

By putting forward a fatalistic theory of collapse, the Fourth International did not have to face the question of revolutionary leadership. Instead the Fourth International took to crystal ball-gazing and the prediction of the inevitable revolution: whether it was 1946 or 1973, the formula was the same.

'The repeated demonstration of the bourgeoisie of its inability to restabilise an economy and political regime of the slightest stability offers to workers new opportunities to go over to ever higher stages of struggle . . .'⁸

Or else:

'For several years, what is on the agenda is neither an ebb in the revolution nor a reconsolidation of imperialism, but on the contrary the continuation of the revolutionary rise, and the multiplication of powerful thrusts of the mass movement going towards the creation of situations of dual power or passing through this threshold.'⁹

The Fourth International has put forward a series of formalistic schemas, each time adapting its simplistic orthodoxy to the course of events.

For Marxists, orthodoxy does not mean the indiscriminate repetition of old formulae. Lenin waged a constant fight against those who 'had learnt by rote certain "slogans", certain answers to tactical questions without having understood the Marxist criteria for these answers'. Lenin warned those who forget that Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action: if we lose sight of this fact . . .

'We turn Marxism into something one-sided, distorted and lifeless; we deprive it of its life blood; we undermine its basic theoretical foundation – dialectics. The doctrine of historical development, all embracing and full of contradictions; we undermine its connection with the definite practical tasks of the epoch.'¹⁰

For revolutionaries the question of orthodoxy is primarily a question of method, of the need to relate political strategy to the changing material conditions of the epoch. A commitment to revolutionary politics gave the Fourth International a formal conception of the inevitability of socialism. This conception was fought for on the basis of old 'orthodoxies'. What was not understood was the method used to arrive at these orthodox conclusions. Thus the necessity of socialism did not emerge from an analysis of the contradictions of post-war capitalism, but was posed in terms of the inevitable' objective process. This one-sided 'orthodoxy' of the Fourth International was an orthodoxy robbed of its dialectical content, an orthodoxy which became easy prey to empirical adaptations and which can easily capitulate to reformism. Its protestations of orthodoxy notwithstanding, a revolutionary organisation unguided by scientific theory can become the victim of impressionism and of social forces quite alien to Marxism. The Fourth International has been no exception to this rule, for its history since the Second World War has been one of adaptation after adaptation: to Titoism in 1948, to petit

6. Fourth International, September 1949.

7. Fourth International, July-August 1950. (Our emphasis)

8. European Executive Committee, 1946.

9. Draft political resolution of the majority tendency, USFI, October 1973.

10. Lenin, Collected Works Volume 17, p39.

Printed page 9

bourgeois nationalism in the fifties, to guerillaism in the sixties and recently to economism. The 1973 Draft Political Resolution of the Majority Tendency sums up the inability of the Fourth International to project an independent strategy for the working class. This document states,

'The revolutionary Marxists, while warning the proletariat and the vanguard layers that this revolutionary rise cannot continue indefinitely and that the absence of a radical proletarian solution due to the betrayals of the traditional leadership would end in tiring out the masses . . . should stake everything on the present dynamic of the proletarian struggles, seeking to objectively sharpen its cutting edge, and if possible to make it consciously anti-capitalist.'¹¹

Despite the good intentions of making the struggle anticapitalist, all that the Fourth International can do is to elaborate a radical version of trade union politics and to 'stake everything on the present dynamic of the proletarian struggles'. Only recently the International Marxist Group was able to state:

'There is only one solution to the crisis of British capitalism — socialist policies . . . The raw material out of which such policies can be made already exists not in the bankrupt reformist plans of the Labour Party, but in the struggles the working class has already launched against the unfolding crisis of British capitalism. Socialist policies are workers' policies . . . they grow out of and are based on the organisations and struggles of the working class and will resolve the crisis in the interest of the working people.'¹²

But where have we heard this before? The Economists in Russia held a similar view:

'We consider the most important phenomenon of Russian life, the one that will mainly determine the tasks . . . and the publication activity of the Union, is the mass working class movement which has arisen in recent years.'¹³

This was the argument of Rabocheye Dyelo, an Economist group, against whom Lenin polemicised. Once again it is necessary to fight Economism, it becomes essential to fight against the re-emergence of groups like Rabocheye Dyelo and therefore the IMG. 'Workers' policies' are not automatically socialist policies, and socialist policies don't arise out of the trade unions in a spontaneous manner. Scientific socialism and revolutionary strategy develop alongside the class struggle and not out of it. The heightening of the struggle between classes does not automatically lead the working class to revolutionary politics; nor does the growth of the workers' movement make the revolutionary party any less necessary. On the contrary, it is precisely an intensification of the class struggle which demands of the party the highest standards of theoretical accuracy, political clarity, and organisational thoroughness.

Though the IMG has correctly noted the sharpening conflict between classes, having observed this it drops its revolutionary responsibilities and tells the workers that they are on the right road to socialism. As the crisis deepens those groups which do not have a clear programme will be swept off their feet by the spontaneous developments in the working class and in their haste to place themselves at the head of the movement will throw aside what theoretical baggage they possess. Such groups will become an obstacle to development of a revolutionary vanguard in the class.

There is confusion on the left about what is meant by 'the vanguard' because these groups do not have a political conception of the vanguard of the class. The concept 'vanguard' implies 'leading', 'hegemonic': a section of the class which both recognises the independent interests of the class and is prepared to lead a struggle for a correspondingly independent strategy. If it were true that a vanguard existed in the class, then the fight to develop an independent working class programme would hardly be necessary, since the militant leadership of the class would already be playing a politically independent vanguard role. On the contrary, we would argue that a vanguard will only emerge when a section of the class takes up the fight for a politically independent perspective. In other words, it can only be trained in relation to the development of a revolutionary programme. This is a crucial task for the revolutionary movement: to develop an independent working class programme and train a vanguard around this programme. No other organisation has assessed the importance of these tasks, precisely because of their incorrect conception of the vanguard, confusing it with working class militants who have yet to break from bourgeois ideology.

The United Secretariat of the Fourth International, for instance, characterises the vanguard as those workers 'who are outside the control of and act independently of the traditional leadership of the working class movement'. It confuses those who are outside the organisational control of, or act independently of, the trade union bureaucracy and Labour Party, with a vanguard which is breaking with bourgeois ideology. The independent activity of the class if it does not come under the leadership of conscious revolutionaries, can only be dominated by bourgeois ideology. As Lenin put it:

'There can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the workers themselves in the course of their movement.' 'All worship of the spontaneity of the working class, all belittling of the role of conscious social democracy means, quite irrespective of whether he who belittles that role desires it or not, a strengthening of the influence of bourgeois ideology among the workers.'¹⁴

To conceive of a mass vanguard, based on the existing leadership of the class, both overestimates the revolutionary forces and seriously underestimates the tasks of developing a programme and training a cadre. The political weakness of the present leadership of militant trade union struggles was revealed in the unsuccessful battles against the Tory government and their counter-inflation policy. To provide a political answer to the present attacks on the class would require a break from their economistic traditions and trade union schooling. These traditions were mainly fostered in the conditions of the fifties and sixties and the militant struggles of the early seventies, where the leadership of the class was trained in the method of trade union politics and tactics of struggle. Today, these methods of struggle are no longer adequate. The fundamental contradictions of the

11. Draft political resolution of the majority tendency, USFI, October 1973.

12. IMG Manifesto, February 1974.

13. Rabocheye Dyelo, cited in Lenin, 'What Is To Be Done', Collected Works Volume 5, p389.

14. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 5, p382 and p384.

Printed page 10

imperialist epoch are reasserting themselves. The day to day problems facing the class can no longer be solved within the limits of capitalist society: an independent working class programme is needed. Under these conditions all the existing organisations and traditions in the working class movement will be tried and tested by events. Already the working class is being forced up against the barriers of reformist ideology. The throwing up of new tactics, such as the flying picket and the factory occupation, indicates that sections of the class, in an effort to defend their existing conditions, are being driven to cross the bounds of bourgeois legality. Though these tactics are not in themselves revolutionary in that they do not offer an adequate strategy to fight for the political hegemony of the working class against the attacks of the bourgeois state, they show that sections of the class are being driven to collide with the barriers of reformist politics. As the crisis deepens, broader sections of workers will be drawn into struggles to defend their existing conquests; struggles which will force them up against the limitations of purely trade unionist or economistic methods. The needs of the mass of workers will come up against their present leaders, who are tied to fighting within the limits of bourgeois society. Under these conditions some workers will be driven to see the limits of the existing leadership of the class and will begin to search for a political alternative. It is from this section of the class which is attempting to go beyond the limits of trade union politics that a new vanguard in the class must be developed.

We see this section of the class as a potential vanguard in the class. The mass of workers will not break all at once from reformist politics, but certain sections – those least imbued with the old traditions – will begin to break in a fragmented way from reformist politics. An important part of this potential vanguard will come from young workers who are least implicated in the old traditions. Whilst sections of the older workers – the best elements in the trade unions and some who have not previously been involved politically – will have to seek a way around old trade unionist and economistic methods of struggle, they will not be in the forefront of the changeover to revolutionary communist politics and methods of struggle which follow from this. They will be open to political solutions, but the example of how to struggle in a political way will have to come from elsewhere – from those workers who do not have to break from the old habits and traditions. Whilst some part of this potential vanguard may be found in the existing left groups, membership of a left organisation is not synonymous with an awareness of the need for a new political strategy. Some workers are attracted to left organisations, such as the CP and IS, on purely trade unionist grounds.

When we speak of a potential vanguard developing in the class, we do not mean to suggest that these workers are already conscious revolutionaries or have broken completely with bourgeois ideology. Their politicisation may have occurred only over isolated issues and their break from reformism only have taken place in a piecemeal fashion. While they are beginning to break from the reformist traditions they have yet to adopt new ones. The revolutionary party must win these workers to a revolutionary programme and prevent them from falling prey to various centrist currents. It must train them in a political tradition. Only the revolutionary party can develop the programme capable of arming this vanguard; only when the party has trained this potential vanguard in revolutionary politics will it be able to win the mass of workers behind it. To win this potential vanguard to a revolutionary programme is a vital and pressing necessity.

Thus we face combined tasks. We must both develop a programme adequate to today's conditions, and at the same time attempt to win the potential vanguard to the struggle to develop such a programme.

Agitation and propaganda to win the vanguard

We have argued above that one of our central objectives is the training and winning of a revolutionary vanguard. Though the winning of the mass of workers to a revolutionary programme is an urgent task, we do not have the trained cadre necessary to appeal directly to the class as a whole. Both our own weakness and the importance of this section of the class demand that we concentrate our forces on winning the developing vanguard rather than disperse them over the entire class. Of course we have to find a road to the winning of the masses to revolutionary politics, but this road leads through the conquest of the vanguard not over their heads. In order to do this our work must consist in the main part of agitation and propaganda directed towards the vanguard.

When we speak of agitational and propaganda work, we mean something very different from what is generally understood by the rest of the left. For them, propaganda means putting across the general principles of Marxism, the fundamentals, while agitation is something very specific. Often they propose a third category, 'intervention', which is virtually equivalent to calls to action on specific practical demands. For them agitation and propaganda differ not only in form, but in content. This type of distinction is entirely foreign to the Leninist tradition. Both agitation and propaganda are concerned with explaining the Marxist world view and relating it to the problems facing the class as a whole. Both argue for the same strategy.

Lenin distinguishes between agitation and propaganda in the following way:

'The propagandist, dealing with, say, the question of unemployment, must explain the capitalist nature of the crises, the cause of their inevitability in modern society, the necessity for the transformation of this society into a socialist society, etc. In a word he must present "many" ideas, so many indeed that they will be understood as an integral whole only by a (comparatively) few persons. The agitator, however, speaking on the same subject, will take as an illustration a fact that is most glaring and widely known to his audience, say the death of an unemployed worker's family from starvation, the growing impoverishment, etc. and utilising this fact, known to all will direct his efforts to presenting a single idea to the "masses", eg the senselessness of the contradiction between the increase of wealth and the increase of poverty; he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice, leaving a more complete explanation of the contradiction to the propagandist . . . To single out a third sphere or third function, of practical

Printed page 11

activity, and to include in this function "the call upon the masses to take definite concrete actions," is sheer nonsense, because the call as a single act either naturally and inevitably supplements the theoretical treatise, propagandist pamphlet or agitational speech, or represents a purely executive function.'¹⁵

Agitation and propaganda are inseparably connected with each other; they are different forms in which Marxists present their views. In propaganda it is possible to explain in more detail, to show how the particular positions held by revolutionaries relate to the Marxist programme, and to explain the analysis which is the basis for the transitional programme. Agitation instead must concentrate on explaining a few ideas, on arousing the indignation of the class and explaining the strategy which Marxists propose. The transitional demands are essentially agitational. Their educational function only really emerges when workers go through the experience of fighting for them.

Propaganda is not a one-way process, a method of transferring Marxist ideas to the advanced sections of the class alone. Through propaganda the party sounds out the consciousness of the vanguard, sees how rapidly the conciousness [sic] of the class is moving into line with its objective situation and weighs up its own ability to explain the new developments in the class struggle and the adequacy of its programme. It is in the process of developing our theory, of drawing out its concrete implication, that we test its adequacy, that is its capacity to render the concrete comprehensible. Our theory is thus first tested by its ability to explain external events (the post-war boom, inflation, the Labour victory in the general election). This depends on the existence within the organisation of a disciplined discussion, without clique or personal ties, in which the political consequences of our theory are pursued to their end. Propaganda tests our theory in a different sense. It forces us, in a debate with the vanguard, to bring to our analysis the necessary precision and adequacy. At the same time, through propaganda the party investigates how the consciousness of the class is developing: it finds out whether the class is taking the path our understanding of the objective conditions would lead us to expect. It provides the information to introduce necessary corrections into our general analysis. Agitation, also, is a two-way process. Trotsky explains,

But in order that this dialogue gives the necessary result, the party must estimate correctly the general situation within the country and outline the general course for the immediate struggle. By means of agitation and probing of the masses the party must bring to its concepts the necessary corrections and exactitudes, particularly in everything related to the rhythm of development and the dates for major events.'¹⁶

In both agitation and propaganda the party strives to centralise the political experience of the class, to draw its attention to the most burning questions, to weld it together as a class with a unified and consistent response to experience which it gains in common, and to direct the struggles of the class towards a single end, towards the struggle for political hegemony. To do this with regard to the masses the party must take up all the vital issues of the day: it must formulate its views on all the struggles of the class. Yet, today, we have neither the political resources nor the necessary experience to be able to regularly work out and present a revolutionary communist position on every question of the day. We must turn our attention only to the most vital questions, the questions of overriding importance, the questions the potential vanguard must have an answer to. To do otherwise would be to fruitlessly divert our energies from the central task of training a cadre from the potential vanguard. This does not mean that we stand aside from the struggles the class is engaged in, for we will only be able to win the potential vanguard when we can convince them through their own experience of the worth of our politics and organisation. But it does mean that we will have to concentrate on the most fundamental questions rather than disperse our efforts over a whole range of issues.

It is not enough however to remain at the level of generalities; a small cadre group such as ours must seek out those areas in which it can intervene to win cadres and develop the potential vanguard. While work in the trade unions will be of decisive importance for us – and our comrades are involved regularly in political work in their trade unions – we do not at present have the resources to mount a campaign of national dimensions in the trade unions, [sic] We believe that in Britain's present conditions a group such as ours can best employ its forces in work in international solidarity movements. Firstly, winning the mass of workers to a position of proletarian internationalism is an essential part of winning the class to a revolutionary position, especially in Britain where nationalism and chauvinism are deeply rooted in the labour movement. Secondly, as inter-imperialist rivalries sharpen, the ruling class will redouble its efforts to win the working class to patriotic 'in defence of the nation' ideas. With this will go greater encouragement of chauvinism against workers abroad, and racialism against immigrant labour at home. Thirdly, with the deepening of the crisis, sections of workers are beginning to see the need to respond to the role the British bourgeoisie plays in aiding the oppression of other nations and their workers. For this reason our comrades are concentrating their activities on work in the Troops Out Movement and the Chile Solidarity Campaign. In these movements we will fight for an orientation which is directed at drawing the mass of workers to oppose the policy which its own bourgeoisie pursues with regard to these countries, and, by doing so, we will start to combat reactionary and nationalist tendencies in the labour movement. We will attempt to draw into these movements those layers which, though they follow the leadership of the reformists and the Labour Party, are beginning to see the need for the working class to adopt an internationalist position. We will aim to go through a process of struggle with those who participate in these movements so that we can demonstrate how the Labour Party and the trade union leadership attempt to throw the support of the class behind defence of the national interest and behind the interest of the bourgeoisie, and at the same time we will show the necessity for an independent pro

15. ibid, p409.

16. Trotsky, Whither France, Merit Publishers, 1968, p82.

Printed page 12

gramme. Our participation in these movements is dependent on the demands of the movement, eg self-determination for the Irish people, being consistent with our programme. Within the movement we will put forward our own independent positions and attempt to attract support for our political approach, but the acceptance by the movement as a whole of our positions in full is not a condition for our participation in such movements. We will hope to draw sections of the potential vanguard into work with us in these movements and convince them of the necessity of mounting a campaign in the class on these political questions. Through this we aim to begin to develop a base in the trade unions by taking these issues into the trade union movement as a whole.

Building a cadre group

Only an organisation composed of revolutionary cadres and organised on a democratic centralist basis will be capable of carrying out the tasks of developing a programme and winning the potential vanguard. Thus there is a third aspect to the tasks facing us, the training of a revolutionary cadre and the development of a democratic centralist organisation. For us these organisational questions are in no sense secondary, and are on a par with the other tasks facing the movement.

One of the central contributions of the Bolsheviks to revolutionary theory was their understanding of the significance of organisational questions for the formation of a revolutionary party. Revolutionary organisation is not a mere form which arises automatically with the development of revolutionary theory. The organisational form must be adequate to the tasks of revolutionaries in developing a correct programme and fighting for it in the working class. This task requires an organisation composed of dedicated revolutionaries capable of participating fully in the development of the politics of the organisation. The development and testing of the revolutionary programme demands both full freedom in discussion and the centralised direction of discussion within the organisation by the elected leadership. Fighting for that programme requires both complete centralisation of the experience of the organisation and national direction of its work, combined with the necessary independence and initiative of the membership in implementing the political line of the organisation. Within a democratic centralist organisation there must be the highest degree of specialisation and division of labour. No one individual can contribute to all features of the party's activity; there must be propagandists and agitators trained in particular fields of work. The necessary condition for this degree of specialisation and centralisation within the party is a membership trained to a certain political level, a membership of revolutionary cadres. A cadre must be capable of working out the tactics to be pursued in a particular situation and be able to fully argue for the revolutionary programme. Every member must be systematically trained and educated in Marxist theory. This process of raising and developing the political understanding of inexperienced comrades to that of political cadres is an essential feature of the revolutionary party. Only if all the members of the party have a firm grounding in revolutionary theory will the party be able to adjust and correct its programme where necessary; only in this way will the party be able to rapidly respond to the changing mood of the masses and at the same time safeguard itself against the pressures of bourgeois ideology.

Disputes over organisational questions throughout the history of the movement have been an expression of deep political differences. For instance, the difference between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks after the 1902 Party Congress reflected the fact that their different political aims required different organisational forms for their expression. If the proletariat was to play the leading role in the struggle against the Tsarist autocracy, then the proletarian party had to be a centralised organisation of dedicated revolutionaries. If, on the other hand, the bourgeois democrats were to be the leaders of the struggle against the autocracy and the proletariat was to play a secondary role, there was no necessity for an independent democratic centralist party. Thus the Mensheviks were prepared to dissolve the party into the masses and thus deny the party's independent role in organising and leading the class as a force independent of bourgeois democracy. It is only when political differences take a definite organisational form that their concrete significance can become clear. The most disparate views can coexist peacefully at the level of pure theory. A disciplined cadre organisation is necessary if theoretical issues are to be pursued to their ends and thus resolved: only in this way will a revolutionary programme be developed. An organisation of revolutionary cadres is necessary if the potential vanguard is to be won to such a programme.

In establishing the RCG we have attempted to tailor our organisation to the precise tasks we face. Clearly the basic conditions for membership of the RCG are understanding and accepting our view of the tasks facing the movement and our basic political positions as outlined in the document 'What We Stand For , together with the commitment to work under the discipline of a local cell of the organisation. Yet there will be comrades who are prepared to participate in the development of the politics of the organisation who will not, as yet, be convinced of our politics as a whole. As a way of drawing these comrades into the development of our politics and convincing them of our ability to follow through these ideas, we will have branches which will contain sympathiser members as well as full members. These will be in addition to cadre cells of the organisation which will consist of full members of the group. We hope to be able to draw into our branches a broad group of sympathiser members and through the process of working with them, convince them of the necessity to commit themselves fully to our group.

As one of our central tasks is the development of a programme, all members and sympathisers will have to be involved in the process of developing the theoretical capital of the group. In order to develop a programme adequate to the present period it is necessary to characterise the world political situation as a whole. We must show how, and in

Printed page 13

what way, the objective prerequisites of socialism exist. We must demonstrate how developments within world capitalism point to the possibility of socialism, and pose, once again, the necessity of revolution before the working class as the only solution to its problems. We must establish that what is lacking for this transformation is a leadership of the working class adequate to the political tasks. As a part of our analysis we must show what tendencies within capitalism have given strength to reformism within the working class movement, and similarly what new developments tend to undermine that foundation: we must examine the material basis of reformism, Stalinism and centrism. Only with such an analysis will it be possible to develop a revolutionary strategy and tactics for the coming period.

Concretely this means an examination of world economy since the Second World War. It is simply wrong to characterise the post-war period as a partial 'upturn' in capitalism in a period of general capitalist decay. This leads to an underestimation of the existing possibilities and an overestimation of the revolutionary forces. We must show concretely how, and in what way, capitalist 'equilibrium' was restored after the Second World War and how this is now being undermined. Similarly, we must explain the 'stability' of the deformed and degenerated 'workers' states'. Important questions arise regarding the underdeveloped world: we have to scrutinise its growing integration into the world economy and the contradictory political consequences of this. We have to examine the consequences this period of capitalist growth – in particular the growing role of the state – has in strengthening opportunism and reformism in the working class movement. We need to establish the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism in this process. Finally we must indicate how the defeats of the working class before the Second World War followed by the betrayals and collaboration of the Social Democratic and Stalinist parties after the war have disoriented the revolutionary movement itself. Full accounting of the failures of the Trotskyist movement since the Second World War is an essential precondition for developing our programme. The roots of the weakness of the revolutionary groups must be located in this process.

Such a basis is necessary if the political leadership is to be built that is adequate to the tasks facing the working class. In order to establish priorities we must show how the different levels of abstraction of our theoretical work are related in order to provide a concrete analysis of the present period. Our first task is to relate the general characteristics of the epoch (Section 1, below) to their fundamental theoretical basis (Section 2, below). This work will then have to be concretised to understand the forms which the general tendencies of the epoch have assumed since the Second World War. Through this process of theoretical development we will be able to locate the objective situation since the war and the balance of class forces that has emerged from it (Section 3, below), providing the basis for a concrete political strategy in the coming period. To illustrate this process of our theoretical work: the long term tendency for the undermining of the material basis of reformism in the transitional epoch (Section 1) must be related to its theoretical basis, the theory of imperialism and the state in the imperialist epoch (Section 2). Through a process of concretisation, an examination of the form that reformism assumes in the post-war period will provide the basis for our concrete political strategy.

1. General characteristics of the epoch

a. Decay of capitalism, transition to socialism and permanent revolution.

b. The crisis of the bourgeoisie.

c. The crisis of working class leadership.

2. Theoretical basis

a. Imperialism.

b. The state in the imperialist epoch.

c. Transition to socialism and planned economy.

3. Specific questions of the post-war period

a. World economy in the post war period.

Workers states

– Eastern Europe, workers' control, China, Cuba.

Advanced capitalist countries

– internationalisation of capital, post-war boom, inter-imperialist rivalries.

Underdeveloped countries

– industrialisation, wars of national liberation.

b. The crisis of the bourgeoisie.

The European Economic Community.

Ireland.

Conflict between nation states.

The bourgeoisie and the state.

c. The working class and its leadership.

Post-war labour movement

– revolutionary work in the trade unions, British trade unions, shop stewards movement.

Stalinism

– Communist Parties, Popular Front, wars of national liberation.

Reformism and centrism

– Labour Party and other tendencies in the working class.

The Future leadership

– revolutionary parties and the International, the transitional programme.

d. The crisis and its reflection amongst other strata.

The petit-bourgeoisie, technical intelligentsia.

Racism, immigrant labour.

Fascism.

Women.

Youth.

All of our comrades will be involved in work under one of these headings in Section 3 above. Work in working groups on each of these topics will proceed simultaneously; they represent a conceptual not a temporal division of our theoretical work. As positions on particular questions are developed, they will be discussed fully by the membership before becoming public positions of the group.

Printed page 14

As part of our struggle to develop a programme we will issue a regular quarterly theoretical journal. We will be unable to complete the tasks facing us without fundamentally raising the political level of debate within the revolutionary movement internationally. The movement in Britain and internationally suffers, above all, from a lack of serious theoretical discussion on the central problems which it faces. Through our journal we aim both to raise the level of debate within the international movement on the crucial programmatic questions, and to provide a clear analysis of the central problems facing the working class in Britain. Only in this way can we hope to win the better elements of the existing left organisations to a recognition of the tasks, and to contribute to the development of a revolutionary International.

In this document we have outlined our view of the crucial tasks facing revolutionaries, of developing a programme, training a cadre, and winning the potential vanguard: we have pointed to the present inadequacy of the revolutionary organisations to meet these tasks. We have indicated the necessity of overcoming the weakness of the revolutionary movement if it is to provide the leadership necessary to the working class in the great events ahead. The objective conditions will thrust the working class into enormous battles in the coming years: it is the presence of a revolutionary leadership which will be the crucial factor in determining the outcome of these battles. The conditions today create tremendous opportunities for the advance of the working class movement: it is up to revolutionaries to seize these opportunities. It is our understanding of this and our ability to measure up to these tasks which justifies the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Group.

Political Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Group. October 1974.