18.01.1996

Bold move needed

Mark Fischer attended the recent aggregate of the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP). He brought the greetings of the Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB and a call for the RDG to make a bold move in communist rapprochement

FIRST, let me thank the RDG for allocating me time. Again this month, the comrades had to struggle with a very full agenda.

There is little place in this article for diplomatic niceties.  I know the comrades will take my critical remarks here with the same fraternal spirit they showed in the aggregate itself. Our pages are open to continue this debate, one we have not explored yet.

I suggested to the RDG’s aggregate that the time was ripe for unity. If the comrades were not convinced to enter en masse, then perhaps they could test the water with the compromise of representational entry. This is not something we positively recommend. Nevertheless, it could be a qualitative development; a significant step forward.

Unfortunately, unity at this stage was rejected by the aggregate. The debate began to reveal in more detail the objections that RDG members currently have.

First, it was suggested that the CPGB tends towards a fixed category of unity. Why should communist unity be perceived of as unity under the Provisional Central Committee in the CPGB? Thus, while the rapprochement process initiated by the PCC was positive, we were - despite our protestations - being too narrow.

This reflects the uneven level of development of the RDG comrades in the unity process. Those closer physically - who have attended our cadre school and are regular participants in London seminars - have been able to develop a more profound understanding of what we are saying and why.

First, on the name ‘Communist Party’. This surely is the scientifically correct title for what we want to build? It is the name of the only working class party built in this country so far. Why choose anything else? I’m sure that the majority of the current Party membership could live with another name, but why?

In fact, it is RDG comrades who display a metaphysical approach here. They tend to view the current political delineations as the “immutable theoretical and historical categories of the left”, as my comrade Jack Conrad has put it. The call to join a communist party is thus not a demand to submit to the narrowly defined project of the erstwhile Leninist faction of the 1980s and ’90s. We are calling for the unity of differing revolutionary shades under the banner of Partyism.

Why under the Provisional Central Committee, we are asked? Again, the PCC as presently constituted has a temporary character. We have proposed factional rights and proportional representation all the way up to leadership level. The current Party majority has thus indicated its willingness to operate as a minority in the future - as long as minority rights are respected and we have the opportunity to struggle for the majority.

Also, there is an air of unreality about the question, ‘Why the CPGB?’ This is the real process of rapprochement, comrades. It’s the only show in town. Why divert ourselves with projects for ‘communist leagues’ which will have nothing like the resonance or impact on the rest of the left? A communist party is the answer. Are we really historically pre-determined to go through the stage of a ‘league’ or extended ‘alliance’ before the party? We see nothing that indicates this: quite the opposite in fact.

The work we are doing together now must continue, of course. Comrades in the RDG refer to this as our ‘alliance’. Alliances are by definition conjunctural agreements between sovereign bodies, however. They do not per se indicate a growing together, a process of merger. A far stronger message needs to be given out to the rest of the British left.

What is the content of this ‘alliance’? Essentially it is a struggle against the leadership of the SWP. Yet this struggle cannot primarily be a propagandist one. Whatever resonances RDG critiques may find in the ranks of the SWP, they cannot be what precipitates realignments and splits in its ranks. That requires the building - or at least the beginning of the construction - of a viable political alternative. This is what RDG entry into the CPGB would be a powerful blow for (that is, it would not simply be an “organisational” question, as one comrade at the aggregate suggested).

Much of politics is about making the right move at the right time. The current debate in the workers’ movement on organisation, on an alternative to Blair, should carry more weight with us now than past links or supposed ‘unfinished business’ with the SWP. Bold moves made at the beginning of this process could help to shape it, to add weight to those forces fighting to ensure that elemental forces set in motion flow into the channels of revolutionary organisation, that they are not diverted. 

Lastly, what I believe some comrades evidenced was an understandable (even laudable) ‘party patriotism’. The RDG has a history of long and patient struggle against the leadership of the SWP. This is not something comrades want to be seen to walk away from. As one leading comrade has put it to me, “We must go to the Marxism 96 conference in the summer and the next SWP conference in November to explain to them what we are planning to do.”

On the contrary, comrades, we should intervene together in the SWP to explain what you have done and why. If communist forces in this country can start now to organise themselves seriously, by November we should be looking forward to having a section of the SWP conference itself arguing our case.

I look forward to the energetic rejoinders of my RDG comrades.

Mark Fischer