26.10.1995

What about the Communist Party?

A Response to the WRP’s call for a new socialist party, Bob Smith - for a permanent Party Polemic Committee

The Workers Revolutionary Party’s call for a new socialist party should not be dismissed out of hand. Admittedly the call, as initially outlined in Workers Press 471, raises more questions than it answers, but the call itself is in tune with the reality of British political life - who and what is to fill the political vacuum to the left of social democracy?

Workers Press is not alone in calling for an anti-Labour/pro-working class/pro- socialist party. The recent Red Action initiative, which is currently supported by Open Polemic, the RCG, the CAG, the CPGB and AFA (and other anarcho-communist groups), makes a similar call. In essence, these calls for a new socialist party are really calls for a left united front against capitalism. Communists should, in principle, support such initiatives, but not as a substitute to the work of constructing a communist party. That is our principal work at this moment and nothing must distract us from this task.

This said, let us return to examine the WRP initiative. The task of its forthcoming February conference is, it declares, to determine “what sort of party” needs to be built. That certainly is the correct question for all communists. What has the WRP got in mind? It is not at all clear. Does it envisage the new party being a replacement for the WRP, an extension of it, or an organisation to which the WRP and other communist groups can affiliate?

Will their ‘new party’ be organised on the Leninist lines of democratic centralism? If not, how will policy emerge and how will this policy be implemented? Will their ‘new party’ be historically specific? That is, will the acceptance of Trotsky’s thesis of the Soviet Union be a prerequisite for membership? Will the ‘new party’ be orientated towards the WRP’s vision of a Fourth International? Will ‘state capitalist’ socialists and pro-Stalin socialists be welcomed? And what of contemporary politics? Will members need to be convinced of the WRP’s analysis of the war in the former Yugoslavia or will all views be allowed to contend? Should such a party even have a particular defining view of the war in Yugoslavia?

In their plea for this party all pro-socialist elements are called upon. Does this mean that the WRP is seeking a united front with Militant Labour, Red Action, and the CPGB, all of whom have separately called for an anti-Labour, anti-capitalist perspective.

And when all these questions have been fully explored and answered, one key question remains: what is to be done about a communist party ...?