07.12.1995

Sectarian vanguardism wins the day

Bob Smith - For a permanent Party polemic committee

AT THE monthly all-member aggregate of the CPGB organisation it was decided, against the advice of the Open Polemic representatives, to move ahead in 1996 with a year - long discussion on their ‘Leninist’ draft programme, their ‘Leninist’ rules and their ‘Leninist’ strategy.

The OP reps, for their part, had put up counter-proposals which we argued to be appropriate for nurturing the embryonic communist rapprochement initiative. It was a battle just to get our counter-proposals on the agenda, let alone direct the organisation away from a vanguardist approach.

The PCC, in true leader centralist mode, sought to relegate our alternative proposals to a mere contribution to some future discussion. The meeting rightly rejected this ploy and insisted on their inclusion on the agenda. However we lost the real debate around the strategic way forward, which we anticipated would be the case. But Open Polemic is committed to conducting a long war of attrition against sectarian vanguardism, not only in the CPGB, but wherever it raises its destructive head.

What did emerge from the debate was that the Leninist faction’s notion of communist rapprochement is markedly different to that of Open Polemic’s.

For the Leninists of the CPGB communist rapprochement seems to be about winning militant workers to their particular banner, their particular programme and their particular strategy. Hence their near apoplectic frenzy over the proposed Socialist Labour Party. “Seize the historic moment,” screamed out their leading cadre.

We at Open Polemic also believe in historic moments, but for us it is the chance for communist rapprochement carried out amongst communist workers and communist intelligentsia - what we refer to as the advanced workers. Any communist strategy and programme must be directed at meeting the needs of this stratum of the class in the first instance. Only in this way can we move on to establish a programme that meets the needs of the whole class.

Class consciousness differentiates itself due to a complex interaction of objective circumstances and subjective experiences. Lenin understood this. Open Polemic understands this. Red Action does not and it seems neither does the PCC of the CPGB.

The line of demarcation is clear - bow to spontaneity, tail the militant struggles of the class, or coalesce the most class conscious elements into the organisational unity of the revolutionary party, where the ideological demarcations within Marxism-Leninism can be played out as the norm of democratic centralist party life.

Ironically it was Open Polemic’s theory and not the CPGB’s which manifested itself in practice in the evening seminar. An impressive range of Marxist-Leninists gathered to debate the recent split in the LRCI (Workers Power) group. Comrades from the Trotskyist Unity Group, International Bolshevik Tendency, Communist Action Group, Revolutionary Democratic Group and a number of ex-members of Workers Power and the Workers Revolutionary Party debated with the CPGB as to what general lessons should be learnt from the recent split.

All contributions were incisive, proving that it is the advanced communist workers who must first tackle the problem of communist ideological and political fragmentation before we are able to effectively go to the class as a whole.

The two need not be exclusive, but for Open Polemic the former must take priority over the latter.

What is required now? Clearly not a retreat into one’s own particular programmatic and strategic position. No, what is required is the political initiative - and, we should add the political courage - to set up the political and organisational structures necessary to allow communist rapprochement to gather pace. If communist multanimity is to be inscribed on the banner of our future party, then it ought to be the watchword of the pre-party rapprochement process.

All this has a bearing on the proposed Socialist Labour Party. Comrade Bates accuses Bob Smith of writing off Scargill’s SLP initiative before it’s even begun. The whole point for Open Polemic is not whether to participate or not to participate but how communists should participate.

If we rush in with all our vanguardist sectarian manoeuvrings, we will simply be introducing into the class as a whole that ideological and political fragmentation which currently confronts the Marxist-Leninist circles. This much I’ve already said in previous columns.

What is required instead is the highest level of communist unity that is possible at this juncture - a communist united front which is then capable of putting a revolutionary alternative to the reformist schema of left social democracy.

Yes, a thing can turn into its opposite. Left social democracy can either slide back to rightwing social chauvinism or transform itself into a conscious pole of communist internationalist politics. But this latter transformation can only be a conscious transformation, and for this to successfully be effected it will need to take a political and organisational form - ie, the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party.

Retreat from this and the CPGB abandons the leading role of the party. It is they who then are in danger of turning themselves into their opposite.