04.01.1996

Five-year plan

Bob Smith - For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee

NEW years, new decades, new centuries and new millenniums are all somewhat artificial and arbitrary anniversaries for the advocates of historical materialism, but they can be damn useful for focusing the mind of the dilettante. For example, it is quite sobering to note that we have just four years until the start of the 21st century, a mere 48 months until the start of the new millennium. Irrelevant perhaps to Marxists, but the ruling international bourgeoisie will certainly be serving up all manner of millennial circuses and carnivals in order to camouflage their brutal and exploitative regimes.

For our part we communists look a sorry lot. Our 20th century dress rehearsal for socialism ended ignominiously, and the debris of 1917 lays scattered in a thousand pieces. In these British Isles the situation for communists is as bad as anywhere. But it is a basic tenet that we, as communists, start our tasks with the reality that confronts us. Fanciful dreamings of what might have been or what should have been are useless.

For the Open Polemic comrades working under the banner of the CPGB, we begin our work for the next five years with one central purpose encapsulated by our central slogan: “The first tasks of communists is their own ideological, political and organisational unity.” We, like the Leninists of the CPGB, are for the rapprochement of communist forces, but not, as their Jack Conrad would have it, for “the rapprochement of working class and communist forces.” (This and other quotes from Jack Conrad’s supplement, ‘Without partyism there is no struggle for communism’, Weekly Worker 123) To pose our task in this sloppy way is to confuse two very different processes and thus to risk achieving neither. What on earth Conrad means by the ‘rapprochement of the working class’ is difficult to imagine, but if he is referring to the unity of the working class he must surely realise that this is impossible without first the ideological and political unity of the advanced section of that class - the communists!

We do however fully accord with Conrad’s call that, “Communists ought to unite though they might not exactly agree on the nature of the former USSR.” Indeed the Open Polemic project was founded on the belief that, as Conrad correctly argues, “Many an abstract theoretical difference can be resolved, or at least put into proper perspective by ongoing comradely debates, in which all teach and all learn.” And we at Open Polemic endorse the call by the Leninist faction for communists to “unite together as party factions with the right to maintain, develop and publicise one’s views.” But we would add that if other Marxist-Leninist organisations and circles feel unable, for whatever reason, to unite under the banner of the CPGB, then at least they should be invited to use either the pages of the Weekly Worker or the pages of Open Polemic to polemicise with other comrades. For those who cannot or will not meet this minimum, it befalls them to advance and establish a practical alternative.

The cosy world of sectarian isolationism, ideological dogmatism and political inertia is over. Routinism will no longer be tolerated. A constant exposé of the sectarians, including any still operating under the banner of the CPGB, will begin in front of all advanced workers. We will name names. Any organisation or individual using the title ‘communist’ must respond to the process of open polemic and communist rapprochement or be publicly condemned for sectarianism. As the dual strategy of open polemic and communist rapprochement draw all the best elements to it and away from the tired and ineffective ‘little Lenins’, those who remain and persist in retarding the advance will be indicted in front of the whole class, not for any past sin, but for their obstruction of the future.

The Open Polemic faction inside the CPGB calls on all Marxist-Leninists (a term with far greater scientific content than Conrad’s bland ‘workers and communists’) to make full use of the pages of the Weekly Worker in a way that has been partially illuminated in the pages of the Open Polemic journal. In five years we need to create a communist press that eschews economism and social democracy, and creates a polemically theoretical and agitational paper which will act as the foundation of the future multanimous Marxist- Leninist party. We are convinced that the Weekly Worker has made a real start, but just a start. Collectively we can create the finest communist paper this country has ever seen. This should be our five-year plan.