25.01.1996

Teething problems

Bob Smith - For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee

TO BE fair to Mark Fischer, there are a number of very useful points that he raises in his reply to Open Polemic’s Ray Hickman (Weekly Worker 126) which I suspect the editorial board of Open Polemic would agree with. We would most likely accept the proposition that if the Independent Working Class Association simply “talked to local working class communities” it would be bowing to spontaneity in a manner wholly alien to the approach of Leninism. It would be tailism at its worst - a tailism that is already pronounced throughout the revolutionary movement in this country.

I certainly believe Fischer is correct to say that the IWCA would be in danger of “replicating the errors of the anarchists”. And Open Polemic would likely share Fischer’s concern that the IWCA might reveal itself as ‘anti-party’. OP’s long and detailed polemic with Red Action over the past four years draws out theoretically this very concern.

But Fischer is wrong, I believe, to imagine that Red Action will be the single or even the dominant imprint on the IWCA. For example, I understand that CAG are already preparing a seminar to discuss the role of communists in the IWCA - precisely the constructive initiative that communists should take when considering their strategy and tactics in respect to united front work with other revolutionary trends. I think Fischer would serve the communist movement better if he were to win his comrades to this positive path of critical engagement. To be blunt, OP’s considered and disciplined approach to our work in the IWCA stands in stark contrast to the shrill and tempestuous approach of the PCC’s Mark Fischer. The irony is that while the PCC argue that communists should work to influence the developments in an around the SLP they seem ill prepared to adopt the same approach to the IWCA. And while we’re on the subject of contrasts and ironies, I must further add that compared to the maturity displayed by Red Action during the formative days of the IWCA, the CPGB comes out rather badly.

One of Fischer’s substantive disagreements with the IWCA concerns the categorisation of the Labour Party. Okay, so there are a number of different assessments and formulations on the table. Personally I’m closer to Ray Hickman’s assessment in that I think that a qualitative change has taken place within the Labour Party; the jettisoning of clause four being the crunch. Ray and I could be wrong on this but in any event this would not negate the essence of our collective agreement: namely, that the Labour Party is not for the working class, not for socialism, not for any sort of break with the capitalist system. Or as the RCG so aptly put it: ‘Labour - a party fit for imperialism’.

Whether we classify the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers’ party or just a bourgeois party, let us not lose sight of the fact that all participants in the IWCA, and that should include the CPGB, share the perspective that the Labour Party is not working in any way for the working class. This common perspective should be the cement that binds the members and the affiliates of the IWCA. From this Open Polemic determined that the IWCA is definitely a place for serious communists to do serious work. Now if the PCC of the CPGB is of the opinion that the IWCA is less important than the SLP, so be it. This is not a reason for sloppy or impatient work methods on the part of communists.

I’ve said what OP thinks the IWCA is. Let me touch on what we think it is not. We do not entertain the notion that the IWCA will evolve into a Marxist-Leninist party because we do not believe for one moment that a Marxist-Leninist party can be built from the bottom up. On the contrary we have long held to the view that in the first instance a party comes into being with the most advanced workers gravitating around the most advanced theory. Therefore we see no prospect of the IWCA, with its ‘local communities’ approach, being any sort of alternative pole to the pro-party work being carried out under the banner of the CPGB.

Clearly the IWCA and the CPGB, and for that matter the SLP, are very different organisations with different perspectives, different agendas and different possibilities. Fischer should be a little more confident in the rapprochement work of his own organisation and a little less fearful of ‘alternative poles’.

Perhaps the weakest part of Fischer’s reply was his clumsy endeavour to manufacture a pro-party/anti-party divide in the OP editorial board. Let it be known that the OPEB was unanimous in its support for OP’s representational entry into the CPGB in the same way as we have a full consensus regarding our work with the IWCA. Mark Fischer should be more careful. If the CPGB is to be successful in winning other organisations to rapprochement he ought not to gratuitously and unfoundedly slander the comrades of those organisations.

It is ironic indeed that, in the very same issue of the Weekly Worker that Fischer invites the RDG to consider the ‘qualitative development’ of representational entry, he sees fit to slander the Open Polemic editorial board members for supporting this very policy. This is hardly the way to win comrades to the banner of rapprochement. While OP members are not so easily slighted or distracted from our work, others may be a little more sensitive.

As for Fischer’s notion of more or less ‘authoritative members’ of OP, this is a non-starter. All of the members of the editorial board come with their own strengths and experiences, prejudices and one-sidedness. It is as a collective that we gain our strength of purpose. This is a culture that challenges the leader centralism of the vanguardist organisations who masquerade under the Leninist title of democratic centralism.

So much for our criticism of comrade Fischer. Full marks to him for promptly suggesting to the IWCA representatives that a full and open debate be conducted on the IWCA question at the very next CPGB seminar. Full marks also to the IWCA reps for promptly accepting the invitation. This is how to get things done. Allparties in the dispute will be there, with full rights to put their position, including I understand, a special guest appearance by comrade Hickman himself!