08.02.1996

Critique, OP and the CPGB

Bob Smith - For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee

Last weekend was the turn of the Marxist academics. Plying their trade at the annual Critique conference, they cleverly counterposed one position against the other. Creditably, they have been doing this for a good many years now, but through ‘natural wastage’ their numbers are declining. The twenty-five editions of the Critique journal were proudly on display and Weekly Worker readers could do worse than to take out an annual subscription. The polemics at the conference and in their journal are of importance to the revolutionary project, and the journal, in particular, is of a high scholarly standard. But at the end of the day the audience leaves as individuals or, at best, as disparate Marxist circles.

What is lacking from the whole Critique project is a party focus. This is not the cry of impatience for a ‘party tomorrow’, but unless the proceedings are infused with a sense of purpose, direction and urgency, then the years will slip by, the older participants will continue to die off, and the whole thing will run out of steam and disappear in a philosophical puff of smoke.

But for those who argue that the revolution has no need for scholarly debate, OP would strongly disagree. The Open Polemic project itself was founded precisely on the strategy of developing all our theoretical formulations to the very sharpest level. Opposing views within Marxism-Leninism must contend and must do so openly and continually. To arrive at the closest approximation of objective truth, the subjective, partial and relative truths must do battle. Lines of demarcation need to be drawn, opposing strategies must be advanced, old formulations need to be reworked.

This is all the legitimate work of the revolutionary party, not the preserve of our learned academic Marxists. We do not philistinely reject their insights, but we demand of them that they subordinate themselves to the self-discipline of the communist collective - the vanguard party. Inside the collective they can play a vital role in communist work. Outside, comfortable at their lecturers’ rostrums, they become an obstacle to party building, muddying the waters with a thousand propositions, yet never able to take a definite collective decision as to the way forward.

Counterposed to the aimless musings of the Critique clique was the CPGB’s London seminar the following day. Here was polemic at its sharpest but with a clear party focus. The Trotskyist Unity Group (TUG) delivered a wide-ranging and powerful argument for the need for a revitalised dialectical philosophy. Warning against a praxis-driven orientation, their representative insisted on the need for a rigorous philosophical approach to our subjective endeavours to reach objective truth. While warning the seminar against the dangers of activism, positivism and subjectivism, he in turn was warned of the dangers of lapsing into philosophical contemplation.

Open Polemic speakers insisted that a communist party must, after the most thorough process of theoretical elaboration and polemic, take definite action and be resolute in that action. Philosophy and theory should not be mechanically counterposed to activity; they are dialectically linked, the former continually informing the latter.

Open Polemic further argued that the ‘rational kernel’ of the TUG thesis and the essence of the CPGB and OP theses had a great deal in common, and it was suggested that it was not accidental that the three organisations were now involved in communist polemic at the highest level. Open Polemic is of the opinion that a TUG presence in the CPGB organisation would greatly enrich the work of communist rapprochement currently underway.

Unlike the Critique conferences, every activity organised under the banner of the CPGB must have a pro-party orientation. We are not dilettantes. Every seminar, every edition of the Weekly Worker, every intervention amongst the advanced workers must raise the party question unceasingly.