22.02.1996

For a communist third force

Dave Craig from the RDG on the way forward for communist unity

The Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP) was from its foundation a pro-party group. Historically our tradition is Bolshevism, which can properly be called ‘international revolutionary social democracy’ or ‘communism’. For us, these terms are interchangeable. But both have their problems. The word ‘social democrat’ has been separated from any revolutionary working class content and taken over by the bourgeoisie to mean liberal reformism. The term ‘communist’ is identified with the horrors of Stalinism, under the dictatorship of the ‘red bourgeoisie’.

The RDG has tended to use the first term, combining ‘revolutionary democracy’ and ‘international socialism’. We chose our name to emphasise the revolutionary democratic aspect of Marxism, which was more or less ignored in the Socialist Workers Party and by the Stalinist and Trotskyist tradition generally. We did not use the term ‘communist’. But with the break-up of the USSR and the collapse of official communism, the name “communist” can once again become the property of the revolutionary movement.

Rather than switch between terms, there is a case for combining them, considering ourselves to be ‘revolutionary democratic communists’. Communism or human freedom is our aim, and revolutionary democracy is our means. The idea of international socialism, as a transitional stage, is included in the term communism (as its lower phase or stage).

1. The revolutionary democratic communist party

The revolutionary democratic communist party is part of the working class. It is the organisation of its most advanced section. It must become the vanguard of the working class in its historic struggle for revolutionary democracy and communism. The workers must win the battle for democracy, become the hegemonic class within the nation as the first step to international socialism.

The party must be founded on a correct programme, strategy and tactics, with the organisational means to carry on the struggle. The programme is central to building the party, by connecting revolutionary theory to revolutionary practice. It centralises the party’s politics and makes it open to democratic accountability.

The struggle for the best theory is simultaneously the struggle for a correct programme and political practice. This will in turn enable the party to attract to its ranks the overwhelming majority of genuine communists and the best fighters for the class.

The revolutionary democratic road

Lenin and the Bolsheviks built their party on the basis of a revolutionary democratic road to socialism. The working class, as the vanguard fighter for democracy, was mobilised to overthrow the Tsarist constitution and its state apparatus. This strategy provided the foundations for the minimum programme of the party.

At first, the revolutionary democratic road was understood in terms of the stageist theory of bourgeois democratic revolution. But Lenin’s April Theses overturned this particular theory. The revolutionary democratic road must now be understood in terms of a theory of permanent revolution (not necessarily Trotsky’s version). The struggle for democracy must lead to a workers’ state, the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.

Non-ideological party

The revolutionary democratic communist party must be a ‘non-ideological’ party. It should not be officially identified with any particular theoretician. It should not be ‘Marxist’, ‘Leninist’, ‘Stalinist’ or ‘Trotskyist’ or any other combination.

In 1984 an interview in the RDG’s first publication asked whether the RDG could be called Marxist, Leninist or Trotskyist? We disclaimed all these labels. We said: “We owe them a great debt and we owe it to the present to appraise them critically. We don’t think, however, it is healthy or useful to dogmatically attach ourselves to one particular historical figure as most left groups do.”

A non-ideological party is not a party without theory or ideas. Rather, it is a party not officially attached to any ‘Great Leader’. Both the Stalinists and Trotskyists preach Great Leader politics. The Stalinists want their party to be ‘Marxist-Leninist’ and their rivals naturally want a ‘Trotskyist’ party.

Great Leader ideologies are part of what has been called leader centralism. This is not working class politics, but a product of petty bourgeois thinking. It is the psychology of the petty bourgeois that needs a Great Leader, whether a Hitler or a Stalin. They put their faith in Great Leaders because they have no real confidence in the masses.

Behind every leader centralist organisation, beginning with the party of Jesus Christ, is a dead prophet and a living pope. It is the task of our science to break with this kind of mentality. Marx rejected leader fetishism, saying, “I am not a Marxist”. By the same token Lenin wasn’t a Leninist and Trotsky wasn’t a Trotskyist. Even Stalin wasn’t a Stalinist. That was a fate reserved for his followers. Stalin was a god builder. He built his own image by building up the mythology of ‘Leninism’.

We must not be hypocritical. The RDG has not always applied this idea consistently. We named our new 1989 bulletin Republican Marxist for example, and we tended to use the term, ‘Marxist movement’, when ‘communist movement’ would be more correct.

Nevertheless we should work to abolish the use of this kind of terminology. We should fight tooth and nail to ensure that any future revolutionary democratic communist party does not identify itself as ‘Marxist’, ‘Leninist’, ‘Trotskyist’ or ‘Stalinist’. This is our understanding of the conception of the party as ‘non-ideological’.

In the meantime some communists will continue to identify themselves and their organisations by these terms. It is quite correct to call Workers Power a Trotskyist organisation. They themselves use this term with pride. We think that the SWP is ‘Cliffite’ because of its leader centralism. When Cliff dies, the SWP will become ever more overtly Cliffite as the new leadership fights to use his authority to control the party.

2. The long march to revolutionary democratic communism

The Russian democratic revolution (1917-21) provides the best example of the revolutionary democratic road in practice. The Russian working class, led by the Bolsheviks, took power and established a democratic dictatorship. However under the impact of the civil war 1918-20 the democratic organisation of the class was destroyed. The victory of the Red Army in the civil war created the circumstances in which Soviet democracy could have been rebuilt. The strikes by workers in Petrograd, and the protests by workers and sailors in Kronstadt, demanded workers’ democracy. Their defeat was the first victory of counterrevolution. At Kronstadt members of the Communist Party fought and killed each other. In the aftermath, factions were banned at the 10th Party congress. In rebuilding a revolutionary democratic communist party, the events of 1921 are an important reference point.

Bureaucratic ‘socialism’ and revolutionary democracy

After Kronstadt, the defeat of the German revolution in 1923 was the final blow to workers’ democracy in Russia. The power of the state bureaucracy grew without check. It led to the victory of the Stalin faction and the purging of the Communist Party.

With the introduction of the five-year plans in 1928, the new ruling class began building bureaucratic ‘socialism’ in one country.

Trotsky was the most famous Bolshevik leader to take up the struggle for revolutionary democracy against bureaucratic ‘socialism’. He described the system as a degenerate workers’ state. In the 1940s Dunayevskaya and Cliff took the struggle for revolutionary democracy further by showing that bureaucratic ‘socialism’ was in essence a form of state capitalism, which exploited the working class. Our struggle with the SWP is about making further advances, by understanding, critically, our roots and traditions in revolutionary working class democracy.

Anarcho-bureaucratic communism

The RDG identified three tendencies in the communist movement: the bureaucratic communists, the revolutionary democratic communists and the anarcho-communists. When the RDG first emerged from the SWP, we concluded that anarchism and bureaucracy were not opposites, but different manifestations of the same problem - anarcho-bureaucratic politics.

Anarcho-bureaucratic politics is middle class politics. It is the foundation for middle class ‘Marxism’. Its class roots can be found in the methods of the managerial (ie bureaucratic) strata and the individualism (ie anarchism) of the small entrepreneur.

Both bureaucratic communism and anarcho-communism hold to an economistic theory of the class struggle. Bureaucratic communism or centrism abandons revolutionary political struggle, adapting to reformism. Anarcho-communism or ultra-leftism also abandons revolutionary political struggle for syndicalist militancy or propagandism (‘Socialism is the only answer’).

The struggle on two fronts

Hence our conclusion is that the struggle to build or reforge a revolutionary democratic communist party is inseparable from and dependent on a struggle, indeed all out war, against every manifestation of anarchism and bureaucracy in the communist movement. The struggle for the party must be waged on both fronts, against centrism and ultra-leftism. The fight for communist unity must be conducted against anarcho-bureaucratic ideas.

The struggle in the SWP

Those who set up the RDG at one stage saw the IS/SWP as the basis for a new communist party, which would eventually replace the CPGB. However as we became more critical of the SWP we began to identify its anarcho-bureaucratic ideas.

Sometimes these ideas appeared in leftist rhetoric and propagandist notions of socialism. They appeared in the party’s hostility to a Marxist programme and to formal democracy in its own organisation. They showed themselves in a syndicalist conception of politics. Despite its claims, the SWP did not practice democratic centralism. The leadership’s attitude to critical members was at first liberal toleration followed by bureaucratic manoeuvres and expulsions.

The RDG was formed not only in opposition to the Cliff leadership, but also against the prevailing theories of other SWP dissidents. These comrades tended to see the SWP as ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘Stalinist’. We saw this as a one-sided analysis. They failed to identify the element of anarchism in Cliffite politics.

Cliffite theory created or maintained anarchistic prejudices amongst the SWP rank and file. When the leadership behaved as bureaucrats, it was natural, although fundamentally mistaken, for SWP dissidents to think that the Cliffites failed to live up to their own libertarian traditions. The unprincipled treatment handed out by the Cliffites created an anti-party and anarchistic reaction amongst the majority of SWP dissidents.

The dissidents carried with them into their new organisations the Cliffite theory of spontaneity. It infected the politics of the early 1980s organisations like the Socialist Federation and Red Action. The answer to the passivity of Cliff’s downturn theory was “doing things”. Activism in overdrive was the answer. This same tendency to worship spontaneity can be found today in the theory of the International Socialist Group and the practice of ex-Gravesend SWP comrades.

The struggle in the old CPGB

The old Stalinist CPGB was an example of bureaucratic communism. In our theory, it was a classic example of anarcho-bureaucratic politics, a party of a middle class type of Marxism. The term ‘anarcho-bureaucratic’ captures the contradiction at the heart of the old CPGB, tearing it apart, and reproduced within the Euros and Stalinists.

In 1984, in our very first publication, we said:

“Take the Communist Party. This is more or less completely corrupted by anarcho-Stalinism (ie middle class Marxism). The anarchist wing would rather be called libertarian communists or Euro-communists. They are libertarian with the revolutionary democratic principles of the working class. Essentially this is no different to the CP ‘left’ who have turned the same principles into Stalinist dogma. Only the ‘Leninist’ faction seems to move towards revolutionary democracy” (Republican Worker No1).

We saw the rebellion of the ‘Leninists’ of the CPGB as the beginnings of a revolutionary democratic alternative. Lenin was one of the great leaders of revolutionary democratic communism. Any faction of the CPGB which was serious about Lenin’s ideas would inevitably be marching towards revolutionary democratic communism. Yet, for us, the concept of ‘Leninism’ indicated an element of Stalinist politics and its cult of the personality.

At the time, we saw the CPGB ‘Leninists’ as a combination of revolutionary democratic and Stalinist ideology.

Ten years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we can see whether the ‘Leninists’ have regressed into dogmatic Stalinism or evolved more fully into revolutionary democrats. Our current relations with the CPGB (Provisional Central Committee) will be seen in some quarters as an opportunistic manoeuvre. But we see it as the result of a coming together of revolutionary democrats from the CPGB and SWP traditions.

Revolutionary democrats and ideological struggle

Revolutionary democratic communism is not the same as RDG politics. We represent one version of this ideology. We do not believe that all revolutionary democrats are in the RDG or that the RDG has some monopoly of wisdom on what constitutes revolutionary democratic communist theory.

Subjectively RDG comrades tend to think that our ideas about revolutionary democracy are the best. Otherwise why we would support the RDG? But objectively this may not be true. The class struggle will show, in the long run, which ideas are the most advanced and progressive and which theories must be junked.

Elements of revolutionary democratic communism can be found in all corners of the Marxist and working class movement. But such ideas are not always found in pure form. They are often fused with the dominant anarcho-bureaucratic ideas.

Ideological struggle is an essential means for distilling revolutionary democratic theory from its poisonous surroundings, creating an ever more solid theoretical foundation for the party. The process of distillation can be seen in living form in the struggles within the CPGB, the SWP and the WRP. This is why we, in common with many others, recognise the importance of ideological struggle and open polemic in building a party. This says a great deal about the kind of internal party democracy that is necessary.

3. The communist movement today

There is no revolutionary democratic communist party in the UK today. Neither is there any immediate prospect of one. Our movement is dominated by two organisations, the SWP and Militant Labour. In addition there are many small organisations, the communist ‘fragments’. The fragments are a result of the class struggle, which has broken up or chipped away at the old movement of the 1970s. The WRP broke up (eg Newsline, Workers Press), the CPGB liquidated (CPB, NCP, Provisional CC, Democratic Left) and various critics of the Cliffite SWP were expelled (Socialist Organiser, Workers Power, Red Action, RDG, RWT, ISG) and the old International Marxist Group split (Socialist Action, Socialist Outlook)

The big two

The SWP and Militant Labour (ML) do not have the ideological basis on which to build a revolutionary democratic communist party. The SWP is an anarcho-bureaucratic tendency. Its left or anarchistic face is towards syndicalism and propagandism. Being anti-programme reflects anarchist attitudes. Its right or bureaucratic face provides support for Labourism.

ML was much more obviously rooted in the centrist politics of Labourism. Of the two, the failure of the ML’s entryist strategy in the Labour Party has given them a much less dogmatic attitude than previously. ML has more connection with working class struggle through its work in the anti-poll tax movement and in the unions. But it still hasn’t broken from centrism, with its sympathy for Labourism and its Broad Left politics in the unions.

Two roads to nowhere

Whatever their relative merits, their strategies - and hence the programmes on which they are based - are fundamentally flawed. The SWP strategy is founded on a syndicalist road to socialism. Underpinning this is the anarchist theory of the spontaneity of the economic struggle. The SWP believes that the growing crisis of capitalism will eventually bring about an “upturn” or strike wave. This will enable it to build for a general strike and seize power at the head of the working class.

Building a “rank and file movement” is an important part of this strategy to make the link between the party and the broader mass of trade unionists. It is claimed that this will be a counterweight to the trade union bureaucracy, which will inevitably sabotage any general strike.

The SWP sees the political struggle as less important. It is either reduced to propagandism or to urging workers to vote for a Labour government, creating the best climate for the general strike.

ML, like the old CPGB, was built on the parliamentary road to socialism. ML sought to elect a Labour government on a “socialist programme”. Using an Enabling Act in parliament, it would implement its programme by nationalising the top 200 companies, etc. ML’s strategy fell apart as its members were expelled from the Labour Party. But it hasn’t yet come up with another strategy.

The main barrier

In the 70s and early 80s the CPGB, armed with the parliamentary road, was the main barrier to building a communist party. By the 1990s the CPGB was liquidated and ML had split over Labourism. The SWP has now become the dominant organisation within the communist movement. It has replaced the CPGB as the main barrier within our communist movement to building a party. Building a revolutionary democratic communist party is inseparable from the task of breaking down this barrier, by means of ideological and political struggle.

4. Towards a revolutionary democratic communist party

There is no revolutionary democratic communist party. Neither the SWP nor ML have the strategy or programme for building such a party. As for the communist fragments, even if they had better programmes and strategies, they don’t have the organisational weight or influence in the working class. The question is: how can we advance to our party goal in these circumstances?

The tactical question for the RDG is whether we build a revolutionary democratic faction of the SWP or whether we build an independent revolutionary democratic tendency. Either way, faction or tendency, it is a matter of struggle for hegemony against the politics of the SWP and ML.

We approach this struggle from the standpoint of the united front. Whilst we are critical and polemical against the theory and practice of the SWP and ML, we are for unity in action with them against the class enemy.

The faction tactic of the RDG is an adaption of the united front approach. Whilst we struggle against the SWP leadership, we are for communist unity. We are seeking unity with SWP members who are fighting the Cliffites. The faction means opposing the understandable sectarian reaction that develops among the victims of the Cliffites.

The faction tactic is a continual struggle to relate correctly to an organisation which has banned us, slanders us, misrepresents us, and expels comrades considered too sympathetic to our views. In so far as we succeed, we become less sectarian and remain pro-party in our attitudes. We have also had to fight off the liquidators in our own ranks.

The alternative is to become an independent tendency with a united front and communist unity attitude to the SWP and ML. There has not been the basis for an independent revolutionary democratic tendency in recent years. A tendency is not a party, but it must be a serious national organisation with a significant cadre base. For the RDG to declare itself a tendency would be as ludicrous as calling ourselves a party.

Those anti-party elements and liquidators have always condemned our faction tactic as a fetish. Consistency is confused with inflexibility. The facts show that the RDG has always been flexible enough to examine other possible roads to the same objective. For example we began working with the Socialist Federation in 1984. In 1988 we were seeking fusion talks with Red Action. More recently we considered how we might work with the Revolutionary Socialist Network.

Being a faction has not stood in our way of entering a serious dialogue with the CPGB (PCC). On the contrary our comrades in the RWT who have apparently “freed” themselves from the “fetish” of faction have not proved themselves to be more flexible. Quite correctly, we never abandoned our factional position for what turned out to be dead ends.

The test is simple. If the RDG were to abandon our faction and go independent, it would be greeted with applause from the Cliffite sectarians. They would say, ‘We have defeated the RDG and they have run away.’ On the other hand, if we gave up our faction and became part of a significant tendency, the sectarians’ pleasure would soon be tempered with the realisation that they now had a harder fight on their hands.

The RDG policy is to continue with our faction, whilst examining every other possible way forward. We would not consider becoming or joining a tendency, unless there was a serious basis for it. We are currently in a process of examining whether such circumstances are now coming into being.

A third tendency or third force

A third force or third tendency would not have to be as large as the SWP and ML, but it would be politically identifiable as the main alternative to the ‘big two’. The strength of such an organisation, if not in the size of membership, would have to be in the superiority, clarity and relevance of its programme.

At present the communist fragments are the only place from which a third force or tendency could emerge. None of the current fragments, various WRPs, various CPs or those originating from the SWP, such as the RDG, RWT, ISG or Red Action, constitute a third tendency.

Reforging something new or repeating what is dead?

There is no future for a third force as some kind of reconstituted Stalinist or Trotskyist tendency. We must reforge something new, not repeat what is dead. A third force that is simply an organisational unity of a few Stalinist and Trotskyist fragments is going nowhere.

There has to be a qualitative step forward. Stalinism and Trotskyism must be transcended to create a new third tendency on a higher level. The politics of ex-Stalinism and ex-Trotskyism must be reforged into revolutionary democratic communism.

If it turned out that the new third force was dominated by anarcho-bureaucratic politics, this would not be a genuine reforging: it would be a sad and disastrous repeat. There would be very little point in our leaving the SWP for this. We would be prepared to end our faction of the SWP and become a minority inside a new revolutionary democratic tendency. Even if we did not agree with the majority on important issues, we would take our place as a minority.

The third force - a revolutionary democratic tendency

The creation of a revolutionary democratic communist tendency as a third force in the communist movement would represent a definite step forward. Such a tendency is not a party. But it would be a pro-party organisation, a cadre organisation, whose aim was to lay the foundation for building a new party.

A crucial part of this would be the relationship of this tendency to the SWP and ML. It would have to wage an ideological struggle against them, but not on a sectarian basis. We would be fighting to win communists to a revolutionary democratic road as an alternative to the parliamentary road (ML) or the syndicalist road (SWP). But the fight for ideological hegemony must be part of the broader struggle for communist unity and the united front.

Third force - beyond the fragments

Are the communist fragments capable of creating a third force? In so far as they are sectarian and anti-party, they will be incapable of producing anything useful. In so far as they represent bureaucratic elements harking back to a golden age of Stalinism or Trotskyism, they will be equally bankrupt.

The crisis is already bringing about unity moves amongst the fragments. For example the conferences of the Revolutionary Socialist Network brought a wide variety of small groups together. More recently Red Action, the Revolutionary Communist Group and the Communist Action Group formed the Independent Working Class Association. The CPGB, Open Polemic, the RDG and the RWT have also been in discussion. The WRP has been taking a similar initiative. This provides evidence of a widespread recognition amongst the fragments of the need for some kind of third force.

Third force - united front or fusion?

A third tendency cannot be created as a united front of communist fragments. A united front could not become a serious alternative to the more centralised and unified organisations like the SWP. A revolutionary democratic communist tendency must come out of a process of fusion. A united front may be the first step to fusion. But if the united front is seen as an alternative to fusion, it will be a barrier to building a new tendency.

The fusion of independent organisations into a single unit poses the question of democratic organisation including the issue of majority and minority rights. It focuses on the question of unity of a tendency around a common programme.

Fusion represents a higher level of unity than the united front. We need therefore to distinguish amongst the fragments those who will not go beyond a united front and those who are prepared to work for fusion. There is of course the proviso that those prepared in principle to work towards fusion may eventually not be able to fuse. But they can at least educate us about the reasons for failure.

Rapprochement - coming together of revolutionary democrats

The bankruptcy of the USSR was an event of major significance for the world communist movement. The most corrupt and degenerate parts of this movement gave up any pretence of communism and revealed their complete bankruptcy. Others were forced to realise that the whole communist project needed a radical rethink. It is in this context that the initiative taken by the remnants of the CPGB, represented by the PCC, is of great significance.

Rapprochement must mean a new dialogue and coming together of those who historically came from the two major traditions in British Marxism, the Stalinists and Trotskyists. This dialogue, in the context of a real desire for communist unity, can become the focal point, the centre of gravity, for the creation of a third force.

Of course there are still many, probably a majority, from both traditions for whom there is still a ‘Berlin Wall’ between us. Yet it is clear that there is a minority from both traditions who are ready and willing to work to overcome the great divide. The dialogue and cooperation between the CPGB (PCC) and the RDG indicates that rapprochement across the great divide is possible.

Next step - an alliance for a third force

At present there is no third force in the communist movement. But what is beginning to emerge is an alliance between the CPGB (PCC), the RDG, Open Polemic, possibly the RWT, and now the Trotskyist Unity Group. We want to see the ISG and others join this alliance. These organisations should seek to attract other communists.

The first step towards the creation of a third tendency is the building of such an alliance. On the basis of joint work and ideological clarification, this alliance should work towards a founding conference of the third tendency. The aim is to bring about fusion into a single organisation with a common programme and full faction rights under democratic centralism.

The alliance should set itself definite tasks which include producing joint statements, joint appeals to other organisations and joint publications wherever possible. We should seek to merge our immediate perspectives for work within the movement. We should work on developing a programme. In all of this work we should be preparing for the conference to launch the third tendency. Our present task is both to widen and deepen this alliance, to bring in new organisations and strengthen the connections between existing members of the alliance.

What is in a name?

I have avoided the question of what names we should use. It is much more important to get agreement over how we should go forward. The question of the names for the alliance for a third tendency, the tendency itself, and the united revolutionary democratic communist party have been set aside.

Some names have already been suggested. These include the CPGB or Communist League or the Revolutionary Democratic Communist Party and the CP (UK). In our opinion, the alliance for a third tendency does not need a special name. We should use the names of supporting organisations - the alliance of the CPGB (PCC), Open Polemic, RDG, TUG and perhaps the RWT.

Conclusion

The first step towards a new united communist party is to create a revolutionary democratic communist tendency, a third force alongside the SWP and ML.

A third tendency should be neither Stalinist nor Trotskyist, but ‘non-ideological’, combining the ideas of revolutionary working class democracy with international socialism and communism. The RDG would be part of such a tendency, ending our factional relationship with the SWP.

The rapprochement process has given the opportunity or possibility of creating such a tendency. We would urge all communists and communist organisations to join this process.