22.02.1996

Weekly Worker retreat

Bob Smith - For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee

The Stalin Society’s annual report for 1995 made for interesting reading. In the report on the ‘Importance of forming a party’ meetings, the secretary had this to say: “It should be stressed that this particular talk certainly did not imply that the nucleus of a Marxist-Leninist party exists either inside or indeed outside of the Stalin Society.” Open Polemic comrades would certainly agree that a communist party does not currently exist in Britain, but to suggest that a nucleus does not exist is bending the stick too far, and furthermore is scientifically incorrect. The nucleus of a communist party resides in consciousness - the most theoretically developed class consciousness at any given point in time. In that sense the nucleus of a party always exists as long as even one communist sees the party as the cornerstone of all revolutionary politics. But we are further down the road than that.

The political collaboration between the Leninists of the CPGB and Open Polemic is precisely on the basis of pro-partyism - that is what binds us together despite our differences. Others are now joining this pro-party pole. So there is clearly a nucleus of a Marxist-Leninist party in existence.

The process would be enhanced considerably if pro-party elements around the Stalin Society were to make a representational entry as a distinct pro-Stalin, pro-Third Internationalist faction. But the report rejects the concept of Marxist-Leninists with different interpretations of the history of the Soviet Union being in the one party. The secretary argues: “Only with ideological centralism can there be a guarantee for developing and maintaining unity and solidarity and defeating individualism and groupism inside a party.” Well, what is meant by ideological centralism? If the Stalin Society are after a monolithic thought machine, then the CPGB/OP project of communist rapprochement is definitely not for them.

While the Open Polemic editorial board is most definitely for a party that has clear ideological parameters, we insist the party must allow for a free flow of ideas within those parameters and within the discipline of democratic centralism. In short, we are for unity of action, not unity of thought. The party, as the report correctly says, is a living organism and if we attempt to suppress contending views within Marxism-Leninism we create not a party, but a religious sect. The ideological centralism that the report calls for is, I fear, more akin to the ‘leader centralism’ that Open Polemic has been at pains to oppose and combat.

To repeat, the respective theses around Stalin and Trotsky are best served within a communist collective which is united in the first instance around a common, universal theoretical programme. The nucleus of the vanguard party will be enhanced considerably when the state capitalist, Trotskyist, and pro-Stalinist theorists submit themselves to the discipline of the communist collective - the party.

Ironically, at the very time that we make the call to the comrades in and around the Stalin Society, it is with much regret that I must report that the Weekly Worker editorial team rejected the suggestion of publishing an interview with Partisan on the central question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Brandishing their own ‘ideological centralism’, the Leninist faction dismissed the OP suggestion on the spurious grounds that Partisan did not represent any serious force in Britain. This is not the point. Partisan, and the Stalin Society generally, do have a view which is still shared by millions around the world and their particular following in Britain is neither here nor there. In any case, communist open polemic is about the struggle of ideas and not simply a numbers game.

While Open Polemic will now conduct and publish the interview itself in the interests of all advanced workers, we recognise that the Leninist decision marks a major retreat for the development of the Weekly Worker and for the twin processes of communist rapprochement and open polemic.