28.03.1996

Fight liquidationism

Party notes

The Party decision to urge partisans of the class to join the Socialist Labour Party prompted the charge from some of ‘liquidationism’. We reject this accusation, of course. It says far more about the sectarian nature of those who advanced it than it does about the orientation of our Party.

It would be foolish to suggest however that this danger simply does not exist during this fluid period. We have already seen the low level defection of the Herts Party supporters’ branch. These people - politically weak, but good comrades - have dissolved their embryonic party organisation into the local Socialist Alliance. For communists the process should be the other way around - from the lower to higher forms of working class organisation.

Other groups we have been speaking to have voted to dissolve themselves or haemorrhaged in order to join the SLP. This is evidence, we are told, of a serious approach to the SLP. By implication we have a more frivolous ‘raiding party’ attitude.

We must underline that the SLP represents a possible bridgehead to a reforged Communist Party: it is not a shortcut to it, however. Struggle is required. Sharp lines of demarcation must be drawn. The fight needs to be joined now, while the process remains liquid, while the party is in the process of formation.

Some comrades suggest that during this period, retaining formal membership of the SLP is paramount. Thus, the very existence of the Weekly Worker - certainly its close monitoring of SLP developments - can be viewed as a problem. ‘Building a base’ in the SLP should not be substituted for the hard slog of creating the infrastructure of the new organisation and molding the body as a whole in this way.

Of course, the new organisation must be built. All comrades should take part in the agreed actions of the party, recruit and fight to extend its influence. But the notion that this is sufficient, that via such a process revolutionaries can determine its nature is simply wrong.

First, this ‘head down’ approach concedes an important victory to the opponents of the revolutionaries even before the battle has been properly joined. It implies that the restrictive constitution put forward by a prominent SLP individual which he himself describes as “a contribution” is de facto in place. There is no SLP constitution, there is no agreed SLP leadership, there are no agreed SLP political positions yet. Acting as if these things were already decided is to be intimidated by phantoms.

Second, it will not work. In contrast to the Leninists, the centrist opposition within the Communist Party of the 1970s and 80s led an existence we classified as “troglodyte”. They built local branches in vain attempts to establish ‘bases’ for themselves, but had no open journals to orchestrate the struggle theoretically and organisationally. They viewed those of us who struggled openly with a deep suspicion that progressively hardened into hostility.

And - it must be added - they were defeated not simply by the ‘external policemen’ of the Eurocommunist-dominated leadership, but also by the ‘internal policeman’ - political liquidationism. Their mode of struggle led logically to the decay of their political principles and accommodation to the right.

Liquidationism is a danger for all of us. The open fight for communist politics is an indispensable - although not foolproof – antidote.

Mark Fischer
national organiser