02.05.1996

Green shoots of communism

Party notes

Writing on the eve of the official launch of the Communist Party’s thirteenth Summer Offensive (May 1), let me send greetings to all comrades who will this year participate in our annual fund-raising drive.

The Communist Party is a machine that lives in order to fight. The finances we raise are not intended to provide leaders with an easy life or to earn us interest in some account. Money-raising provides us with the sinews of war of our organisation. As our Party is constantly stretching itself - fighting not for what is ‘possible’ but for what is necessary, what must be - our finances always lag behind. The annual Summer Offensive is an indispensable boost to our activity for the entire year.

Those who have told us that the SO is wrong, or even ‘illegal’ according to Party rules, should take their argument to its logical conclusion. Without the Summer Offensive, no Weekly Worker, no communist rapprochement, no work around the SLP, no electoral intervention, no Party branches - no organisation, in short.

Critics lambaste the SO as a horrendous example of the blind ‘activism’ that plagues the left in general and our organisation in particular.

This is a lame charge and does a great injustice to the comrades who take part in the SO. In fact, these comrades exhibit not ‘blindness’, but conscious, clear-sighted communist work, activity guided by their communist morality and their devotion to the cause of the revolution. Comrade critics, the Summer Offensive of the Communist Party is something all communists should build and participate in, not deride and fear! It is a high point of the fight for communist morality, an essential weapon in our fight for a reforged Communist Party.

What is ‘morality’?

Broadly, it is a social code, a form of social consciousness that regulates behaviour. Unlike law, morality is not a written entity backed by force of arms. The force of morality takes the form of impersonal obligation, injunctions addressed to all but issued by none.

In any society split into class, there is a morality that defends the existing order and one that denies it.

In modern capitalism, that ‘oppositional’ morality is obviously communist morality, the recognition that what is moral is that which facilitates the fight for revolution, the fight to build the Party of the working class.

Aspects of communist morality therefore include: the duty to fulfil all Party tasks assigned to you, to work in a disciplined way and ensure the unity of the Party, to fight for finances for the Party, to support and facilitate the work of your comrades, to raise criticism and self-criticism in a constructive way, to recruit to the Party and defend it against attack, to respect and develop your comrades.

By raising our fight for communist morality to higher levels, we facilitate the fight for the reforged Communist Party. Our communist morality is one of the most important weapons communists have in a society so antagonistic to us.

It is on the basis of this fight that the reciprocal ties within our organisation are built. When comrades plunge into work for the organisation, when they give their all for communism shoulder to shoulder, authority and leadership arise as an organic function of the Party as a whole. In this way, the ability both to lead and be led is an internalising of the morality of communism.

When comrades shirk work, look for excuses and a lazy life, then they will find the discipline of the Party an external imposition, something irksome, uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Work for the Summer Offensive is the high point of Party activity in the year. It is genuine communist work in same sense that that Lenin spoke of the Subbotniks in the early Soviet Union: work without expectation of individual reward, work for the collective good, or as Lenin wrote, the “green shoots” of communism.

Victory to the 13th Summer Offensive!

Forward to a reforged Communist Party!

Mark Fischer
National organiser