31.10.2024

Debating our culture

Our present differences are minor - a scratch - but scratches have to be taken seriously. Failure to do so risks the danger of gangrene. Mike Macnair reports on the debates at the October 27 CPGB aggregate of members and visitors

Last weekend’s aggregate meeting continued our discussion on proposed statements on the Ukraine war, triggered by the Provisional Central Committee’s statement published on October 3, and the counter-proposal by comrade Carla Roberts and others published last week.¹ The meeting included the helpful participation of several guests.

The questions involved are important ones, but tricky to disentangle. Beginning as a discussion about the form of the PCC’s October 3 statement, the aggregate moved into questions about who we are attempting to engage with in the present period, and about the political culture of the CPGB.

Jack Conrad opened the discussion on behalf of the PCC with a long and elaborate introduction, defending the October 3 statement and criticising the counter-proposal. He began with an assessment of the political context, arguing that it is now likely that Donald Trump will be elected as US president on November 5, since the gerrymandered character of the electoral college means that a Democrat needs a decisive lead in order to win, and the polls are showing the candidates neck and neck. If so, this will throw the question of the Ukraine war up in the air. It is possible that Trump will force the Ukrainians to settle; equally possible that he will go for Zelensky’s escalation ‘victory plan’.

The PCC statement arose from the discussion at the last aggregate (September 15).² It appeared at that meeting that there was general agreement on the war situation: the stalemated fronts, and the political pressure for escalation, and hence the immediate threat of a slippage into World War III. And there was agreement on the principles involved: that we are opposed to both sides; that our primary responsibility in Britain is to oppose British and thus US/Nato warmaking; and that among the left we oppose primarily pro-Nato social-imperialism, which is a scab policy. But, secondly, we oppose social-pacifism, which promotes illusions in a peaceful capitalism; thirdly, illusions in the ‘progressive’ role of the Russian FSB regime; and, fourthly, the form of centrism that downplays the political importance of the war or avoids open argument about it, in order to cling to unity with, especially, the social-imperialists. Comrade Roberts at that aggregate suggested the production of a statement, and PCC comrades agreed to the idea.

The basis of the idea of a statement was the immediate threat of escalation. But the PCC was delayed in producing the statement, and wound up editing it at the absolute last minute for publication on October 3.

What we hoped for from the statement was some response from other groups on the left. What we actually got was a dispute in our own ranks on the basis that the statement was “not fit for purpose”, because it was too long and contained too much content. Comrade Roberts in her original letter proposed the deletion of points 1-10 (which offer motivation for a statement at this time, in spite of the dominance of the headlines by the Middle East) and point 19 (which focuses on the hypocrisy of the social-imperialists in simultaneously demanding arms for Ukraine and opposing the cuts in social spending that are to pay for this policy).

Comrade Conrad went on to argue about the objections made by comrade Roberts to absences in the statement: that is, that the PCC was dropping our position on “revolutionary defeatism” and “the main enemy is at home”, and had omitted the call for a workers’ militia. On the last of those questions, the CPGB has persisted, against the opposition of other groups, on the demand for a popular militia. He argued that the conclusion of the statement, calling for “turning what is a war between reactionary capitalist powers into a civil war - a revolution - for democracy, socialism and communism”, was in fact the same as the ideas of “revolutionary defeatism” and “the main enemy is at home”, merely in different phrases. If it had really been the case that we were abandoning the policy, this would have been a betrayal of principle. But he opposed the fetishism of words and phrases.

Comrade Roberts had given as an example our defence of the name, ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’, against the Eurocommunist liquidators and against the bureaucratic-sectarian Morning Star group. But if there was a real prospect of an actual party, we would be willing to sacrifice the name: as when in the early 2000s we argued for the Socialist Alliance, the strongest of the left coalitions to date, to transform itself into a party (any such project was defeated by the successive sabotage of the Socialist Party in England and Wales and of the Socialist Workers Party). The lengthy discussion in comrade Conrad’s October 17 article³ of the shift in the Bolsheviks’ position on the war after the February revolution was precisely addressed to the question of fetishism of words and phrases; it was not intended to suggest that the CPGB was addressing the masses.

From the defence of the PCC statement, he moved on to criticise the alternative statement proposed by comrades Ian Spencer, Bob Paul, Andy Hannah, Paul Cooper, Carla Roberts, and Anne McShane.⁴ In the first place, the statement muddled the risk of world war. This came from the Ukraine war, and not from the Israeli aggression in the Middle East, since none of Israel’s targets have the means to start a world war. Equally, we are not dual-defeatists between Israel and its targets. The fact that communists in the region would have to defend themselves against the local nationalists would not alter the fact that the main enemy is US-Israel, just as in China in the 1930s-40s communists had to defend themselves against the Guomindang, but the main enemy was Japan.

The alternative statement confuses the issue of workers’ defence guards (workers’ militia) with the demand for a people’s militia as an alternative to the standing army. It displays illusions in the policy of sabotage against the war, which Lenin criticised as helping the rulers to defeat the revolutionaries. It characterises Russia, China and Iran as aspirants to join the core imperialist powers: possible for China, but unlikely for Russia (which, apart from its military, is a mid-rank economy), and delusional for Iran. It is necessary to take seriously what we write and to be precise. In relation to trends on the left, the alternative statement misses out the form of centrism that uses diplomatic language and clings to unity with the social-imperialist wing, which the PCC statement had characterised as the worst kind of opportunism; a principled left needs, on the contrary, a clear opposition to this wing.

The closeness of the US presidential election, creating uncertainty, has made the initiative we sought to take less timely. We should not adopt the alternative proposal, he said, but instead continue the discussion.

Discussion

Comrade Roberts’ counter-introduction was, as she said at the outset, much shorter. The purpose of the PCC statement was, she said, to cement principled unity on the left. It was not fit for this purpose. The supporters of the alternative proposal had set out to produce an alternative that would be more suitable. The issue of centrist conciliationism was present (implicitly) in the alternative proposal through the criticism of pro-Russianism, social-pacificism and social-patriotism.

The issues are not differences of principle, but differences about how to present our politics. If the PCC had produced a statement with the aim of unity, it should have focussed on principle, rather than including matters of analysis. The PCC had dropped the militia question, and had given inconsistent accounts of why - one being that others might disagree.

The supporters of the alternative proposal had laboured under the impression that the PCC statement was open to amendment, and not just from other groups, but also from within CPGB. The original proposed amendments were clearly of a minor tactical nature. Comrade Conrad’s article in response to comrade Roberts’ original letter showed that he had failed to read it in good faith, she argued, and was an attempt to ‘nuke’ minor tactical differences. She repeated that the statement was unfit for the purpose of seeking unity. The episode displayed a strange and bad feature of the culture of the organisation. We have to recognise that the group is small and old and needs to renew itself; this requires nurturing rather than squashing comrades’ initiative.

Comrade Farzad Kamangar made a short point that what she had said in a cell meeting, which comrade Roberts referred to, was that if the PCC had included the militia question in the statement, comrades would have accused us of artificially making a separation from other groups, which oppose us on the issue.

Comrade Martin Greenfield, a guest, said that from the point of view of an outsider (he is in Australia) the underlying issue seems to be frustration with the CPGB’s political isolation. Comrade Conrad seemed to be exaggerating the significance of the differences. He agreed with the supporters of the alternative proposal that the PCC statement did not pin its target down clearly and needed to be shorter and sharper. But he had not signed the alternative proposal; the PCC does have the right to issue statements, and we should not be hung up on the particular form of words for expressing the policy of revolutionary defeatism. He reported that the Australian Revolutionary Communist Organisation’s central committee had been divided about how to respond to the PCC statement. On the other hand, “alternative theses at 10 paces” was a cultural problem.

I argued that the fetishism of exact forms of words and long lists of slogans including everything was a part of the culture of the Robertsonite Spartacist League and its descendant organisations - hence comrade Alan Gibson of the Spart-origin Bolshevik Tendency and his intervention on Discord (which comrade Roberts had effectively tailed). The militia question would be diversionary, because orthodox Trotskyists, who oppose CPGB on the militia question, could still have a principled defeatist position on the war.

The question of culture is fundamental. There can be no unity of the left without acceptance that there will be within the unity polemics as sharp as those of the Second International or the early Comintern, and that these will be conducted in the open. The left culture of politeness, and of separating internal from public disagreement, denies the working class the right to choose between competing positions and inevitably leads to bureaucratic control of what can be said and to splits.

Comrade Ian Spencer argued that culture is important. The PCC statement was too long to be discussed by other groups. Comrade Conrad’s two-page reply to Carla Roberts seemed to regard any suggestion as treason: the PCC was displaying a “bunker mentality”. The use of the slogan, “The main enemy is at home”, had the advantage of clarity. Returning to comrade Greenfield’s point, what was the purpose of the PCC statement, if it was not to seek unity? In his view the CPGB has excellent politics, but “an unfortunate way of conducting itself that doesn’t invite people in”. We have to improve on this, he said.

Comrade Andy Hannah said that the reason for the alternative proposal was that the original statement lacked focus. What was needed was not the detail, but the restatement of fundamental principles. He agreed with comrade Roberts that the alternative proposal did implicitly pose the question of centrism. On the question of party culture, he had the greatest respect for PCC comrades. But the authority of comrades comes with responsibility towards rank-and-file comrades. In Jack Conrad’s obituary of Tom May he had remarked that Tom had corrected Jack as a young man gently; the PCC needed to be more Tom-like.

Comrade Tam D, a guest, thought that the debate was making a mountain out of a molehill. He did not see the point of the statement on the basis of the exchanges in the paper. What he now sees on the basis of the discussion is that the point is the British supply of weapons to Ukraine - hence the first 10 points of the PCC statement. But Britain is not at war; this remains a proxy war, not a direct war. Contrast the (1991) Gulf war, where Britain had troops on the ground. Comrade Conrad’s response to comrade Roberts’ letter was overkill; the effect comes across as a little cult fighting among ourselves, washing our dirty linen in public. The PCC’s rush to publish the statement was unnecessary and we should pull back from sharp polemic.

Comrade Kamangar argued that if the original criticisms of the statement were merely tactical, they could have been raised more constructively; they did not come across as friendly, and the PCC was accused of political failures. She said that the differences did not seem to be merely tactical, but concerned “what sort of unity”. Our older differences on the Labour Left Alliance were inevitably in comrades’ minds. We need to discuss the question of the basis of unity. PCC comrades share the concern about the CPGB’s small size and age; but ‘unity for the sake of unity’, submerging political differences, would be merely ephemeral and no solution.

Second round

Comrade Conrad in a second intervention said that the purpose of the statement was to ring an alarm bell about the danger of, as Donald Trump had put it, “phasing into World War III”. The principles and analysis involved were discussed at the September 15 aggregate. The statement aimed to get engagement from other groups; in this respect the negative response from Prometheus⁵ and the division on the Australian RCO CC were (small) steps forward. The imminence of the US presidential election has thrown the issues up in the air; our planned winter Communist University, which is to discuss the politics of war, will still be before the inauguration.

The Prometheus group has issued an invitation to write about the nature and purpose of a party. It would probably be better to devote the next aggregate to that issue (though we will have to submit something to Prometheus before then). This leads into the ‘culture’ issue. We favour washing our dirty linen in public. It is over this issue that we have had splits; back in 2012, over our criticism of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative as opportunist;⁶ last year, over freedom of speech and trans rights.⁷ The problem with the left is its lack of openness about political differences. We are not out to crush critics; sharpness of expression is not “crushing” people. If the PCC had abandoned the policy of revolutionary defeatism, comrade Roberts’ letter and article should have been much sharper than they were.

Comrade Roberts in a second intervention said that comrade Conrad was failing to listen: she, and supporters of the alternative proposal, were not claiming that the PCC was abandoning the policy of revolutionary defeatism, but merely that it had dropped the slogans. She agreed with the principle of openness on differences, but there is a “middle ground” between hiding differences dishonestly, at one end, and crushing people, at the other end. In a statement that aimed to create principled unity, she argued, the use of standard slogans like “The main enemy is at home” would improve clarity. The material in the PCC statement on weapons systems was already out of date. Communists should present the ABCs in a more succinct form. The PCC was falling into a “bunker mentality”. Age and small size means that we have to make plans to replace ourselves; that means working out how to educate people in a way that does not leave them demoralised.

Comrade Cat R, a guest, said that her discussions with comrades outside the CPGB had implications for how to approach the issue. She was not sure that it was clear what the point of the PCC statement was; she had been under the impression that the point was to create a principled pole in the anti-war movement, analogous to the role of Hands Off the People of Iran in the movement against the Iraq war. Was the aim to lead to unity of this sort, or was it to expose and drive wedges? There is a general problem of lack of trust on the left. In this context, the discussions of the approaches of the Bolsheviks in comrades Conrad’s and Roberts’ articles and introductions pointed to the importance of tactical flexibility. By using the standard slogans, anti-war comrades in RS21 had succeeded in defeating RS21’s initial pro-imperialist line, which reflected the human impulse to oppose aggression.

My own second intervention was addressed to these issues. The statement was not analogous to the Hopi appeal: there is no mass anti-war movement round Ukraine, and Stop the War Coalition’s attempt to launch demos against the Ukraine war was a complete failure, with trivial numbers turning out - the attempt abandoned. Our object is, rather, concerned with the party question, and what we hoped for was not immediate unity, but rather to begin a discussion about the possible basis for unity, in which other groups might, so far as they disagreed, offer political reasons for their disagreement. In fact, most British groups are committed to the methods of diplomacy, ‘politeness’ and the separation of public and internal discussion. In this context comrade Roberts’ argument that the PCC statement was “unfit for purpose” actually served other groups’ unwillingness to engage with the politics in it. The background to this effect is partly that social media platforms, and email lists, have the seriously negative characteristic of promoting instant soundbite responses, which are inconsistent with serious political argument.

Comrade Hannah, more briefly, argued that comrade Kamangar was mistaken to suggest that there was any issue of uniting on a false basis. We are concerned with engaging with the existing left, as it is presently constituted, and for that purpose the alternative proposal was clearer than the PCC statement.

Responding to the discussion, comrade Conrad referred to the difference between minor and major differences. In One step forward, two steps back Lenin wrote of the surprising appearance of sharp differences in the Iskra group at the 1903 second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which initially appeared to be about trivial issues; Trotsky famously referred in 1940 to “From a scratch - to the danger of gangrene”.⁸ Comrade Conrad insisted that the present differences are minor - a scratch - but scratches have to be taken seriously. We live in the world of bourgeois society, antagonistic to communism, and left groups can and do collapse into the gangrene of social-imperialism, like the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Anticapitalist Resistance, or of popular-frontism and the hunt for respectability, like the SWP. Open and sharp political debate and factionalism is the only antiseptic remedy available.

The proponents of the alternative statement did not put the statement to the vote. Comrade Roberts proposed that the aggregate should commission a new statement after the US election result; we need to show that we are serious about unity, as well as insistent that it should be on a principled basis. Comrade Conrad agreed that a new statement would be needed after the US election result, and proposed that we should continue the discussion at the next aggregate meeting - shifting more onto the party question.

The discussion will continue.

1. ‘Establishing a principled left’ Weekly Worker October 3 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1509/establishing-a-principled-left); ‘Danger of World War III: the communist response’, October 24 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1512/danger-of-world-war-iii-the-communist-response).↩︎

2. As Ian Spencer reported in ‘Political organisation is key’ Weekly Worker September 19 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1507/political-organisation-is-key).↩︎

3. ‘Wrong and right war politics’ Weekly Worker October 17: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1511/wrong-and-right-war-politics.↩︎

4. ‘Danger of World War III: the communist response’ Weekly Worker October 24: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1512/danger-of-world-war-iii-the-communist-response.↩︎

5. In this week’s letters column; received by the editor before the aggregate.↩︎

6. ‘Broad fronts and liquidationism’ Weekly Worker May 30 2012: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/916/broad-fronts-and-liquidationism (and several other articles from that period).↩︎

7. ‘Upholding the free speech principle’ Weekly Worker March 9 2023: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1433/upholding-the-free-speech-principle (and following correspondence on the Letters pages).↩︎

8. Lenin: www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep, passim; Trotsky: www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/21-scratch1.htm (the title).↩︎