18.07.1996

Archaic ‘communism’

Around the left

Communists believe in the liberation of humanity. We believe that this can only occur under communism, a truly global system which has ‘transcended’ all forms of class society - including democracy, which in the first and last analysis is a state formation, whereby one class uses force to suppress and exploit another class. The same under socialism, albeit the majority is suppressing the minority.

Fairly conventional stuff, you would think. Obviously not, judging by the views promoted in the left press. Groups and organisations that explicitly claim loyalty to communism seem to have taken their eye off the ball (ie, human liberation) and have sunk into the mire of so-called ‘pragmatism’. In short, we need to rescue communism from the ‘communists’.

A classic example is Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Regrettably, despite its name, the RCPB(M-L) has not the slightest understanding of Marxism-Leninism, or communist science in general. In fact, it sounds unmistakably bourgeois in tone. Hence, Workers’ Weekly informs us without the slightest blush of embarrassment: “On a world scale, all developments point towards the necessity for modern sovereign states in which the people themselves decide and participate in governance” (June 29).

Sentiments that the Sunday Telegraph or Tory Eurosceptics would echo - I bet John Redwood would be astonished to discover that the ‘programme’ of the RCPB(M-L) is so akin to his own. The worldsceptic Workers’ Weekly continues in this quasi-Redwoodian vein, telling the “English workers” to fight

“for the dismantling of the archaic and oppressive British state and its replacement with modern sovereign states for the nations which at present constitute the United Kingdom - English, Scots, Welsh and Irish - in which the people hold power”.

Perhaps there is a hitherto unknown ‘iron law’ which states that the more revolutionary-sounding the organisation, the more conservative and tame its real politics is. Living Marxism, the precocious but dull monthly of the Revolutionary Communist Party (sic), takes a similar line to Workers’ Weekly. It states:

“When governments hand the responsibility and blame for everything that happens to the EU ... then the opportunities for any electorate, whether it be British, German or Spanish, to hold its rulers to account for anything become ever more remote” (July/August).

Genuine Marxism-Leninism tells us that “all developments point towards the necessity” to smash the nation-state and proceed towards communism - a message alien to Workers’ Weekly and Living Marxism.

Don Preston