09.01.2025

Forging communist unity

A proposal from the TAS steering group issued on January 4 2025

Talking About Socialism presents the following document in response to the discussion held on December 14 between representatives of TAS, the CPGB-PCC, Why Marx?, Prometheus and RS21, which was convened to discuss the possibility of joint work.

TAS welcomed both the initial proposal for common work, and even more so the contributions that were made during the discussion. These in our view showed a serious attitude to working together with other communists in a comradely and collaborative way. Set against the backdrop of a deeply divided and mistrustful left, the significance of communists talking to each other about collaboration cannot be understated. People in the future looking back on that meeting may come to view it as a significant positive first step in a new drive towards unity among communists.

It was clear in the discussion that there was substantial agreement among the participating organisations (with the exception of RS21, who engaged in a positive way but were up front about not having a settled position as a whole). In broad terms there was agreement on the need for a new mass communist party, united on the basis of communist politics rather than any lesser programme, and which rejects and breaks with the ‘sect’ model. That is clearly what is required to enable our class to fulfil its strategic objective of coming to power.

All of us would be members of the same future mass communist party. Although this should go without saying, it bears repeating because it is generally not said among members of the various competing Marxist organisations which currently exist.

We think that the question of unity cannot wait until we are on the threshold of building a mass party of millions, or even an organisation of thousands. It needs to be addressed, albeit in different ways, at every stage of our activity as communists.

As a preliminary but essential step towards the future mass communist party we all wish to see, we say that all of those who share our objective could and should be members of the same partyist organisation which organises and propagandises around that objective. In other words, those who are currently involved with TAS, the CPGB-PCC, Why Marx? and Prometheus could fuse into a single organisation.

The advantages of unity, if achieved on a viable and principled basis, are obvious: pooling of resources and effort instead of needless duplication; setting an example to wider layers that overcoming division is possible; and the potential to create an organisation that is greater than the sum of its constituent parts, as was achieved on a larger scale with the formation of the CPGB in 1920.

Creating such an organisation will not be as simple as merely declaring it, if it is to be viable and durable. There are reasons why we are not yet in the same organisation; we must acknowledge and confront these issues in order to meaningfully transcend them. A broad agreement on the need to fight for a mass communist party does not necessarily imply agreement on specifics, although it may be that through discussion we do in fact identify much deeper agreement on various specific issues.

Bringing into being a united partyist organisation through a process of regroupment would need to be the result of a process of serious discussion aimed at working out in broad terms what the organisation will look like and what it will do. We would need to confront issues of fundamental principle on which there may be disagreements, try to eliminate those disagreements if possible and try to find alternative paths to unity if not. In other words, we would need to work together to identify and remove any real barriers to unity which currently exist.

This process of discussion with unity as its goal should encompass at least the following (non-exhaustive) list of issues:

1. What should a partyist organisation’s fundamental principles and programmatic commitments be?

2. What is the best structure for a partyist organisation, especially at our current stage of dozens of members? Should this change when we group together hundreds, or thousands?

3. What kind of democracy should the organisation adopt? How can we ensure that its democratic functioning outweighs trends towards bureaucratisation, etc?

4. Who is included and excluded from membership? What principles and processes govern this?

5. How should a partyist organisation at our current stage approach the question of those who claim agreement with our goal of a united communist party, but who hold positions which may undermine that commitment in practice? (We might take as an example comrades who consider themselves revolutionary communists, but advocate support for the Ukrainian war effort on the grounds of the right of nations to self-determination.)

6. How should any new organisation engage in the wider movement, for example how would it relate to broader formations? What obligations should there be on its members in such situations?

Inevitably there may be particular issues which we have left out which comrades may wish to add to the agenda at the outset; other issues may present themselves during the discussion.

Addressing the problems of building a partyist organisation (and a party) in a flexible but concrete way is in our view preferable to the original proposal of discussions around the Marxist Unity Group reader. In addition to the practical purpose of working through the problems of forging unity among our participant organisations, we hope the discussions would also have significant educational and explanatory value for those who we hope to win to our ideas and draw into our project.

If successful this programme of discussion, suitably amended to address the concerns of all involved, would bring us to a point where collectively we could draft a positive statement as to what kind of organisation is required by our present situation - and with the benefit of that statement we could then take practical steps to bring a fused organisation into being.

Even if the aim of a united organisation cannot be achieved immediately, direct and open engagement with these discussions may well lay the basis for more productive collaboration between partyists in the future. That would still be a meaningful step forward from where we are now.

We recognise that as well as the substantive disagreements on the issues outlined above, comrades may disagree with our proposal and how we have proposed to approach it. We welcome frank disagreement, where it arises, in the interests of moving us forward. We will engage with equal comradely frankness. We look forward to your thoughts and your response.