13.02.2025

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Thoughts on the Marxist Unity conference in Salford from Cat Rylance, Edmund Potts, Chris Strafford, Toby Mckenzie-Barnes, Daniel Brady, Bryce Bailey

Significant

I was very pleased with the Salford event - not just with the number of people who were willing to give over a whole Saturday to having these discussions, but also the level of political engagement and developed contributions amongst everyone present. This came through clearly to me in the workshop sessions, however challenging and critical the exchanges may have been at points. Someone commented during the day that they couldn’t have pictured us having these kinds of discussions, at this level and in this way, 10 years ago. And I think that’s right.

The experiences of Corbynism, the student movement, the anti-austerity movement, etc - these have mobilised, coordinated and developed people, but have also left a great many questions and exposed different limitations in horizontalism, movementism, broad fronts, etc. There is an appetite to have the type of discussions that were posed at Saturday’s event: How does a mass Communist Party look different to these organising experiences? What are the barriers or challenges to advancing it? What work can we do towards it in the here and now? It is clear to me that there is a greater opportunity now for advancing the argument for a multi-tendency, democratically organised Communist Party than there has been for 15 years or more.

One thing that struck me too from the day was the desire for active engagement amongst many of those participating - not just part of a passive audience to these discussions. In Prometheus we orientate our work to publishing written articles trying to advance these arguments widely, but the space in which we can then bring these discussions to life with others is a fundamental partner to that work. Likewise, for those of us involved in the Forging Communist Unity process, it is clear from Saturday that there are a number of people who have an interest for more active engagement. This is something important to think about in terms of what that might look like and when/how there might be an opportunity to do this.

None of this is to get ahead of ourselves - we remain a profound minority on an already isolated left. What is on the table through this work though - both through events like this, but also through organisational efforts in the FCU process - is the opportunity to cohere and strengthen a partyist core. To reinvigorate ourselves through this process and to think seriously, and with renewed perspectives, about what the work of an organisation fighting for a mass communist party should look like in this period. If we are successful in this then the result, I believe, could make a significant impact within the left.

Cat Rylance
Prometheus editorial board (pc)

Optimistic

This was the first event of its type organised by Prometheus, and it was a positive step forward for it to be co-hosted by Talking about Socialism. A significant number of comrades from both organisations are based in Manchester, which bodes well for further collaboration of this type. We should look at other parts of the country too.

As ever, there will be things to learn from and improve upon. Break-out groups are a bit controversial, but clearly stand the best chance of success if there is a tight focus to the discussion questions, allowing the reconvened meeting to move forwards as a whole.

Thirty eight people gave up their Saturday to attend a day school on the theme of Marxist unity. The majority were not in any organisation. That should indicate two things.

First, there is a significant number of people interested in organising together as communists, going beyond both ‘the sects’ and left reformism.

Second, while partyist organisations have faced diminishing returns in recent years, if the Forging Communist Unity process succeeds in creating a credible and open organisation greater than the sum of its parts, then it might well win a significant number of adherents.

Nothing is guaranteed; success will depend in large part on us demonstrating that it is possible in practice to move beyond sectarian division. But Saturday gave us reason to be optimistic.

Edmund Potts
Prometheus and TAS

Serious

It was very positive to see a good turnout for Prometheus’s and Talking About Socialism’s day school on partyism in Salford last Saturday. The comrades have clearly judged that there is a changed mood across our movement with members of several different groups in attendance. More and more people are not just interested in the arguments for a new party, but that it should be a Communist Party. The speakers helped guide the discussion, but it was in the workshops where the day really proved its worth.

Although breakout groups often hinder rather than help discussion, the two I attended fostered lively and productive exchanges. Particularly of note was the discussion on ‘red lines versus programmatic commitments’ and how we deal with reactionary views on trans people in a mass Communist Party. I argued that there should be no red lines, that during discussion in party organisations, in our trade union branches or during an election campaign you confront reactionary ideas and change them over time. What is important is the collective commitment as outlined in a programme to resist attacks on trans people and to fight to extend their freedoms and control over their own lives, healthcare, etc. The importance of this discussion was such that we even ignored the lunch bell.

The day continued with similar seriousness, as comrades from the CPGB, Prometheus and TAS outlined the need for communist unity and discussed the ongoing regroupment efforts between their organisations. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in communist ideas. You only have to look at the Revolutionary Communist Party’s successful ‘Are you a communist?’ campaign to see that more people are seeking out communist ideas and organisations than were a decade ago. Collectively we have a responsibility to meet this moment with increased efforts towards communist unity.

It would be a small and in many ways a long overdue step forwards if a faction of the new Prometheus editorial board, TAS and the CPGB unite. The numbers are small, but many in the movement here and abroad are watching. If successful it could be a totemic moment and all communists should encourage and support this process as a thread in the struggle for a mass Communist Party. That we had a chance to thrash some of this out in person last Saturday was invaluable and we must ensure that the discussion continues and we keep meeting and figuring out a way forward together.

Chris Strafford
Manchester

Disproportionate

Through the day, there were many points of real depth of reflection on these key questions for us as communists aiming to build this - the tensions between ideological alignment and flourishing debate; whether we start with a broad communist programme or a tighter organisational form; the path between a currently limited ideological current and a mass party.

However, these highlights were contrasted for me with a somewhat myopic focus on a currently topical ‘regroupment’ between two (or maybe even three) small organisations. While there is cause for celebration in the practice of finding paths for unity and collaboration between our contemporary fragmented forms, this was often taken to be a disproportionately important topic. This felt symptomatic of some lack of self-reflection on the role we may potentially take in this historical process. As was suggested by other participants throughout the day, to be a movement which truly seeks not only to understand the world, but to change it, we must face outwards as well as in. Our success will rely on our readiness to be deeply involved in the worker, anti-imperialist, climate and other frontline struggles of our class, to bring in historic knowledge and develop a wide cadre to fight for a communist future.

Attending this event demonstrated the principled commitment of Prometheus in organising the day, and gave me faith that they will work with, and beyond, those attending to widen and deepen this conversation, even as we face difficult tensions in our approaches.

Toby Mckenzie-Barnes
email

Patience needed

Firstly I would like to praise the comrades who organised the event for taking the initiative to build on recent party discussions and take them offline and out of London. The opening panel discussion featuring Mike Macnair and Cat Rylance set the tone for the day as an event which would be comradely and open-minded without shying away from debate or disagreement.

The opening session was followed by two breakout group sessions and a closing plenary, which provided an opportunity for all attendees to take part. While I think that these sessions could have been more focused by limiting discussion topics to one or two questions per session (the first session had six questions to discuss in 15 minutes, while the second had five to discuss in 30), I think that the value of the event was really solidified by these sessions. Comrades from a variety of left groups and tendencies debated and discussed their perspectives amicably and enthusiastically, and displayed a very healthy attitude to disagreement and the question of building Marxist unity. While the real questions of unity building are likely to involve sharper disagreement in practice, it was a positive example of the kind of new communist culture we seek to build, where a similar event even several years ago may have been more toxic and hostile.

Several key questions emerged throughout the day about the current prospects and barriers to Marxist unity. The first of which was around the ongoing Forging Communist Unity talks between the CPGB, TAS and (a section of) Prometheus, which would potentially build a slightly larger and more dynamic pro-party campaign organisation than its constituent parts. The fact that these talks are taking place is certainly positive, but my view is that in practice such a fusion process would look like a slightly larger version of the present CPGB, albeit with a much needed injection of different perspectives and a modification of its Draft programme. I wish the comrades involved all the best on this process, but in the recognition that Marxist unity will only come about by the long-term, patient process of convincing the other existing Marxist groups of the necessity for a mass, multi-tendency Communist Party united in principle around a common programme, and that the prospects on that front do seem further away.

I spoke briefly as a member of the newly launched Marxist Unity Caucus in RS21, where a group of us have proposed a common platform in favour of RS21 taking a pro-party and pro-regroupment position. We are so far pleased with the response that the announcement of our platform has received, and are pleased that RS21 is open-minded and diverse enough that such a platform can exist, where other organisations would take more hostile attitudes to minority perspectives. We will have the opportunity to discuss our platform and partyism more generally in a ‘partyism and regroupment’ session at RS21’s upcoming All Members Assembly.

In light of this, I would urge comrades to be patient when addressing groups such as RS21 which could be potential allies of whatever new organisation comes out of the FCU process. This is not to say that disagreements or criticisms need to be ignored or dropped, but also not every organisation that is cautious to enter into immediate unity talks is hostile to the prospect of unity as such. The reports that were published in the Weekly Worker on Jack Conrad’s assumptions of the RS21 position were quite understandably read as an attempt to pose ultimatums and shape the narrative in bad faith. RS21 is an organisation of roughly 300 members, so any decisions to engage in unity talks will naturally require much more consideration for a majority view to be reached. While the comrades in the CPGB may be frustrated by what they view as an unwillingness to enter unity talks, any attempts to rush those who have taken the time to hear you out will only act against the longer-term interests of unity-building.

Relatedly, another key topic of the day was on the question of what the ‘red lines’ to unity will be. To me, the reason why this topic became a key element of the discussion is related to the view that the CPGB has a relaxed attitude to transphobia. I accept the argument that the CPGB comrades pose, which is that a mass communist organisation will inevitably attract reactionary minority tendencies, and that we would need to find ways to defeat those reactionary tendencies politically rather than resorting to bureaucratic expulsions and backroom manoeuvring.

However, I believe that any draft programme of a communist party should include a strong opposition to social oppressions such as transphobia, and one which is strong enough that it could not accommodate transphobic groups such as the CPGB-ML without them having seriously reconsidered their perspectives. I think the CPGB quite rightly recognises this to be the case in regards to how state-loyalist groups such as the AWL should not be able to be accommodated in a unity process without having reconsidered their state-loyalism.

Finally, I hope to see the same comrades and more at future events which are similar to the one on Saturday, which would only go further in helping to build the links to developing unity. I would propose that a similar event be hosted two or three times a year in different areas of the country, to maintain momentum without oversaturating the event.

Daniel Brady
RS21 Liverpool

Promising

I attended the Prometheus and Talking About Socialism ‘Marxist Unity’ conference. Held in Salford, Manchester, at the Working Class Movement Library, the conference was attended by three organisations that are currently in unity talks: members of Prometheus’s editorial board, TAS and CPGB. There were also members of RS21’s Marxist Unity Caucus, Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Party of Great Britain, and myself as someone who sits on Transform’s Council.

Along with this there were many people who were no longer or never had been members of any kind of socialist organisation, which is a good sign that these events can reach people who aren’t yet organised. About 40 people attended, many of whom were relatively young (late 20s, early 30s), which is a positive sign of the Partyist movement’s recent growth.

The first session was a panel featuring Mike Macnair and Catriona Rylance. Comrade Mike’s speech was a synthesis of the points he’s been making in his Prometheus article and in his responses to other articles in the ‘What is the party?’ series. He argued regroupment outside of Labour was unlikely, given Collective’s failure to resolve the differences between its partyist and movementist factions. Further, even if it did manage to launch, it is likely that it is now well past the moment it could have achieved mass membership, which would have been when Corbyn was kicked out of the Labour Party; and I would add that we are now well past the 2024 general election, when there was some excitement about left independent campaigns.

Moreover, he argued that even if Collective posed a threat, Labour could always veer to the left and crush the nascent project. He then made the positive argument for the goal of replacing the Labour Party with a mass Communist Party, drawing on the book Reforming to survive, which showed how the Norwegian elites conceded to the working class the social democratic system just after the Norwegian Labour Party radicalised and applied to join Comintern.

Catriona Rylance made the argument that our political goal, communism, is what should inform our political strategy, rather than short-term needs of the movement (need to recruit more people, needing to outreach to communities, to work with other parts of the broad-left) determining our political strategy. This leads to a critique of broad-frontism and putting primacy on assemblies and the need for a Communist Party. Another point was that talks about communist unity would need to be an open substantial political discussion where differences in opinion will be clarified and worked through.

Many of the responses were broadly positive of the arguments for partyism. Tina asked “what would a mass Communist Party look like?”, to which Mike replied that a mass Communist Party would look like around 25,000 members if we could unite with the sects, but ultimately we need a party of eight million. I put forward that though Collective would likely fail, it has succeeded in getting the Revolutionary Communist Party and Socialist Party in England and Wales into the same room, with the Socialist Workers Party aspiring to also enter, and that, if it did succeed, joining Collective as a faction might be a way of reaching these sects.

After the panel discussion we had two sets of workshops. With limited time to answer four questions in each workshop, not all the questions were answered by the groups, nor were any answered in depth, but were good prompts to discuss the issues with the left and with partyists. Older comrades have said that they were more positive than most previous experiences they had with workshops and I think this is reflective of the left working together better than it has previously.

On the challenges of left regroupment, my workshop argued that there was a difference between the broader structural issues facing the left and problems that we can deal with, such as the lack of a Communist Party. On the issue of whether partyists should join a wider left (mass) party as a faction, Edmund Potts made the point that this could lead to a situation where communists are working more towards a broad left party and its electoral campaigns rather than working towards a Communist Party.

On the issue of how to get to a mass Communist Party, it was argued that unifying a faction of Prometheus with CPGB and TAS would be a good first step that could lead to 50-100 members. The next step would be to build an organisation that all partyists in the UK would want to be a member of. But after that the strategy gets more difficult: how would a communist unity organisation approach the sects or the broad left?

The casual conversation after the conference revealed some of the trickier parts of the unification process. Part of the editorial board of Prometheus would like the journal to remain independent so that it could more impartially publish a whole range of left perspectives, despite their commitment to partyism. Members of the Marxist Unity Caucus in RS21 are unsure about their future involvement with any unity talks due to a desire not to jeopardize their status in RS21, with it being a much bigger organisation that potentially could be won over to partyism. Concerns over red lines, especially over transphobia, were discussed, and there doubtless will be other issues that need to be ironed over. Overall, it was a very positive conference and I would be up for helping to organise a similar event in London.

Bryce Bailey
London