WeeklyWorker

27.02.2025
Rotten elements: easily kept out

Programmatic starting point

Without a comprehensive, fully worked-out programme, our party will have no chance of taking coherent form, guarding against opportunism or navigating the road to socialism, argues Jack Conrad

Our fifth round of Forging Communist Unity talks, on February 23, centred entirely on the programme question, specifically the CPGB’s Draft programme. Myself and Mike Macnair represented the CPGB; Nick Wrack and Ed Potts, TAS; Cat Rylance and Sam Turner the pro-party Prometheus faction. Minutes were taken by Gaby Rubin.

Helpfully, the day before, the TAS reps presented us with their ideas, objections and alternatives in two shortish documents.1 I could therefore open the discussion for the CPGB by countering their considered criticisms and misconceptions. A great advantage when it comes to taking our fusion process forward to the point where we arrive at binding votes.

The first issue I touched upon was length. Our Draft programme totals some 13,000 words (10,700 if you leave aside the introduction and the closing section on the Communist Party). Excessive, according to TAS. Well, ignoring the Communist manifesto (11,400 words), the programmes of classical social democracy were much, much shorter: eg, the Gotha programme, the Erfurt programme, the Programme of the French Workers’ Party, the programme of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

However, I argued, while minimalism was perfectly suitable in the late 19th and early 20th century, that is no longer the case. The passage of history, terrible failures, expanded needs, new challenges, all necessitate more: more subjects, more democratic commitments, more stress on combating bureaucracy. We can no longer expect to be taken at our word, that is for sure. To imagine otherwise would be naive in the extreme.

Longer

This was already the case when the Bolsheviks came to redraft their highly serviceable 1903 programme in 1919. Not only was there the October Revolution and the seizure of state power. There were the horrors of inter-imperialist war, the treachery of official social-democracy, the main goals and problems of the newly created soviet state, the formation of the Communist International and the dangers of pacifism and centrism. All had to be included. Hence, whereas the programmes of classic social democracy were between a few hundred and a few thousand words, the 1919 programme of the Russian Communist Party amounted to 9,100 words. The same can be said of the notes drawn up by Nikolai Bukharin for a draft programme of the Communist International in 1922. That comes in at 6,500 words. Fully fleshed out it would probably easily exceed 13,000 words.

Moreover, our Draft programme is surely obliged to deal with the Soviet Union turning into its opposite in the 1930s and, following that, the collapse of bureaucratic socialism and ‘official communism’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then there are little matters such as the danger of nuclear war and the threat of civilizational collapse brought about by anthropomorphic climate change.

Either way, both myself and comrade Macnair stressed that we in the CPGB have rightly resisted the inevitable tendency to add, add and add again. We want to avoid the prolixity of Britain’s road to socialism (30,500 words).2 Nonetheless, we do not think that 21st century communism can go back to the minimalist programmes of classical social democracy. To do so would be farcical. Hence our approach: as short as possible, as long as necessary.

Accept or agree?

Another, far more important, question where there appears to be a dispute with TAS is over whether Communist Party members are required to ‘accept’ or ‘agree’ with the programme. We take the ‘accept’ approach of classical social democracy, Bolshevism and Comintern as a given. That means, when it comes to this or that programmatic formulation, there can be theoretical and tactical arguments, even differences over principles.

However, while minorities have the right to fight for their viewpoint to be adopted and thereby become the majority, in the meantime, when it comes to agreed actions, they will be expected to unite with the majority and put up with being in a minority. Not a nice position to be in, but better, far better than the indiscipline of minorities resigning in a silly huff or forming yet another stupid sect.

TAS comrades want to begin with an ‘agree’ approach. Without that they fear notorious social-imperialists such as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Anticapitalist Resistance will wheedle their way into our ranks with their ‘self determination for Ukraine’ excuse for promoting what has been, at least from 2014, a Nato proxy war against Russia.

I assured them that we would have not the least trouble in keeping out such rotten elements. Programmatically, they are beyond the pale. However, opportunism arises spontaneously and has to be constantly fought. Unless that happens, yes, there is the danger of a single scratch turning into gangrene. That is why we favour open, sharp and sometimes fierce polemics.

There are real problems when it comes to the TAS 17-point ‘heads of agreement’ which the comrades “consider to be essential ingredients which members of any fused organisation should agree with”. Take point xiv: “Communism is democratic. We reject the idea that what existed in the former Soviet Union and similar states, or that exists today in China or North Korea, was or is in any way communist or a transition to communism. We oppose all forms of dictatorial rule.”

Comrades X, Y and Z disagree.

Comrade X wants the “bold slogan” of “Overthrow the bourgeoisie! Dictatorship of the proletariat!”3 Comrade Y explains: our “ultimate political aim is to surpass the whole state and, thus, democracy too.”4 Communism is not “democratic” because democracy is a form of the state and communism sees the withering away of the state to the point where democracy itself withers away.

Let us allow comrade Z to elaborate a bit: “after the “socialist revolution” the political form of the “state” is “the most complete democracy”. But, says comrade Z, it “never enters the head of any of the opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism” that what we see is the “dying down of itself”, or “withering away” of democracy. “This seems very strange at first sight. But is ‘incomprehensible’ only to those who have not thought about democracy also being a state and, consequently, also disappearing when the state disappears. Revolution alone can ‘abolish’ the bourgeois state. The state in general, ie, the most complete democracy, can only ‘wither away’.”

Comrade Z concludes, like comrade X, they definitely support one form of “dictatorial rule”. “The theory of class struggle, applied by Marx to the question of the state and the socialist revolution, leads as a matter of course to the recognition of the political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, ie, of undivided power directly backed by the armed force of the people.”5

Anyone with the least familiarity with Marxism will instantly recognise that comrade X is, in fact, Karl Marx himself, comrade Y is Frederick Engels and, of course, comrade Z is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. But TAS would keep them out because they disagree with point xiv of their ‘heads of agreement’. And, as an orthodox Marxist, I too would find myself excluded.

And having complained about the length of our Draft programme and listed 17 ‘must agree’ points, the comrades come up with this:

We also believe that a statement in respect of the current inter-imperialist rivalry between the USA and its subordinates and the rising power of China should be part of our programme. Specifically, our position is that we do not take sides in the battles/rivalries, whether economic or military, between rival capitalist/imperialist powers, but point out the need for the working class to impose its own solution. [This position would be supported broadly by other groups, including the RCP, SWP, Counterfire, Soc Alt and maybe some others.]6

For our part, we are against falling for such temptations, ie, discussing current politics in the programme. Why? Because it all too easily becomes instantly dated. The fate of one edition after the other of the British road to socialism. Put to one side the hugely complex and highly contradictory political economy of China and whether and to what degree it can really be described as straightforwardly capitalist. There is always the possibility of shifting geo-strategic alignments. Europe could, for example, make overtures to Beijing in the attempt to end its subordination to the US, there could be a rapprochement between the US and Russia, etc.

No, much better to briefly deal with the past, highlight the inevitability of war under capitalism, but, as we have done in our Draft programme, steer well clear of current politics. Certainly we should not be putting forward programmatic positions because they would be “supported broadly by other groups”. That smacks of diplomacy.

And it is presumably diplomacy that leads the TAS comrades to fight shy of including the fight for extreme democracy under capitalism anywhere in their 17 points. Nothing about abolishing the monarchy, House of Lords, MI5 or the standing army and replacing it with the popular militia. Nothing about the right of Scotland and Wales to self-determination and a federal republic. Nothing about the unity of Ireland. Nothing about free speech. Nothing about the ecological crisis. Nothing about women. Nothing about sexual freedoms. Nothing about free movement and migration. Nothing about religion and the separation of church and state.

Is it that the comrades forgot such vital questions? Or is the absence of high politics designed to appeal to economistic groups such as the RCP, SWP, Counterfire, Soc Alt and maybe some others?

The TAS comrades have an organisational, stagist, approach to programme. Their starting point is not the programme required for the working class to go from the cramped, demeaning, unpromising conditions of today to the conquest of state power. No, it is about thoroughly instrumental organisational steps. I might get them wrong, but they appear to be saying that we should adopt a different minimalist programme - really something like Socialist Worker’s ‘What we stand for’ column - stage by stage during the fusion process, till, that is, we reach the stage of a mass Communist Party, but with the emphasis, especially to begin with, being on agreement: eg, “We see little reason, at this stage, to include anything in the programme which goes beyond what we would expect any communist to agree with.”7

Does this mean a dozen, two dozen programmes? True, with the growth of membership, adding this or that group, room would, thank heaven, be given for ‘acceptance’ and therefore the permissibility of programmatic discussions. But certainly not to begin with.

There is an obvious danger here. The politically backward, those inclined to conservatism and lowest common denominator unity will exercise a veto. This owes more to the consensus politics of petty bourgeois protest campaigns than the politics of Marxism with its tradition of debate, resolutions, amendments and binding majority votes.

If the TAS approach had been adopted by the RSDLP in 1903 the Bundists and Rabocheye Dyelo economists would have decided everything and the 2nd Congress would have been a total fiasco. But, of course, nothing of the kind happened … and because they could not tolerate being in a minority, the Bundists and Rabocheye Dyelo eventually stormed out and gave Lenin and his comrades their majority (Bolsheviks = majorityists).

Compared to our TAS comrades, we advocate a diametrically opposite approach. Our starting point is the programme itself. From the programme we build the organisation. Not the other way round.

The RSDLP really began with the 1903 programme first drafted by Georgi Plekhanov and batted backwards and forwards by him and Lenin before the Iskra group finally presented it to the 2nd congress and its 43 full, voting, delegates gathered in Brussels/London (there were 33 Iskra comrades, five Bundists and two Rabocheye Dyelo delegates). With a couple of amendments the congress adopted the Iskra programme by a thumping majority (there was just one abstention). We shall not deal with the Bolshevik/Menshevik split - suffice to say that both main wings of the party agreed that the rules should begin by stating: “A party member is one who accepts the party’s programme …”8

From solid programmatic foundations the RSDLP went on to become a mass party (yes, albeit with two bitterly opposed, big factions). It was the same, though, with German social democracy, the French Workers’ Party, etc. Programme - not gathering in additional groups, not growing membership figures, not parliamentary representation - came first and foremost.

Hence our Draft programme is both a propaganda weapon of the here and now, and also our road map to the future. As such we expect a fundamental redraft only with the conquest of state power by the working class (a long and possibly winding road which could both see the CPGB assume mass proportions, but also reduced to clandestine, underground, operations carried out by dedicated revolutionary cadres in periods of reaction and, therefore, of severe repression).

Put another way, the programme is about epochs, strategy, essential social laws and transforming the working class into a hegemonic class for itself. Not organisational vicissitudes.

Middle classes

Another area of disagreement involves the necessity of the Communist Party winning over the middle classes as allies (or at least neutralising them). The TAS comrades appear to imagine that the middle classes represent not the least problem. As the Communist Party becomes a real social force they will flock to our banner … even though TAS says that they envisage (forcibly?) expropriating all capitalist concerns immediately, or almost immediately, after the revolution, no matter how tiny or marginal. They plead on behalf of workers employed by small capitalists: why should they remain exploited wage slaves! A strategic blunder of the first order.

There are today some 5.5 million small enterprises in the UK (0‑49 employees).9 Instead of leaving them to the Tories, Reform UK and other far right outfits, we need to champion their interests (within definite limits) as against the interests of big capitalist corporations, the banks and the state machine. Eg, we should aim to split small farmers from the far right and the agro-industrial lobby when it comes to the inheritance tax issue.

The same basic approach applies after the working class assumes political power. The TAS comrades envisage a wonderfully easy hop, skip and jump to full communism and a society without money, wage-labour, exploitation, etc. They brush aside the standard Marxist expectation that between “capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.”10 In other words, there will be a first or lower phase and a second or higher phase of communism. We insist, therefore, that the lower stage is not and cannot be a mode of production. Its essence is movement, change, flux. Neither the law of value nor the law of the plan dominate. Rather the lower stage is the rule of the working class state over capitalism as it is and which ends with the withering away of the state and the realisation, at last, of a society of freely associated producers. Since the late 19th century Marxists have called this, the lower stage of communism, the “socialist commonwealth” or more “commonly” simply “socialism” (the last quote coming from Lenin’s State and revolution).11

Hopefully the TAS comrades are right. The transition to communism will be an almost instant event. But probably they are wrong. Probably badly wrong. Either way we should at least consider the possibility of a drawn out, highly contested, bitterly fought transition from capitalism to communism. A transition during which we would be well advised not to alienate the middle classes either by threatening or actually forcibly expropriating them (every corner shop, every restaurant, every small farm, every local plumbing business). Why? Because the chances are that, firstly, any such move would result in chaos, economic regression and cause widespread consumer discontent; and secondly, that any such move would see the middle classes flocking into the arms of counterrevolution.

Our approach, which is directly dependent on the progress of the world revolution, crucially winning the core centres of capitalism - Europe, North America and Japan - is therefore softly, softly. Encourage voluntary cooperatives, explicitly reject any suggestion of using force, treat the middle classes as potential allies rather than a fifth column. That approach is, of course, outlined in our Draft programme but dismissed by the TAS comrades, who appear to see advanced capitalist economies as only having two classes. Yes, there are two main classes. However, when it comes to political strategy, to ignore or downplay the middle classes is to adopt the sociology of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin and the ‘we are the 99%’ popularism of the fleeting Occupy movement. There is proletarianisation. There is, too, bourgeoisification.

The TAS comrades appeal to the plight of wage-workers in the post-revolution petty bourgeois economy. On day one after the revolution we freely admit that alienated labour will not have been abolished. Nor on day two … or three, either. The working class will have won political power but will not have fully liberated itself. Money, commodity production, wage labour, skills monopolies will continue but simultaneously take on transitionary forms as the class struggle continues, under conditions that now are radically advantageous to the working class. While big capitalist companies will be fully socialised, run democratically, with ever expanding measures of workers’ control over management - such as election and recallability - there will, too, be full trade union rights, social protection, limits on hours, etc, throughout the remaining private sector.

Doubtless the stage will be reached when work is rewarded simply on the basis of hours done. The law of value is therefore being superseded, and the transition towards work being its own reward comes ever closer. But everything depends on the global revolution. We agree, to state the obvious, with the TAS comrades about the “impossibility of socialism in one country”.

However, the idea that this was “not easily envisaged in the early years of social democracy” is demonstrably false.12 Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lenin, Zinoviev and Trotsky all took it as axiomatic … and explicitly said so. Read Principles of communism onwards. National socialism was considered an exotic rightwing aberration amongst those who called themselves Marxists - till Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism (1924 second edition).

We are sure that TAS comrades, along with the pro-party faction of Prometheus, agree with us that socialism is an act of self-liberation by the great mass of the working class for the sake of the great mass of humanity. But for us, a necessary precondition for working class state power is organising the working class into a disciplined political party founded on the solid foundations that, alone, a comprehensive, fully worked out programme can provide.

Though it may appear paradoxical to some, that party is built top-down. As Lenin bluntly explained, doubtless simplifying for the sake of the argument:

We have said that there could not have been social democratic [communist] consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness: ie, the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals.

By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of social democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.13

Lenin had in mind the role of the Emancipation of Labour group founded by Georgi Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch and Pavel Axelrod - members of the “revolutionary socialist intelligentsia” who had gone over from Narodism to Marxism in the early 1880s. They studied, adapted and applied the theory of Marx and Engels to Russian conditions and then brought it to the working class from the outside - the outside in this case not being from Switzerland, where they were exiled, but, as Lenin made clear, from outside the economic struggle between workers and employers.

Economic struggles in and of themselves produce nothing more than trade union consciousness and therefore trade union politics - what Lenin called the “bourgeois politics of the working class”, because trade unionism primarily involves selling, bargaining over the market price of labour-power (a commodity, in principle no different to any other commodity).14

We have devoted some considerable time and effort to drawing up our Draft programme. Not to present others with an ultimatum - an accusation made by the fearful, the ditherers and the plain dishonest. No, our Draft programme comes with the same idea in mind as when the Iskra group commissioned and finally presented the Plekhanov-Lenin draft programme to the RSDLP’s 2nd Congress.

Basis

It is a contribution and, hopefully, it will provide the substantive basis for amendments that the refoundation congress of the CPGB will debate and decide upon. That is, of course, entirely a matter for the assembled delegates. If we have the majority, as was the case with the Iskra comrades, then debating our Draft programme will certainly be one of the first agenda items.

As a long established, authoritative, pro-party centre, we might expect a clear majority. Who knows? That is for the future. But, even without that majority, there are very good reasons for delegates to take our Draft programme as their starting point.

Obviously we need to reject the programme phobia of the SWP, Counterfire, RS21 … and maybe TAS. Not that the rest of the left is much better. The Transitional programme was wrong in 1938, and nowadays just excuses the most abject tailism, economism and sub-reformist politics. The national roads of ‘official communism’, the Scottish Socialist Party, George Galloway’s Workers Party are hopeless. Our Draft programme, by contrast, constitutes the only serious basis for building a mass Communist Party.

Naturally, the Communist Party - organising the advanced part of the working class - reformulates and adjusts the programme when necessary. But in many ways the Communist Party is in itself an outgrowth of the programme. Recruits are attracted to its far-reaching, inspiring, but theoretically well-grounded demands. Members are then trained, steeled, made into mass leaders by the struggle to realise its goals. In that sense the programme is responsible for generating the Communist Party. For certain, the main determination runs not from organisational considerations, but from the programme and its principles to the organisation and its membership.

Form and content

As already explained, our Draft programme is as short and concise as possible. Everything nonessential was deliberately kept out. Passing facts, prime ministers, presidents, the latest round of mass demonstrations, opinion polls on Scottish independence and episodic international alliances and deals have no place in the communist programme. Engels urged exactly that approach: “All that is redundant in a programme weakens it”.15

Our Draft programme, rightly, concentrates on principles and strategy. Particular tactics, theoretical and historical explanations - all that should be dealt with elsewhere: party meetings, articles in our press and on the internet, seminars, pamphlets and books. As we confidently stated back in 1991, it should follow that our programme “will therefore not of necessity need rewriting every couple of years, as with the programmes of the opportunists, let alone go out of date even before they have come off the press, as was the case with the CPB’s version of the BRS”.16

Not that our programme owes anything to holy script - it is not fixed, timeless and inviolate. On the contrary, given a major political rupture - eg, Brexit, the break-up of the UK and its historically unified workers’ movement, the abolition of the monarchy, etc - then various passages in our programme ought to be (and have been, in the case of Brexit) suitably reformulated.

The programme must become the political compass for millions. Again, as argued not a few years back:

Every clause of the programme must be easily assimilated and understood by advanced workers. It must be written in an accessible style, whereby passages and sentences can be used for agitational purposes and even turned into slogans.17

We have sought to learn from the best: eg, the Marx-Engels Manifesto, the Erfurt programme, the first and second programmes of Russia’s social democrats/communists, etc. Of course, we have not mindlessly aped. Conditions in the UK, its history, economic peculiarities and specifics, and, not least, its constitution and class structure must be, and are, fully taken into account. Let me, therefore, briefly describe the structure of our CPGB Draft programme.

There are six sections, each logically leading from the one to the other - form and content being closely connected.

The opening section is a brief preamble, describing the origins of the CPGB and the inspiration provided by the October 1917 revolution. We also, rightly, touch upon the liquidation of the ‘official’ CPGB by its various opportunist leaderships and conclude with the subsequent struggle to reforge the party.

This matters. The CPGB was not just another sect. It organised, for good and bad, key layers and segments of advanced workers. Indeed the CPGB was arguably the highest achievement of the working class movement in Britain. That is why anyone who aspires to build a mass Communist Party would be well advised to adopt the CPGB name that we successfully rescued, took, appropriated, from the Eurocommunist liquidators.

The next section - the real starting point - outlines the main features of the epoch: the epoch of the transition from capitalism, by way of socialism, to communism. Then comes the nature of capitalism in Britain and the consequences of its development. Following on from there we arrive at the economic, social and democratic measures that are needed if the peoples of Britain are to live a full and decent life.

This minimum, or immediate, section of programme is most definitely not an attempt to throw the social weight of the working class into the ‘liberal’ task of completing the bourgeois revolution.18 That happened in 1688. The monarchy, the House of Lords, the established Church of England, the Privy Council, etc, are not feudal relics. They are thoroughly embourgeoisified forms, through which capital rules - bourgeois democracy being, of course, an oxymoron. The only democracy the capitalist class considers ‘natural’ is ‘One share, one vote’. Hence every real democratic advance has been won from below, crucially by the organised working class - in the face of savage opposition from those above. To credit capitalism with democratic rights, such as universal suffrage, free speech and the right to strike, is ahistorical and politically naive to the point of treachery.

Though our minimum programme is technically feasible within the framework of present-day capitalism, in actual fact, its demands can only securely, genuinely, fully, be realised by way of revolution and the Communist Party forming a government. So the minimum programme is not a programme to reform capitalism, so that it matches some entirely bogus liberal ideal. On the contrary, our programme is designed to shift the main focus of the class struggle from the day-to-day economic, to high politics and the question of state power and beyond.

Those who reject the minimum programme, as Rosa Luxemburg did in 1918, disarm the party: “socialism”, she proclaimed, “this is the minimum we are going to secure”.19 In the midst of a revolutionary situation it is doubtless right to raise slogans such as “All power to workers’ and soldiers’ councils”. But, if the revolutionary situation is drowned in blood and becomes a counterrevolutionary situation, what does the party have to say then?

Anyway, from our minimum demands we move on to the character of the British revolution and the positions of the various classes and strata. Marxists, let it be emphasised once again, do not consider non-proletarian classes to be one reactionary mass. Sections of the middle classes can and must be won over. Next, again logically, comes the workers’ government in Britain and the worldwide transition to socialism and communism. Here is our maximum programme. Finally, comes the necessity for all partisans of the working class to unite in a reforged Communist Party.

The essential organisational principles of democracy and unity in action are then stated and we underline in no uncertain terms why the CPGB must combine unity in action with internal democracy and the open expression of differences.

Towards that end let the fusion process continue … we have much to talk about.

  1. ‘A contribution to the Forging Communist Unity process from TAS’ (1,797 words) and E Potts ‘Developing a suitable programme for communist unity’ (3,259 words). Neither are available on the TAS website when last searched (February 26 2025).↩︎

  2. Britain’s road to socialism is the programme of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain. Since the early 1950s the programme of the ‘official’ CPGB was called the British road to socialism. However, be it the British road or Britain’s road they all had to be hurriedly updated. Indeed on not a few occasions they were already outdated even before they came off the printing press. Take the November 1989 version. Its Labour government ‘road to socialism’ was premised on what was supposed to be the “decisively” shifting international balance of class forces. “Socialism” in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and China would allow a peaceful road to national socialism in Britain through the election of Labour, CPB and progressive MPs. Needless to say, when the CPB rewrote its programme in 1992, we find though that the Soviet Union and the “socialist countries” in eastern Europe have been crudely airbrushed out. Predictably, however, the parliamentary cretinism, the popular frontism, the national socialism remained. For a critique of the BRS see my 1991 book Which Road?↩︎

  3. K Marx CW Vol 10 New York NY 1978, p69↩︎

  4. F Engels CW Vol 27 London 1990, p417.↩︎

  5. VI Lenin CW Vol 25 Moscow 1977, p402.↩︎

  6. My emphasis, ‘A contribution to the Forging Communist Unity process from TAS’.↩︎

  7. ‘A contribution to the Forging Communist Unity process from TAS’ point 9.↩︎

  8. www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/rsdlp/1903/rules.htm.↩︎

  9. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2023/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2023-statistical-release.↩︎

  10. K Marx CW Vol 24 London 1989, p95.↩︎

  11. VI Lenin CW Vol 25 Moscow 1977, p472.↩︎

  12. E Potts ‘Developing a suitable programme for communist unity’.↩︎

  13. VI Lenin CW Vol 5, Moscow 1977, pp375-76.↩︎

  14. Ibid p426.↩︎

  15. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p220.↩︎

  16. J Conrad Which road? London 1991, p239.↩︎

  17. Ibid pp235-36.↩︎

  18. The thesis of Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson presented in a series of New Left Review articles beginning in January-February 1964 and subsequently demolished by EP Thompson (The poverty of theory 1978) and Ellen Meiksins Wood (The pristine culture of capitalism 1991).↩︎

  19. M-A Walters (ed) Rosa Luxemburg speaks New York NY 1997, p413.↩︎