22.08.1996

Rapprochement debate crystallises

At the Communist University ‘96 rapprochement was on the top of the agenda. But there was no diplomatic truce and key areas of disagreement were fought out throughout the school in the context of many different areas of discussion

Gathered in Swansea for a week-long school, communists from many different backgrounds thrashed out important programmatic questions that can take us to revolution, socialism and communism. These centred on concrete questions of the day: from the Socialist Labour Party, Scotland, Trotskyism, Labourism and the Socialist Workers Party to strategic questions, such as the nature of capitalism, revolution, theory and practice and historical questions that have divided our movement, including the nature of the Soviet Union and ‘What is socialism?’

Supporters of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain were joined by members of the Revolutionary Democratic Group, the International Socialist Group, the Socialist Labour Party, the Economic and Philosophic Science Review, the Workers International League, the Trotskyist Unity Group, the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran and a number of comrades from various political backgrounds, including ex-members of the Workers Power group and comrades from Peru and Bolivia. Militant Labour joined the school for the debate on ‘What is socialism?’ and Istvan Mészáros, author of Beyond Capital, opened a discussion around the main thesis of this book.

Comrades from Open Polemic, who recently suspended their membership of the CPGB, were unfortunately not present throughout the school. They did however attend one session to discuss the problems they saw with their membership and the way forward now for communist rapprochement. Given OP’s emphasis on the importance of rapprochement, many expressed regret at their absence from the rest of this live process.

The wide spectrum of comrades involved ensured that all of the debates were heated, but they were serious. All involved were interested in taking us towards correct programmatic conclusions, drawing on lessons of the past and the situation today. Though I would have criticism of some comrades who seemed to be stuck in their dogmatic conclusions of the past, there was no point-scoring involved. A process of collective thinking, of grappling towards a scientific consciousness was developed.

This process should of course be seen in the context of continuing discussions amongst revolutionaries and work in the SLP, but there is no doubt that CU ’96 took those discussions onto a much higher level and began to concretise the process of rapprochement. This encompassed key areas of theory and the practicality of coming together in communist unity in action.

The school covered a lot of ground and the organising committee was well aware that none of the sessions could conclude the debates. The structure was designed rather to open up the questions that need clarifying. These debates must now be vigorously engaged in through the pages of the Weekly Worker and other left journals, as well as in meetings and schools throughout the year. However the point was made by CPGB comrades that there were no areas of disagreement which should preclude organisational unity in the context of open discussion and programmatic clarification. In the working group on ‘programme’ four different drafts were on the table for discussion. The CPGB has a year of London seminars planned on this subject. Discussions on programme would be enriched by organisational unity, since in this way they would be informed by practice in the context of Party, rather than the small-group, sect-like thinking that has infected the revolutionary movement in the past.

Though the individual sessions themselves were too short to fully explore the many shades of differences, certain dominant themes emerged which developed and crystallised throughout the week. Perhaps the most important of these was the revolutionary process and the struggle of socialism and, linked to this, the experience of the Soviet Union.

This debate galvanised around the slogan of a federal republic and the struggle for democracy in the movement towards revolution. It was the comrades from the CPGB and the RDG who were emphasising that the struggle for revolution is the struggle for democracy, the struggle to raise the working class into a ruling class. Revolutionaries must be the best fighters for all democratic demands and the working class become the hegemon of those struggles.

Nobody wants a bourgeois federal republic. The federal republic slogan is raised in the context of a programme for revolution and for the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism and communism. But concrete day-to-day struggles cannot be won by simply posing socialism or communism as the solution. Revolutionaries must take the class as a whole to these conclusions in the fight for democracy in all spheres: women’s rights, environmental issues, working conditions and - yes - constitutional democratic deficits, such as the absence of self-determination for the people of Scotland and Wales.

Many other comrades demanded a slogan for nothing less than a workers’ republic, although some began to argue for Scottish separation. Those arguing against the slogan of a federal republic thought that the RDG envisaged a necessary stage of a bourgeois republic. Part of this confusion arose from the RDG’s slogan of a dual power republic which does suggest something fixed, though of course dual power is intrinsically unstable and transitional.

This debate posed much wider differences amongst all comrades over the process of revolution and the link between the fight for democracy and for socialism. This process of both political and economic transformation was also raised by comrade Mészáros, who made a distinction between capitalism and capital. He characterised the Soviet Union as a ‘post-capitalist’ form of capital and emphasised the centrality of not just overthrowing the capitalist system, but the capital-labour relation which for him continued in a new form in the Soviet Union. The discussion by comrade Mészáros will be presented in more detail in future issues of the paper.

Understanding the experience of the Soviet Union informed many of the debates around our programme for revolution and socialist transition today. Many from Trotskyist backgrounds insisted on the characterisation of the Soviet Union as a workers’ state, though CPGB comrades asked where the political expression of the working class could be said to exist. The only control the workers had was a negative one in the workplace.

This report cannot of course develop these debates and many others, but is merely intended to inform those unable to attend of the basic framework of the discussions, which will take place in much more detail in future issues of the paper.

In the evaluation of the school at the end of the week many welcomed the spirit of comradeship that had infused it. Though many of the debates had been very sharp and at times emotions ran deep, this never stopped the debate continuing informally late into the evening in a partisan and fraternal atmosphere.

The numerous informal discussions were a central part of the school. For revolutionaries who have been working in isolation in many different ways and have developed their ideas in the absence of open debate or in the absence of organisation, this was a major step. Questions as varied as art and culture, women and nationalism were discussed and comrades came together to start to develop their ideas collectively and practically. This is the essence of Marxism as a science and communism as a programme for the liberation of humanity in all its aspects.

This collective organisation was reflected in the culture of the school. With comrades living together for a week a communist culture begins to develop spontaneously and is consciously enhanced.

This was expressed in the deep respect comrades develop for each other, without feeling that this involves the dropping of criticism or argument. Quite the opposite - they develop together. Criticisms were made of the organisation of the school, of the language used by some male comrades that can alienate the minority of female comrades, and of interventions which were perceived as aggressive denunciations. But they were made in a spirit, not of censorship, but of comradeship necessary to cut through bourgeois culture and begin to live the culture of the future.

Lee-Anne Bates