28.08.2025
Make the party now!
Resolution unanimously agreed at the August 24 aggregate of CPGB members and invited supporters
1.Some 800,000 people have signed up to Your Party, otherwise known as the Jeremy Corbyn Party. Even if only a quarter become members, that is a very considerable force. Effectively, what we are seeing is the pro-Palestine movement taking party form - something we communists have long called for and very much welcome.
2. As a mass opposition party - that actively encourages and relies on the self-activity of its members - the JCP gives the left a real chance to fundamentally change things in Britain. The balance of forces can be radically shifted in favour of the working class. Achieving such a positive outcome is, however, only possible if we have bold, genuinely transformative, political goals.
3. At present, too much of the left is mired in narrow-minded conservatism/economism, and/or it is simply fearful of its own shadow. Every organisation, apart from the irredeemably sectarian, has told its members to sign up. Nevertheless, typically, the aim is simply to win the next round of recruits for the confessional sect - that and promoting this, that or the other extraordinarily limited pet project. Eg, the SWP seems to want little more than a loose electoral alliance based on a minimalist set of minimal demands. The SPEW is no better. Though it has put the Tusc coalition on the back burner for the moment, it is still committed to the principle of federalism and the futile aim of a Labour Party mark two. This sees it calling for trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party and affiliate to the JCP. If that happened - though it is highly unlikely - it would be a disaster. Union bloc votes would see the JCP yanked to the right and lead to nothing more than yet another round of demoralisation. Not that we dismiss the Labour Party as a site of struggle. It remains, no matter how attenuated, a bourgeois workers’ party. The JCP should not be seeking an electoral alliance with the Greens (James Schneider has called for joint primaries to choose candidates). Instead, we should seek positive ways to support and challenge the Labour left, not least from within the affiliated trade unions.
4. Others on the left, usually sects of one, see only the negative side of the larger organised left groups. Various devices are thereby lighted upon, or are hatched anew, in the attempt to either keep them out or to neutralise them once they are in. Some, like Tony Greenstein, have called for bans and proscriptions. That would mean a witch-hunt from day one. The same effectively applies to Anticapitalist Resistance and calls for ‘speech controls’ to prevent the ‘ultra-left’ raising ‘crazy’ demands such as a popular militia or the communist programme for revolutionary change. Another guarantee, if implemented, of disaster.
5. With the same essential view in mind, Zarah Sultana has called for an OMOV Zoomocracy, where generally passive members vote on chosen issues from the comfort of their homes. Meanwhile, some like Ed Griffiths and Max Shanly recommend sortition: ie, decision-making by randomly chosen juries. Any such arrangements, if institutionalised, would serve to lower the political culture of the JCP to the average and put effective political power into the hands of a self-appointed elite, who get to choose or frame the questions. Once again, the result would be a disaster - this time of the kind that wrecked Momentum (note, at the prompting of John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn).
6. We oppose all attempts to silence or marginalise the left in the JCP. We favour a culture of open, honest and robust debate. No compromise on this can be permitted. We also reject ‘codes of conduct’, which - no matter the reasons for establishing them - restrict free speech and are almost inevitably used to silence those with minority views on important political questions.
7. Our party requires democratic structures at all levels. Branches must be free to elect their own committees and delegates to regional and national conferences. A democratic party requires the right to form temporary or permanent factions and political platforms. Our officers at all levels should be elected, accountable and recallable by the relevant party committee. The same applies to our councillors and MPs. They should represent and be accountable to the party, not their conscience or their atomised constituents. They should be paid no more than the average wage of a skilled worker, with the rest of their salary going to the party. The party leader/s, required to comply with electoral law, should be elected by the party leadership and only have a symbolic and nominal role. We oppose bonapartist leaders and leadership cults.
8. We do not rely on a shadowy clique at the top doing the ‘right thing’. Nor should we wait till November and a formal launch and an easily manipulated hybrid rally/conference. At a local level, comrades are rightly forming branches. However, things should not stop there. We say form regional committees, form a national committee. Choose election candidates. Establish online and print publications. Make the party now!
9. While organisational structures are important, politics are vital.
10. We agree with, and will seek to work closely with, those who want a complete break with Labourism, broad frontism and all varieties of reformism. Historically, not only has Labourism predictably failed to produce socialism: the halfway houses, such as Die Linke, Podemos, Syriza and Respect, have proved next to useless too. The same has to be said of Corbynism and Corbyn’s capitulationist leadership of the Labour Party between 2015 and 2020. Given escalating trade wars, the climate crisis, the bloodbath in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza and the danger of the US-China conflict culminating in a generalised nuclear exchange, humanity faces a stark choice: barbarism or socialism.
11. Therefore, we openly seek to transform the JCP into a Communist Party. Fundamentally that means equipping the JCP with a Marxist minimum-maximum programme. The minimum programme is the maximum we can achieve under capitalist conditions and the minimum we require if the JCP is to enter or form a government; eg, abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords, a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales, Irish unity, replace the standing army with a popular militia, oppose all imperialist wars, alliances and occupations, proportional representation, go beyond carbon neutral, free movement of labour, work at full trade union rates of pay, abolish anti-trade union laws, health care for all, genuine equality for women, end discrimination against sexual minorities. With state power, albeit in the form of a semi-state, secured, the maximum programme of transitioning to full communism and the principle of ‘from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs’ begins. Something which, of course, has to be international in scope. There can be no local or national socialism.
12. Towards that end we shall promote political education: official/unofficial, local/national, online/face-to-face. We shall combine this approach with drawing sharp lines of political demarcation. Immediately, that means establishing a firm line against those who favour, or who are soft on, Zionism. In terms of basic political economy, Israel is a genocidal project. The same goes for those who side with our own ruling class when it comes to the Ukraine war. Such a process of differentiation brings clarity and strength.