25.09.2025

Paved with good intentions

Informed by a pamphlet written by the Pacific Collective (Marxist-Leninist), Jaques de Fouw explains how to build communist unity through a watered down minimal programme and opening up to opportunist groups

Recently I was able to attend the Communist University 2025 in London. I thank the CPGB for their effort in hosting this event, which had interesting talks and lectures, even in light of the late change in the event’s theme and content. The originally intended theme was, of course, the fusion talks between the CPGB, Talking About Socialism (TAS) and the Prometheus Unity Faction (PUF), which sadly failed in the period leading up to the university.

I accompanied the members of the Dutch group, Communist Platform (CP), which is aligned with the CPGB ideologically. Although I myself am not part of CP, I have been involved in the Revolutionaire Socialistische Partij (RSP, formerly de Socialisten) and ROOD (youth wing of the RSP) in the Netherlands since shortly before its involuntary birth as an independent party. As such I hope to provide a perspective from a sympathetic, but external, ideological standpoint on the questions of fusion, communist unity and party-building.

Since our inception, the RSP has, under the ideological leadership of CP, tried to implement the ideas set out by Mike Macnair in his book, Revolutionary strategy. Our unity project has led to some success, but has also revealed new and unforeseen problems. I hope I can provide some insights I have obtained from these experiences and the subsequent research I have done for new ways forward. Some of these lessons are, in my opinion, also applicable in the current situation in the UK.

To start, Macnair and the CPGB are correct in their identification of splitting over the smallest things as a major issue in the Marxist left - something which has to be solved, if there is to be any hope of a unified communist force. To this end, Macnair proposes unity on the basis of agreement or acceptance of a party programme as the basis of unity, rejecting splits over other positions. In this, he correctly found a step in the right direction in advocating a sort of unity based in a more basic strategic and tactical agreement, rather than enforcing theoretical unity on a great many or all topics, which contrasts with what many contemporary Trotskyist and Marxist-Leninist groups tend to do.

It is regrettable that the fusion project between the CPGB, TAS and PUF failed, especially in the light of the recent developments of the new Corbyn-Sultana party, which has the potential to dislodge the increasingly unpopular Tory-Labour political status quo. All three communist organisations, as well as other groups present in the talks, have expressed the intention of becoming politically active within this new party, and to try and perform political interventions. Tight or tighter cooperation would certainly help all of the groups in making a bigger impact. The talks between these three groups’ leaderships and their attempt at forming a new party programme on which to base their unity did not succeed, though they all seem to express the sentiment that they would be willing to try again if a new approach can be found.

In the Netherlands we have tried and to some extent succeeded in implementing this idea of a broader unity, based on a programme, by forming our new unity project on acceptance of the party programme, open faction rights and a rejection of theoretical unity. In my experience, programmatic unity and open faction rights has not been enough to stop the very issue it sought to prevent. We have experienced several minor splits with those with whom we sought to unify, and unity in action has not materialised in any meaningful capacity either.

To try and understand our situation and find a way forward, I have searched for and read old literature from western communists in the mid to late 20th century, who were already largely dealing with similar fragmentation and party-building difficulties. Amongst these, I found the book, From circles to party, by the Pacific Collective (1979) particularly insightful. This book highly informs my current thinking on party forming, party functioning and how to build agreement and unity among communists. It does this by fully deconstructing, and then reconstructing, these core concepts from the ground up.

I think their lessons are sorely needed to underpin our future attempts forward, and to this end I have written a 40-page summary article which makes the book more approachable and easier to understand for a modern (and inexperienced) audience, and which connects the main topics to the current situation in the western left, with a specific section dedicated to Macnair. I will apply a few of the lessons from this book to the failed fusion of our British comrades, and I hope that those who are interested will take the time to read my article on my blog (jaquesdefouw.wordpress.com), and/or the original on marxists.org.

Ukraine example

Macnair was correct in seeking unity on a more limited set of points, but a more fundamental understanding of theoretical unity and democratic centralism, and how to get to them, is needed and is missing in our parties and our current approach. The party programme itself is a form of theoretical unity. In fact, many things within it have an implicit element of theoretical unity, despite us not being necessarily aware of it. The party programme is merely the easiest case to identify. Despite our rejection of ‘theoretical unity’ in favour of ‘democratic centralism’, theoretical unity exists in some capacity in everything a political party does. Any resolution our parties adopt, any position we take, and collective action we agree to and enforce using democratic centralism, has an element of theoretical unity in it.

Let us use an example from the Netherlands: our position on the war in Ukraine. The RSP adopted a resolution on the war declaring it to be an inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and the west. Subsequently, a Trotskyist organisation - Socialistische Alternatieve Politiek (SAP), part of the Fourth International - which was active within the RSP, split from it. Why? It had adopted the view that Ukraine was fighting a war for national self-determination, and as such needed to be supported militarily. Now, the rationale, following the ideas of Macnair and CP, is that this is merely one position, and you can disagree on it: you just have to advocate and defend the agreed party line to the outside world, while you can continue to discuss it internally - democratic centralism. The rationale is that you should simply try to convince others of your position, using your faction rights and right to publish.

A nice idea, but it is clear that it is not working. People are not staying in organisations operating on this basis, despite them having more freedom of opinion than most classic Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist parties. This is because these people are forced to promote and openly defend the official position - one they clearly disagree with, one which has far-reaching tactical implications for practical work. If you say that you agree with the ‘inter-imperialist’ position, it logically follows that the party should take part in protests, strikes and direct action against any efforts by our own government(s) to fuel their side of the war. However, if you agree with the ‘self-determination’ position, it follows that you ought to form a sort of national front with your national bourgeoisie, or some temporary alliance, in order to defend the Ukrainians and their state. With the RSP adopting the position of the inter-imperialist conflict by majority vote, it mandated all members to engage in ideological - but, more importantly, practical - political work on the basis of this position.

Following the formula found in Macnair’s work and engaged in by both CP and the CPGB, we would expect the Trotskyist SAP to remain in the organisation, subject themselves to the majority decision through democratic centralism, enact the decisions, and meanwhile use their rights to fight for their point of view. Instead of this, they left. Why did they choose to leave? And was this good or bad? If our goal is to have unity among communists, how can we reconcile this with these kinds of splits? Why would this be a valid reason to split, while other reasons are not? But if we say that it was not a valid reason, we have to accept that the split still happened. Are we really going to delude ourselves by clinging to what we wish reality was, as opposed to what the practical results of our own approach are?

With the goal of communist unity in mind, there is no real difference between enforcing theoretical unity on a position, then purging those who do not fall in line, with adopting a strategically and tactically far-reaching, rather fundamental position, enforcing compliance in all the practical work that follows from it, and having a ‘natural’ split follow as a result. This framework is clearly not working, and is not giving us a method towards unity that works, so what are we doing wrong?

One of the main insights the book provides is that having splits or purges on political grounds - ie, enforcing theoretical unity - is not necessarily bad. They can be a good thing if applied correctly. How do we determine how and when to apply this principle? The authors of From circles to party point out that there are two types of positions: those which have been proved in practice; or through very thorough, political statistical research. These positions are discussed and established in highly publicised, thorough, easy to understand polemics, reports and statistical research, such that any communist who is honest in their convictions has had the ability to follow the topic to such a degree that denying it would be like denying the earth is round, denying it is a betrayal of the working class. And then there are those positions which have not been proved in that manner.

Theoretical unity can and should only be enforced on this first category of positions during our time of widespread ideological immaturity and confusion. Once a position is proved beyond any doubt and has been shown to all comrades in such a comprehensive manner, it must be enforced as theoretical unity. Some things can already be determined to be demonstrated as irrefutable in this way. At the time of writing, it is a betrayal of humanity to still support Zionism. Everyone on the left has been able to see, without a shadow of a doubt, the genocidal horrors inflicted on the Palestinians. This must be a point of theoretical unity, and disagreement with this is grounds for expulsion from any communist, socialist and Marxist party, since coherent collective action cannot be taken without this common understanding of reality.

But can it be said that all communists have been able to see, without a shadow of a doubt, that the war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist war? Has there been definitive thorough statistical proof of the imperialist nature of Russia, by Lenin’s definitions and others? And has this information been shown to all communists, especially those in our own organisations, in a comprehensive manner? Has it been shown, in a comprehensive manner, irrefutably, that support for Ukraine by the west is a proxy for imperialist goals? Has the nature of the Ukrainian state been demonstrated well enough? Do the people in our organisations even know what Lenin wrote on imperialism? I do not think so. Why else would there be such vast differences in the interpretation of this war among communists worldwide? Surely we must do better than just roll out the old ‘they are revisionists’ or ‘they are opportunists’ card to explain away the fact that astronomical numbers of communists disagree with our perspective. Even our own communists have not been able to truly understand this topic.

Yet despite all this, the RSP forced this position onto its organisation through majority vote. And subsequently a wing of our young organisation left, and ties with prominent peace movement figures got severed.

No different?

What we did is no different from the sectarianism we seek to escape from. Adoption of this position was enforcing implicit theoretical unity on the topic of the Ukraine war, due to its implications for practical work. It was no abstract theoretical position of no consequence. Nor was it a democratic centralist agreement of secondary nature: ie, implementational details within a larger ideologically coherent strategy, which can be accepted by the minority as a compromise or on the prospect of disproving the majority opinion in practice. It was no small detail which could simply be accepted in the face of broad strategic and tactical agreement. It was, like many of the things we do, an unconscious enforcement of theoretical unity of a position which has not been proven to our own movement and our own communists.

The RSP currently has a very narrow base of theoretical unity - a very narrow base on which we can build collective practical work. If we take the lack of engagement with the party programme and the open opposition to the programme’s content and form itself as a prominent tendency, we must say that our only basis of unity are a few negative positions: We oppose capitalism. We oppose theoretical unity. We oppose Nato. We oppose Zionism. We are not the Socialist Party.

Consequently, we can see that the only real successes the RSP and its youth wing have are in collective action on this basis. An anti-Nato campaign during the summit in the Hague. A protest for re-socialisation of public transport. Protests against Zionism and ‘for Palestine’. Other attempts on different topics have not yielded large-scale collective effort on the part of its membership. The lack of conscious effort to build true, organic unity, through proving - in research, theory and practice - positions and analyses, is holding back the organisation from taking further steps. At the same time, (unconscious) premature enforcement of theoretical unity is what is driving away our own members.

Which brings us back to the UK. Jack Conrad mentioned during one of his talks or comments that he wonders why comrades seem to be able to cooperate fine in a broad-front organisation with other groups, but unity as communists in a party does not seem to work out. This insight about theoretical unity explains precisely why. Macnair was most of the way there, when he pointed out that a more limited unity programme could be the way forward. What distinguishes communist parties from broad fronts is the level of (implicit) theoretical unity. Were TAS, the PUF and the CPGB to cooperate within the Corbyn-Sultana party as a broad front, it would suffice to outline a short tactical agreement.

To list just a few possibilities: 1. Push for democratic structures, so that Corbyn cannot wield the bureaucracy against the members. 2. Push for factional rights to protect the ability of communists to operate within it. 3. Collectively make and enact ideological proposals on topics which help to progress the general politics of the party towards anti-capitalism and away from social democracy.

These could be points of unity in a broad front in the Corbyn-Sultana party. Your theoretical unity would be around agreement on anti-capitalism, anti-bureaucracy and faction rights.

But a full blown Communist Party necessarily has a higher degree of implicit theoretical unity than a broad front. For a fully functioning communist (vanguard) party that is capable of taking power in the UK or elsewhere in the world, you need an analysis of the USSR, of China, of the weak points of capitalism, and many more topics. We do not currently have any agreement on that whatsoever among communists. Most communists, especially those born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, have not been able to sufficiently engage in depth with these topics. Dare I say, I do not think there is any definitely proved position on most things which are of strategic and tactical importance to the communist movement.

But what do we do? We enforce positions on these topics anyway within our organisations. Even when we try to build fusion projects. Based on my very limited insight into the talks between the CPGB, TAS and PUF, it seems that one of the factors behind the failed talks was the fact that some positions were non-negotiable, which made forming a common programme impossible.

Two of the topics of disagreement between TAS and the CPGB were the nature of the transition between capitalism and communism (TAS taking a classical Trotskyist position on socialism vs communism, and the CPGB taking a more traditional Marxist-Leninist position) and the class character of the UK - Jack Conrad took the position of the UK having a definite middle class of well-to-do wage labourers, among which barristers (lawyers, not those who work in a bar - a necessary clarification for me and most of the Dutch comrades!) were specifically controversial, in addition to small shopkeepers. TAS seemed not to align with this view fully.

These are both excellent examples of premature enforcement of theoretical unity. The transition from capitalism to communism is, quite frankly, a long way off. The exact nature of the speed, nature and institutional character of this transition are impossible to determine right now. No Marxist, communist, socialist or degenerated workers’ state (or whatever else you want to call it) is a model for the transition of a highly developed imperialist country to communism. The nature of this transition was not clear ahead of time in Russia either, and many of the characteristics of what happened lie in how the proletarian and self-organised proletarian political structures developed at the time in the run-up to the revolution.

This topic, while interesting and of importance, is not something which should prevent unity now, because it has little to no impact on any of the practical work of communists in the west. The true way forward on that topic can only be found by extensive collective research and then testing it out in practice. Macnair correctly pointed out that unity of communists needs to be on a narrower basis, and this subject is at this moment simply not one of the points on which communists need or can have unity. As such, it cannot be enforced through theoretical unity in a party programme at this time.

The exact class nature of the UK is similarly not a topic on which theoretical unity can be enforced. Much more statistical research needs to be done to clearly map out which segments of the population fall into particular jobs and categories. Perhaps Jack Conrad has already conducted this research, but, if not, a full statistical analysis of the class composition of an entire country is a difficult task which should be undertaken by all communists together.

Then, with this irrefutable statistical data in hand, we need to transform it into insight. Do barristers actually respond positively to the ideas which Jack Conrad says they might sympathise with? Are small business owners indeed charmed by the proposed ideas to win them over? These things can only be found out by testing out slogans, researching responses, and in depth reporting. So, as we cannot enforce theoretical unity on this point yet, it should not be in a party programme meant to serve as a basis of the unity of all Marxists.

Real unity

This research, these tests, this building of revolutionary theory can best be done if all communists join up to do it collectively. And it is only worth doing if all communists are able and obliged to engage with the results of the research, of the trials and errors.

I would once more like to highlight the point Tina Becker made about opening up the editorial board of the Weekly Worker, so that it may serve as the organising organ of communists within the Corbyn-Sultana party. This idea - or some other collective organ open to and run by the many Marxist organisations active in this field - is exactly what can elevate the work of communists from uncoordinated, bickering cliques into a more cohesive force. Marxists will want to and be forced to engage with both this organ and members of other organisations and their ideas.

By focussing this organ on the topics which constitute obstacles for the Marxists in that moment, real unity through real experience can be built, and it will additionally provide a place for new leadership to develop the skills it needs to lead a larger party, as well as cultivate the trust among Marxists needed for those enacting the coordination and mental labour in their stead, so they may do more practical work.

While a united Communist Party is the ultimate goal - the ultimate tool for the proletariat - we must face reality and see that such levels of unity are not yet possible. We should seek not to think merely in terms of ‘broad front’ versus ‘full-blown party’, as there are many more forms and levels of possible unity in-between.

I hope this insight can serve and inspire some of you. If this way of thinking resonates or interests you, I hope you will take the time to read my full summary on my website (jaquesdefouw.wordpress.com), and perhaps after that the full book, From circles to party, on marxists.org.