12.09.1996

Transitional forms?

Party notes

On Sunday September 8, a leading Open Polemic comrade addressed a Communist Party London seminar on the question of ‘Open Polemic and the programme’. The comrade has done us a service in opening up an important area of debate - that of democratic centralism, Party discipline and the form of organisation appropriate to this primitive stage of the reforging of the Communist Party.

Inevitably, much of the discussion revolved around the details of OP’s so-called “representative entry” into the CP and its subsequent “suspension” of this. At the core of the comrade’s argument was the idea that democratic centralism was a manifestly inappropriate form of organisation for the current stage of the rapprochement process. Fundamentally,

“It ... raises the question as to whether the process of communist rapprochement can succeed within an established, vanguardist organisation without ... a transitional form of political organisation being put into place” (Open Polemic broadsheet No5).

For OP, this “transitional form” is a ‘Communist Rapprochement Committee’ consisting of the organisations currently discussing together in the pages of the Weekly Worker and moving closer to organisational unity in the CPGB. The distinctive feature of this committee - the property that marks its “transitional” nature - would be that all participants would “have the unquestioned right not to participate in majority actions with which they have particular, principled disagreements” (Ibid).

This is to avoid the painful experience of OP supporters in the Communist Party, where it was “demanded” of them “that they participate in all discussion and decision taking and abide by all majority decisions” (Ibid, emphasis in original).

This position may have a certain resonance with some of the organisations involved in the process of communist rapprochement. While the idea of the revolutionary unity on the basis of Partyism has a certain intellectual attraction, the hard practical measures that this may involve clearly wobbles people. Readers should be reminded that the ‘particular, principled disagreement’ that sent Open Polemic heading for the hills was our annual fundraising drive and the minimum requirements made of members during it.

Of course, the CPGB recognises the need for flexibility during this fragile beginning to principled communist unity. We are prepared to discuss a variety of forms of organisation around the Party for comrades from other political traditions. However, in principle we will fight first and foremost for these comrades to become members of the CP, under the discipline of the organisation with the same rights and duties as all other members.

The notion that, as the Party does not exist, democratic centralism and revolutionary levels of discipline should not apply in effect is a call for the liquidation of our organisation, in order in some way to aid ‘communist rapprochement’.

Zinoviev - in his History of the Bolshevik Party - cites periods where this organisation ceased to exist. For example, during the years of Stolypin’s counterrevolution (1907-09), he suggests that “we can say quite unhesitatingly that ... the Party as such did not exist: it had disintegrated into tiny individual circles ...” (p165). Is it being suggested that in hindsight we should say that Lenin’s polemic against Martov’s definition of a Party member had been superseded by events? Was it wrong for the Bolsheviks to continue to build the Party as an organisation composed of professional revolutionaries, comrades who participated as members of a Party organisation, subject to the same discipline, rights and duties as all other members? Should they have adopted a “transitional form” motivated by consensus democracy and loose organisational affiliations?

This would simply be shamefaced Menshevism.

Comrades must draw conclusions from their implicit positions. It must be pointed out practically how the suspension of the Weekly Worker, the disintegration of the Communist Party into disparate circles, our practical abstention from elections and political intervention in initiatives such as the Socialist Labour Party would aid the process of communist rapprochement.

It is not ‘rude’ or ‘insensitive’ to point out that all the organisations who find this ‘transitional form’ argument attractive have qualitatively lower levels of discipline and organisational work than the Communist Party. We have encountered this argument in different forms many times before. Indeed, the fight against it has been one of the defining elements of our organisation. This is not a case of narrow organisational bloody-mindedness. Without this struggle, communist rapprochement - a real process around concrete organisational and political forms - would simply not be on the agenda of any section of the workers’ movement.

This is a fundamental argument we will return to many times over the coming period.

Mark Fischer
national organiser