17.10.1996

First stage of communist rapprochement

Towards a revolutionary democratic communist tendency the RDG (faction of the SWP) gives its assessment of rapprochement

1. Historically advanced sections of the British working class movement embraced different ideological trends, including revolutionary democratic (eg, Chartism), bureaucratic (eg, Labourism) and anarchistic (eg, syndicalism).

2. Marx and Engels laid the ideological foundations for revolutionary working class politics, combining the ideas of revolutionary democracy with the aim of communism, and placing these ideas on a scientific basis.

3. The early CPGB, founded in 1920 through a process of communist rapprochement, represented the revolutionary part of the British working class. But with the rise of Stalinism, the Party came under the hegemony of anarchistic (eg, third-period leftism) and bureaucratic (eg, popular frontism) politics.

4. The British road to socialism confirmed the CPGB as a party of middle class radicalism based on the ideology of bureaucratic Stalinism and its adaptation to the parliamentary road (later to become Eurocommunism)

5. In 1991 the old bankrupt CPGB was liquidated. Today the communist movement is fragmented into many organisations including the Socialist Workers Party, Militant Labour, Socialist Organiser, the Communist Party of Britain, Workers Power, the CPGB (PCC), the Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press and News Line), the RDG, the International Socialist Group, the Revolutionary Worker Tendency, Open Polemic and Red Action, etc. There is no revolutionary democratic Communist Party.

6. The communist movement is dominated by the SWP (syndicalist tendency) and ML (Labourite tendency). Neither of these organisations has the correct ideological or programmatic foundations for building a new Communist Party. A revolutionary democratic Communist Party cannot be built out of the growth in the membership of these organisations.

7. There is no immediate prospect of launching a new Communist Party in the UK. However the process of communist rapprochement, which played such an important role in the foundations of the CPGB, is part of the process which can move us in that direction.

The call for communist rapprochement by the CPGB(PCC) and the work done to bring this about is a definite step in the right direction.

8. The process of communist rapprochement is as yet only in its earliest stage. Our task is to define this stage correctly in order to act effectively.

9. The first stage of communist rapprochement is the struggle to create a revolutionary democratic communist tendency. This is likely to involve only a minority of the communist movement.

10. A revolutionary democratic communist tendency is not a Communist Party. It would be or have the potential to become the main alternative to the other two main tendencies within the communist movement, the SWP and ML.

11. A revolutionary democratic communist tendency will be organised on the basis of democratic centralism with the full freedom for factions to express their views internally and publicly.

12. One tendency (uniting as many factions as necessary) will define itself in terms of the theory and practice of revolutionary working class democracy and communism. It will not define itself in terms of adherence to any particular historic leader (eg, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin). Individual members or factions will be free to define themselves in whatever way they want.

13. The second stage of communist rapprochement will be characterised by the fight for communist unity between the three main tendencies. The revolutionary democratic communist tendency will fight for communist unity, for the unification of all tendencies into a single Communist Party, drawing on the experience of the unification of the CPGB in 1920.

14. However, the fight for a united Communist Party should not be considered as some diplomatic truce with Labourite, syndicalist, centrist and ultra-left politics. On the contrary, there can be no united Communist Party without a hard fight against all forms of bureaucratic and anarchistic ideology. Only by defeating these ideas will it be possible to create a strong, united Communist Party.