14.11.1996

Reading history backwards

Phil Watson reviews Democratic Rhondda: politics and society 1885-1951 by Chris Williams (University of Wales Press 1996, pp304)

Readable works of academic history are rather thin on the ground at the moment. Chris Williams’ study of the politics of the Rhondda valley between 1885 and 1951 is therefore a relative breath of fresh air, proving that the production of accessible and empirically sound historical works is possible in a period where university history departments have increasingly developed a disastrous obsession with the arcane narratives of the ‘postmodern’.

For readers of the Weekly Worker it will perhaps be Williams’ analysis of the Rhondda CPGB that will prove the most engaging part of this book. From the middle of the 1930s the Rhondda communists posed a vigorous challenge to the Labour Party, steadily building up the Party’s parliamentary support (particularly in the Rhondda East constituency, where Harry Pollitt was narrowly defeated by the Labour candidate, Mainwaring, in 1945), its representation in local government and an awesome reputation for its campaigning ability around struggles such as the means test and Spanish aid.

Williams carefully accounts for the relative success of the CPGB, showing that by the mid-1930s the Rhondda Labour Party began to lose political ground as a result of the allegations of corruption and nepotism aimed at the Labour group on the Rhondda urban district council and the adoption of fiscal measures which alienated many working class voters. This was coupled with the definite attractions of the Rhondda Communist Party’s distinctive political culture and its “brave, bold and imaginative leadership” (p170). Williams is therefore careful to avoid the mistake of reducing communist success to external factors (unemployment in the valley; Labour corruption), in that the CPGB is portrayed as a dynamic and resourceful agent in the politics of the Rhondda. There are however sufficient grounds for a searching critique of this work.

Williams offers us no real basis for a qualitative assessment of the CPGB’s revolutionary character in a period of drastic tactical change for the Party. The changeover from the ‘Third Period’ to the united front and then to the popular front in the mid-1930s are presented to us as pragmatic shifts in orientation. The author follows Hywel Francis in admitting that during this period,

“Communist campaigns were not revolutionary but were essentially defensive, in that they concerned themselves with stopping the advance of fascism and with both protesting at the levels of unemployment and mitigating its worst effects” (p186).

Of course, the intrinsic problem with popular frontism was not that these campaigns were defensive; it was the fashion in which the revolutionary goals of the CPGB (along with the other parties in the world communist movement) were subordinated to the Soviet Union’s foreign policy of attempting to construct pacts with British and French imperialism. Vague assertions that the “Communist Party could be perceived as pure repository of revolutionary hopes, as the ideal vehicle for the conduct of the struggle against fascism, war and unemployment” (p169), only serve to confuse and disarm the reader further.

The fundamental point of this work is that the author characterises the Labour Party as “the political expression of modern Rhondda and more generally that of South Wales” (p6). Therefore the task is to restore “the Labour Party to its rightful place in the history of modern Wales” (p7). This is not just a case of giving priority to the Labour Party over the CPGB, in that Labourism - seen as the basic expression of a class conscious society - is also judged to have formed a point of dependence for the Communist Party:

“No ideological division can be ruled through South Walian history to place syndicalists and communists on one side and Labour on the other ... This was a common history shared out amongst a multiplicity of strategies. Fascinating and vital though syndicalism and communism were, it was the strength of the Labour polity that enabled them to flourish” (p209).

This is to misunderstand that the formation of the Communist Party represented the highest stage of political praxis for the working class in Britain thus far, and one that was initially conceived of as a revolutionary challenge to Labourism. Again, it is Williams’ lack of criteria for judging qualitatively the political development of the Communist Party that is the problem. It is certainly the case that the popular front period did indeed see the growth of a social democratic cancer inside the ranks of the CPGB, which eventually became politically codified in the 1950s with the adoption of the revisionist British road to socialism which - with its liquidationist emphasis upon the Labour Party being the leading force in the establishment of socialism - marked a qualitative stage in the Party’s degeneration.

However, this would be to read history backwards. It also ignores the subjective hostility between the communists and Labour in South Wales, something that becomes immediately apparent when talking to activists of the post-war period. Portraying the communists in the Rhondda as a dynamic force who were able to take advantage of the relative alienation of working class people from the local Labour Party but then ultimately making this dependent on Labourism seems a curious equation. In the final reckoning, these failures of judgement can be laid at the door of the author’s theoretical approach.

The perspective that has been chosen for this work is one of ‘open Marxism’. This is seen to acknowledge the “common reference points it has with non-Marxist histories, and particularly with post-structuralist modes of historical enquiry” (p7). It is unclear what is implicitly meant by such statements, but Williams later enlists Gareth Stedman Jones in stating that language/discourse (which is seen as the analytical tool by post-structuralist historians) is part of social (human) being (p9).

However, the major problem is with the ‘model’ of Marxism that is used to inform this study. Williams essentially resorts to the parody of Marxism represented by the various protagonists in the interminable base/superstructure debate of years gone by, insisting upon the ‘relative autonomy of the political’. The author is at pains to point out that this concept

“should not be misunderstood as an attempt to cut politics free of its social and economic context in an overreaction to crude, deterministic readings of Marxist historical materialism ... In this formulation the economic ‘base’ sets limits and creates circumstances within which ‘superstructural’ activity (politics, ideology - the ‘making’ of history) can be decisive” (p7-8).

There is no notion in this laboured narrative of the Marxist idea of capitalist society being a totality of social relations. If capitalism is viewed as a set of autonomous (relatively or otherwise) social spheres (economic, politics, science, etc), all that is being reproduced is the alienated form in which capitalism ‘presents itself’ to the proletariat.

Capitalism appears ahistorical and unmovable for the majority of the time, precisely because it appears as an autonomous entity, positioned externally in terms of social relations. In the guise of anti-determinism and the ‘relative autonomy of the political’, Williams in fact reproduces the theoretical foundations of determinism. For example, limiting the ‘making’ of history to ‘superstructural’ activity leaves the subject no grounds for an assault upon the ‘base’ of capitalism. By fracturing the totality of capitalism’s existence, parts of the object become naturalised and the subject becomes itself fractured and de-activated. The unity of subject and object has been utterly shattered.

It is this deterministic methodological backdrop that explains why the author is unable to satisfactorily come to terms with the communist challenge in the Rhondda. In the political scenario presented to us, it is the dominance of the Labour Party that is seen to define and determine the relative success of the CPGB. Williams’ empirical desire to place the Labour Party in the centre of South Walian history is sound, but his flawed historical method means the Communist Party is left in a state of subjectivity (albeit a dynamic subjectivity) - its objectivity in the landscape of Rhondda neutered.

Phil Watson