19.12.1996

Continuity and discipline

Party notes

The Communist Party will soon be adopting its perspectives document for the coming year. As I have written in previous columns, an important element of our work for 1997 must focus on the continuity of our organisation - its press, its financial structures and, crucially, its cadre. The period of reaction we operate in is still characterised by disintegration, fraying and liquidation on the revolutionary left. No organisation is immune to this.

Thus, I have suggested that to a certain extent we must “look after our people” during the next 12 months (Weekly Worker November 16). At the same time, we have underlined that this “in no way implies a slackening off of the pace of work, a lowering of required financial or other commitments”. The continuity we require is at the high levels of discipline and activity that have always characterised our organisation and that have made it probably the most effective group for its size on the revolutionary left.

It is quite evident that this will entail a political struggle in our organisation. Over the last six months or so, we have witnessed an unravelling around the edges of the Party. This is reflected, for example, in unauthorised absences from Party events, cell meetings and agreed actions. We have seen comrades casually breaking agreed voting instructions in non-Party forums. Comrades are violating the discipline of the Party in booking themselves time away, then informing the organisation, rather than seeking permission in the first place.

Comrades, all of this nonsense must stop.

I believe this drift reflects two things. First, the corrosive effects of this hard period on individual communist cadre. Second, the fact that much of the Party’s work at present rubs us up against the Socialist Labour Party, a social democratic organisation characterised by the traditional British political sloppiness and lack of commitment. But, comrades, we are in business to make people in the SLP more like communists, not to allow communists in the SLP to become more like Labourites.

The fourth conference of the Leninists of the CPGB in 1989 laid down the basic approach of our organisation to membership and its requirements - stipulations that still apply today. Membership means “being active in a cell, regular payment of dues and adherence to all the decisions of the organisation” (The Leninist December 231989). Furthermore, the basic requirements of our discipline mean that “no member has the right to move job or district without permission. Members can secure leave of absence in case of sickness or necessary travel because of job or other commitments.”

Our aim is to develop professional revolutionaries, whatever particular bourgeois job a comrade has to undertake in order to survive. Characteristic of a professional revolutionary is that they are “ready to go wherever the organisation sends them, do whatever the organisation asks - family considerations are taken into account but are not decisive” (ibid).

Of course, the discipline of our organisation is not created by blood-curdling resolutions or barked orders. Communist discipline is an auto-reflex of comrades whose consciousness is characterised by the ability to marry revolutionary theory with the revolutionary practice that flows from it.

Furthermore, communist discipline cannot be created around a leadership that has lost the trust of the membership. All comrades must be confident that all the decisions taken by the leadership of our organisation are motivated by the imperatives of our collective, communist struggle. Decisions that appear to be driven by short-term, opportunist calculation or clique solidarity cannot draw the membership into genuine communist work, activated by genuine communist discipline.

Seriously addressing the deterioration in discipline amongst elements of the membership therefore means looking at this question politically, rather than technically. This is an important issue for us over the coming months, particularly as we see opportunities for growth open before us. We wish to expand as a Bolshevik organisation, comrades. Any other approach would be positively harmful to the workers’ movement.

Mark Fischer
national organiser