29.05.1997

Programmatic confusion in RDG

Given Dave Craig’s relationship with the CPGB, our joint discussions on programme at seminars and the Communist University, it is very surprising to read his letter in the Weekly Worker of May 15. This is supposedly in ‘defence’ of the CPGB’s Communist Manifesto (see Weekly Worker April 3) against criticisms made by John Stone of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (Weekly Worker May 1).

Firstly he claims “the CPGB have neglected to include the demand for workers’ councils and workers’ control in their version of TP1”. TP1 is Dave Craig’s shorthand for ‘transitional programme one’, since his organisation, the Revolutionary Democratic Group, has two of them in its programme. He agrees with John Stone that this is a weakness.

When I read this criticism from John Stone I merely assumed that he was not completely familiar with our organisation or our actual draft programme on which the manifesto is only based, but why Dave Craig wants to repeat the assertion is curious, to say the least. He even goes on to draw the political conclusion that “they are in danger of slipping back into a purely bourgeois democratic minimum”.

Hardly, comrade Craig. The demand for ‘councils of action’ appears in point 3.6 of the draft programme (see Weekly Worker September 21 1995) under immediate demands, which are demands to take the class towards revolution.

To dispel any further confusion here is the section in full:

“In any decisive clash of class against class, new forms of organisation which are higher, more general, more flexible than trade unions emerge. In Russia they have been called soviets, in Germany Räte, in Britain councils of action.

“Democratically embracing and coordinating all who are in struggle, such organisations of struggle have the potential to become the workers’ alternative to the capitalist state. Communists encourage any such development.”

Section 4 (the ‘Character of the revolution’) includes point 4.2 on ‘The socialist constitution’, which, as stated in the draft, is “the culmination, embodiment and continuation of our immediate demands”. In other words it is the transformation of organs of working class struggle into organs of working class power in the achievement of our minimum programme with socialist revolution. The first section of this states that:

“Supreme power in the state will be workers’ councils, composed of delegates who are elected and recallable at any time. These organs will have both executive and legislative functions.”

Since the programme debate is a central one at the moment, it is worth going on to quote section 3.7, which again appears in our immediate demands, following straight after the section on councils of action. It is one which has been criticised by many Trotskyists of different hues. The demand for workers’ militia, they say, is an ultra-leftist slogan at present and can only be raised when workers are already setting them up, it seems.

Our immediate demands are not slogans which we shout at every picket line, but they are inclusive of the very minimum that workers require to organise themselves for democracy, against capitalism, and thus take them towards revolution and on to socialism and communism (our maximum programme). In the immediate they therefore serve as a guide to developing the spontaneous movements of the class and how we mobilise the class in reaction to developments in society. For instance it was notable that we were one of the few organisations to come out overtly against the banning of guns after the Dunblane tragedy and the reactionary crusade that followed.

The section in full reads:

“Communists are against the standing army and for the armed people. This principle will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state. It has to be won by the working class developing its own militia.

“Such a body grows out of the class struggle itself; defending the picket line, mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, fending off fascists, etc.

“As the class struggle intensifies, the conditions are created for the workers to arm themselves and win over sections of the military forces of the capitalist state. Every opportunity must be used to take even tentative steps towards this goal. As the circumstances allow, the working class must equip itself with the most advanced, most destructive weaponry available.

“To facilitate this demand:

1. Rank and file personnel in the state’s armed bodies must be protected from bullying, humiliating treatment and being used against the working class.
2. There must be full trade union and democratic rights, including the right to form bodies such as soldiers’ councils.
3. The privileges of the officer caste must be abolished. Officers must be elected. Workers in uniform must become the allies of the masses in struggle.
4. The people have the right to bear arms and defend themselves.”

Of course no organisation is immune from “slipping back into a purely bourgeois democratic minimum”, but surely Dave Craig, and those Trotskyists who criticise the minimum-maximum approach of the CPGB because it is not Trotsky’s transitional programme, cannot imply that the draft programme has a stageist approach and reformism is written into it. On the other side after all the ultra-leftist accusation chastises us for including the dangerous, crazy idea that workers should have “the right to bear arms” in our minimum programme.

Neither do we concur, as Dave Craig seems to think, on the need for a TP1and TP2. Craig himself falls into the danger of a stageist approach. He seems to think that TP2 demands such as nationalisation would be “ultra-left” in a non-revolutionary situation. Though it is difficult to imagine why on earth we cannot raise the demand for the nationalisation of unprofitable industries, when the bourgeoisie itself nationalised vast amounts of industry when it was in its interests to do so.

At the risk of being churlish (because I know Dave Craig is still in the process of working on a programme document, and ‘The revolutionary democratic road to socialism’ which was published in the Weekly Worker (July 11 1996) was a very rough draft), there are other peculiar anomalies and artificial divides in this rather schematic and over-detailed document.

The TP1 and TP2 divide seems to be purely arbitrary or else based on what Craig thinks is likely to be achieved before the revolution rather than after it. So we have: “The abolition of all private fee paying schools” (point 231 in TP2) alongside: “A workers’ government would be elected by and accountable to the National Assembly” (point 228). “A free, comprehensive national health service, under workers’ control. The abolition of private healthcare” is another demand which apparently cannot be made until we are in a dual power republic. The list goes on.

Most of the demands are immediate demands which can mobilise the class in its struggle against capitalism: whether they are actually implemented before or after the revolution will only be decided by struggle. The rest read like a description of a socialist state, without actually calling it that, because according to Craig’s scheme we cannot talk about socialism or socialist tasks until there has been a world revolution - hence the dual power republic and on to “state capitalism under workers control” (point 227).

In the absence of any mention of socialism in this section or how the national revolution is linked to the international revolution, Craig’s post-revolutionary tasks can read a little like a description of an isolated revolution - and as such it is in danger of becoming a recipe for institutionalising this isolation rather than overcoming it.

This is different from saying that socialism cannot survive in isolation, but that should not prevent us from having a programme for the development of the socialisation of the economy through extending workers’ control. This process of course can only develop fully on an international scale. Both our political and economic tasks are bound up with the progress of world revolution - in a certain sense they are the same thing, or at least become increasingly so, as the extension of democracy begins the process of the withering away of the state.

Finally Craig is also wrong to assert that “I am sure that the CPGB, LCMRCI, and the RDG are in favour of nationalisation of the major capitalist enterprises.” John Stone’s criticism of the supposed absence of this demand may have been well off the mark, but Craig equally has failed to understand the CPGB’s criticism of the nationalisation demand applied in blanket fashion or as the basis on which socialism will be built.

The draft programme explains this view clearly in point 3.4 of our immediate demands on ‘Nationalisation’:

“From the point of view of world revolution, programmes for wholesale nationalisation are today objectively reactionary. The historic task of the working class is to fully socialise the giant transnational corporations, not break them up into inefficient national units. Our starting point is the most advanced achievements of capitalism. Globalised production needs global social control.

“Communists oppose the illusion that nationalisation equates in some way with socialism. There is nothing inherently progressive or socialistic about nationalised industries.

“Under definite circumstances, however, nationalisation serves the interests of the workers. Faced with plans for closure or mass sackings, communists demand that the state - the executive committee of the bourgeoisie - not the workers bear the consequences for failure.”

The section continues with demands related to this.

The left is very circumspect when it is talking about nationalisation, workers’ control and public control, as if they are all the same thing. My view of socialism is certainly not the Britain of the 1945 Labour government. It is of workers being increasingly in control of every aspect of their lives, internationally. The aim of the communist maximum programme is precisely to extend this control so that classes and the state are replaced by “freely associated producers”.

Pulling companies out of a global economy in an attempt to control them nationally through nationalisation cannot advance the development of the economy under workers’ control internationally. Nor is it workers’ control in the factory, let alone of society as a whole. The stage of socialism when production is still controlled through the state, albeit communally in a truly proletarian state with a democratic plan, cannot be developed, let alone superseded, on a national basis.

Clarity on these issues of programme would certainly be useful and I hope both Dave Craig and John Stone will take the opportunity to elaborate their views in this paper.

Helen Ellis