13.11.1997

Sober assessment, yes. Liquidationism, no

There are differences on more than the September 11 referendum

The November 9 aggregate of Communist Party members formally concerned itself with one issue alone. Scotland and an evaluation of the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination. Despite that, debate ranged far wider. Differences might have appeared, to begin with at least, only those of shade or nuance. Yet what was revealed was something more substantial. Differences which go beyond an assessment of the boycott campaign; differences which, unless countered and positively resolved, will put our organisation on a very dangerous course. Without mincing words, right liquidationism raised its head.

The aggregate was presented with ‘Draft theses on the results of the September 11 referendum’ unanimously agreed by the Provisional Central Committee. Our purpose was fourfold. First, show that a majority of Party members reject the claims and assertions of those who would have it that the PCC “overestimated” the movement for self-determination in Scotland and made “predictions” of “political strikes, meetings and demonstrations, occupations and civil disobedience”. Second, emphasise the correctness of the call for a mass boycott of Blair’s rigged referendum against our left nationalist, Trotskyite, pro-Labour and other critics. Thirdly, underline our estimation that during the course of the referendum campaign the CPGB and CGSD made a marginal or peripheral - but nonetheless real - impact on the masses in Scotland. Four, by implication, we thereby have the possibility of maintaining our politics on an all-Scotland basis if we raise ourselves to do what is necessary.

There were 11 amendments submitted in the name of the Scottish Committee of the CPGB. Around them grouped a backward and fluctuating minority. The essential intent of the amendments were twofold. Firstly, remove all internal polemical references from the PCC’s theses. Secondly, water down or completely eliminate all reference to the mass impact of the CPGB and CGSD.

Let me deal with the first category - removing all internal polemical references. It was proposed to delete the sentence: “Nevertheless there exists a tendency towards pessimism and confusion that ought to be countered and overcome” (thesis two).  Thesis three was to be deleted in its entirety. Thesis 16 was to be robbed of its polemical content.

Why should the comrades want to do this? It had nothing to do with fear about unnecessarily handing our opponents weapons. The comrades were not trying to protect the organisation as a whole in an honest but misguided fashion. Rather their prime concern seems to be to shield themselves and perceived allies. All manner of arguments were used. However, a common thread emerged in a co-ordinated attack on robust internal polemics per se.

Though it was not specifically used in the theses, phrases such as “political cretinism” were cited as gratuitous and personal insults. Nothing more and nothing less. Such idioms and modes of expression should have no place in our communist culture or should at the very least be viewed with disdain. The term ‘right liquidationism’ also fell into this class of ‘bad’ words that should presumably be “guarded against and frowned upon as a deviation from comradely norms of debate”. So the comrades would decree.

Frankly here we have a recipe for dumbing down, for liquidating, not improving our communist culture. Instead of communist polemic, what is being recommended as a model is an amalgam of a hole-in-the-wall debating society, the saccharine calm of a Quaker gathering, along with an unhealthy dose of US-style political correctness.

Personally I consider such an approach the antithesis of Marxism. Communist organisations are serious about their tasks and serious about fighting for the truth. Just like complements, flattery and praise, insults do - and must have - a legitimate place and role to play in that fight. The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, etc certainly contain a rich vein of invective - usually directed far more against fellow comrades than enemies. When we find comrades doing or saying something damnable, dishonest or dangerous, it is more than correct - it is a duty - to show them and others the error of their ways. On occasion that will involve using the sharpest, most outspoken and brutal terms. Such heightened and violent language grabs attention and demands an answer.

Marx famously lambasted the ‘poverty’ of Proudhon and the ‘state socialism’ of Lassalle. Engels mercilessly tore into Herr - not comrade - Eugene Dühring - a supporter of the German SDP. Lenin ridiculed Bogdanov and Bukharin - on occasions among his closest lieutenants. Luxemburg for her part fought Lenin’s mentor, Karl Kautsky, many years before Lenin broke with him, and consistently attacked his - that is, Lenin’s - position on the right of nations to self-determination. As for Trotsky, he cut his teeth in polemic against the ‘Jacobin’ Lenin. This is the communist culture we seek to emulate and build upon. There is nothing prissy, nothing precious, nothing mealy-mouthed about it. On the contrary it is full-blooded and no-holds-barred.

The fact of the matter is that within our press, cells, seminars and aggregates personal insults are very rare, to the point of being almost entirely absent. I for one keep my insults 100% political. No one I know of cowers in silence for fear of humiliation or derision. There is moreover an established and ongoing practice of active engagement with different - in my opinion incorrect - ideas. At the same time there is a spirit of utmost toleration towards their proponents on a personal level. After all we regularly have present at London seminars comrades, friends and opponents from all manner of traditions - eg, the semi-Labourite left, the Stalinite, the state capitalist and the Trotskyite schools of thought. They are always given a fair and full hearing. Quite rightly we engage in sustained argument with them. That can, does and should entail fierce exchanges. What applies to external relations also applies to internal relations.

It must be pointed out, however, that our comrades are not being entirely consistent. Jack Conrad openly stands condemned of everything from “adventurism” and “bombastic tirades” to “flippant optimism”. Meanwhile the majority of members are themselves accused of being “theoretically and programmatically at sea” and acting “on faith”. Let me stress that while strenuously rejecting these calumnies I have not the least problem with the use of such ‘insulting’ terminology ... though comrades are, of course, morally obliged to back up these attacks with hard evidence.

That is exactly what we have done in reply to enraged critics who insist for all they are worth in terms of huff and puff that the scientific formulation ‘national socialism’ - used to characterise the programme of Scottish Militant Labour, the Socialist Party, the SLP, etc - is an unwarranted slur and akin to associating or equating such organisations with Nazism. We have patently shown in reply that the term has a long pedigree. That there is every reason not to confine it exclusively to Hitlerism. Certainly - as István Mészáros argues - Stalin and Labourism both had programmes for “national socialism”. It is amazing therefore to hear comrades in Scotland referring to the Weekly Worker in general and the use of the formulation ‘national socialism’ as being “insulting, rude and sneering” or a “diversion”.

We can now turn to the second category of amendments - those which sought to water down or completely eliminate all reference to the mass impact of the CPGB and CGSD. On the surface there appears to be no dispute among us. The CPGB and CGSD had a mass impact. Comrade Linda Addison correctly writes of the “impact ... on layers of the working class”. In another document Lee-Anne Bates boldly and authoritatively states that a “certain portion” of the “radical abstentions” which were seen in the four major urban centres - Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen and Edinburgh - “would have been aware of, and influenced by our active boycott campaign”. Comrades in Scotland too speak in glowing terms about our “exemplary campaign” and “our impact on the masses”.

Neither Jack Conrad nor the PCC, supposes that our campaign set the popular agenda for the September 11 referendum. Nor has it been said that all abstentions and spoilt ballot papers should be claimed by us. As stated in the theses, such an attempt would be “ridiculous”. That did not stop Linda Addison in the Weekly Worker putting those very words in the mouth of Jack Conrad - a libel that has yet to be retracted (October 9 1997). Nevertheless if, as all comrades formally agree, we had an objective mass impact, should we not artistically illustrate and highlight this material fact? That is what thesis 19 does when it refers to our impact in terms of “tens of thousands of abstentions and thousands of spoilt ballot papers”. Given that there was an estimated 1,574,589 abstentions, this is saying something very important for us as an organisation and our immediate tasks. But to claim such an impact - ie, one or two percent of those who abstained, is hardly to engage in hyperbole, as we are charged. If the ‘yes, yes’ campaign had narrowly lost we can be sure that Alan McCombes, Phil Stott and other SML comrades would have pointed the finger of blame at us - you “will be regarded for years and even decades to come as a pro-unionist collaborator”, comrade McCombes warned us in May  (Scottish Socialist Voice May 9 1997).

Our minority willingly admitted that we had a mass, albeit marginal or peripheral, impact. Yet at the same time they contradictorily did everything they could to deny it. Comrades list off with the greatest assurance the role played by the May 1 general election victory for Labour, the sleaze and corruption in Glasgow, the confusion of people faced with a double question ballot paper and the fact that colleges were closed and therefore many students were away. But despite being pressed time and time again, the idea that the mass impact of our campaign can be described in terms of tens of thousands - in percentage terms nothing more than we regularly gain standing on a full communist manifesto in elections - was condemned as a fantasy that would moreover make us a laughing stock on the left.

So to save themselves from embarrassment, perhaps to save themselves from the tasks that follow on from having a mass - yes, marginal or peripheral - impact, the comrades insisted that it was “impossible to assess the extent of our impact in terms of non-voters or spoilt ballot papers”. If that is really the case, not least given that our only agitational slogan up to and including September 11 was ‘Boycott Blair’s rigged referendum’, what the comrades are effectively saying is that we should not claim to have had any mass impact whatsoever. And that is exactly what their amendments would have done and were probably designed to achieve.

Hence they wanted to remove the second and third sentences of thesis 16 - which is, I suppose, also polemical. They presumably consider it the purest adventurism to “claim some of those who refused to vote on September 11”. This is indeed foolish, not to say illogical. Politicians of all hues and varieties have an interest in putting the best possible spin on the results they achieve - including Lenin’s Bolsheviks and we CPGBers. What then can one make of those who will concede that we ran “an exemplary campaign” and consequently had a “mass impact” but want to remove all reference to it? Instead the comrades wanted to shift the whole emphasis of our achievement from the mass to the left, in particular SML. No one denies that in terms of sales, discussions and contacts there was a tangible impact on SML during the referendum campaign. But we did more ... that at least is what the majority agreed at the November 9 aggregate. That is why, “Given our resources and the collapse of almost the entire revolutionary left into the camp of Scotland Forward”, the CGSD “has to be considered a resounding success” (thesis 20).

Evidently an air of pessimism infects the views of some comrades. Such an assessment is greatly reinforced if we take into account other minority claims and proposals that surfaced at the aggregate. A number of comrades insisted that when the Scottish Socialist Alliance majority voted to back Scotland Forward was no longer possible - irrespective of any change of circumstances - to actually achieve a mass active boycott of the rigged referendum. The working class was supposedly totally pacified and could never be roused by our fighting message, no matter what happened in the run-up to September 11.

Such defeatism is put forward under the banner of coming to grips with the period of reaction. In my view, apart from being wise after the event, the comrades make an elementary mistake. The collapse of the revolutionary left, in particular the collapse of the SSA, increased our responsibilities. It did not make a revival of latent working class and national militancy an impossibility. Hundreds of thousands in Scotland - including those who ended up voting ‘yes, yes’ - viewed Blair’s parliament as nothing more than a sop. Under the right conditions even the smallest organisation can articulate and move such a mass. Hands off Russia! in 1920 is a splendid example. Certainly not to fight is to guarantee failure and to become self-fulfilling and self-defeating. Pessimism breeds inaction and fatalism.

Obviously the main content of our campaigning work up to September 11 was propagandist. Who suggests otherwise? Nevertheless that propaganda could have connected with some event, some scandal, some outburst, some accident, and thereby sparked off the conditions which allowed us to shift a gear upwards in order to agitate around specific actions - that is, other than not voting on September 11.

Among our minority there are those who appear to believe that the working class has been smashed. That we live in a period of profound counterrevolution, not reaction of special type. Hence we have on the table for the next Party aggregate in December the rightist and liquidationist proposal to close down the Weekly Worker and return to something like the fortnightly we were producing in the 1980s. Inevitably, though monstrously, this is done in the name of improving our Marxist knowledge and theory. In truth it is an example not of countering the effect of the period of reaction we are living through, but succumbing to it.

If individual comrades want to lessen their commitment, if they want a quieter life in order to pursue a career or to rest, that is their right. They can resign from Party membership - that would be bad. They can ask for absence of leave or negotiate less onerous responsibilities. That would be better. But what they should not do is to include the whole organisation in their retreat.

There is a clear Party majority and a solid and confident leadership. We will succumb neither to despair nor pessimism. I know all who voted for the minority will now soberly reassess their position. I am sure they will ponder the consequences of their proposals. Let us continue our comradely debate. I have every respect for all the comrades in the minority and every reason to hope that they will soon be reunited with the majority

Jack Conrad