30.07.1998

Taking sides

Party notes

The delay in the publication of the letters from comrades Mary Ward and Nick Clarke provoked a small flurry of controversy from some around our organisation. Jim Higgins - the ex-industrial organiser of the International Socialists - tells us in this issue that we were being “cynical” (see Letters). Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group informed us - ironically, in the pages of this paper - that deferring publication in this way blew a “big hole in the policy of ‘openness’” (Weekly Worker May 28). Even Nick Long - a comrade whose name is less than synonymous with an above-board approach to politics - felt qualified to tick us off for ‘suppressing’ the letters.

As we showed last week when we finally reproduced these sad little notes, our organisation had nothing to fear from them politically. They speak for themselves, unfortunately. We delayed publication to allow the preparation of a substantial reply and to create the space for some calm reflection on the part of our ex-comrades. As I underlined in last week’s paper, beneath all the trivial complaints and reproaches, the political issue of substance raised was that of liquidationism. I think it is incumbent on those who have been so quick to accuse our Party of political censorship to indicate whether they stand politically with those whose actions implicitly suggest that this organisation be wound up.

A philistine counter-charge thrown back against us over the years from a variety of liquidators has been that we conflate the future reforged Communist Party with our current small group. This confusion produces a sort of organisation dementia in us, where we “[elevate] democratic centralism into a fetish - inappropriately organising [our] cadres as ‘professional revolutionaries’ on a cell basis - a state of affairs which smacks of nothing less than wish-fulfilling voluntarism” (International Socialist Group Weekly Worker September 26 1996). Thus, comrade Craig hints at a similar criticism when he writes that I had a “pragmatic” approach to printing the Ward and Clarke letters, that I believe we should “only [print] what … will help the Party (ie, the CPGB)” (Weekly Worker July 16).

I have already denounced this “even-handedness” between forces fighting for the Party and those that have deserted it, and demanded that comrades in effect “take a side” (Weekly Worker July 23). But there is clearly more to be said.

The defining task that this organisation sets itself, our “central aim” emblazoned at the head of every ‘What we fight for’ column, is to “reforge the Communist Party of Great Britain” (my emphasis). Puerile charges against us that we believe ourselves to be ‘the Party’ are hardly worth answering. Our Party was liquidated by the opportunists.

Yet we continue to regard ourselves as Party members and our structures as Party committees. The leadership of this organisation originated as a faction of the CPGB in 1981. We claim a line of continuity with our Party throughout its history, an organic relationship we are proud of. Genuine communists were not excused their responsibilities to their Party because of the wrecking activities of the Euros or Morning Star splitters.

A lifeless, static and fixed-category approach to the question of the fight for Party reproduces strikingly similar objections to those that Lenin encountered in his battle against the liquidators. The arch-liquidator Petresov mocked Lenin’s pretensions to ‘pro-Partyism’ by sarcastically asking, “Can there exist in sober reality, and not merely as the figment of a diseased imagination, a school of thought that advocates liquidating what has ceased to be an organic whole?” He compared the fight for Partyism being waged by the Bolsheviks and elements of the Mensheviks as “playing with toy soldiers in the face of tragedy” (Ascher The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution pp76-77).

Formally, the man was irrefutably correct, of course. Did not Zinoviev subsequently write that during “this hard period” of reaction, that “the party as such did not exist”, it had “disintegrated into tiny individual circles” (G Zinoviev History of the Bolshevik Party p165)? So Petresov was correct then. Wasn’t he?

The fight for Party is the key question facing communists. There should be no equivocation, no ‘balanced’ attitude between a communist collective dedicated to that fight on the one hand, and individual deserters of the fight on the other. I suggest again that those comrades who - through sectarian pettiness or lack of political guts - have constituted themselves as the attorneys for trivial political backwardness should take a stand with the Party, against liquidationism.

Mark Fischer
national organiser