20.08.1998
Communist University ’98
Party notes
This year’s Communist University was a real political success for our organisation. Over 60 comrades attended this important annual Communist Party school. Limited space stops me from going into detail, but let me take the opportunity to thank all those who took part in the event, in particular the speakers from outside our organisation who enlivened the proceedings immeasurably.
Continually, we returned to the pivotal question of the USSR. Readers will know that before the school Steve Riley from Manchester CPGB - articulating the fears of other comrades - had taken up the cudgels against what could be broadly identified as the view of the Party majority. The comrade suggested that “in a rush to wash our hands of inconvenient associations” most comrades - with Jack Conrad at the head of the pack - were engaged in the “debunking and rejection of all the progressive character of the Soviet Union from 1928 onwards” (Weekly Worker July 30).
Communist University began the exploration of this difference, with the Manchester comrades leaving the school at the end of the week determined to deepen their theoretical understanding of this question - a task posed to all of us, of course. This may lead them - as individuals or as a group - to a convergence with the present Party majority; it may take them further away. However, in contrast to the characteristic fears expressed by a comrade from a guest Trotskyist group, this process does not signify some ‘pre-split’ scenario. The debate on this thorny question - sharp and discourteous as it was on occasion - has helped to bond our ranks. Whatever side comrades took, they are aware that there is only one organisation on the British left that could conduct such a fundamental discussion openly, in front of friend and opponent alike.
In other words, the open expression of this important difference was a living manifestation of the spirit of Partyism, a word and associated concept liable to bring some on the sect-strewn left out in a rash. No comrade left the school with the view that our organisation should be cleaved apart along theoretical lines.
In general, the standard of interventions from comrades was high, the debates interesting. All comrades contributed and learned. More than that however, the school presented our organisation with its real theoretical and programmatic task for the coming years. This is a struggle that must be joined and won if workers are to rise above the politics of a slave class, to become a potential ruling class worthy of humanity.
In a variety of different forms, comrades were faced throughout the school with the struggle against economism. This is the near universal method of the British revolutionary left, a degenerate form of ‘working class politics’ that transforms the proletariat into a mere appendage of bourgeois democracy.
In this century - dominated as it has been by working class defeats - the magnesium flash of 1917 illuminated everything, both behind and ahead of it. It showed in practice the dead end of the mechanical politics of the Kautskyite Second International; they were a product of the compromise with the labour bureaucracy, a caste with interests inimical to those of the broad mass of workers. Later, judged in the harsh light of counterrevolution, we can see that the ‘official communism’ of the Soviet bureaucracy represented a dialectical negation of Marxism, the opposite of 1917.
The degeneration of the revolution, and the decline into ideological obfuscation this engendered in the ‘official’ world communist movement, has had a material effect on the working class. The degradation of the politics of our class from its 1917-23 apex, when it won the position of democratic hegemon of contemporary world society, down to today’s sorry nadir is the story of the 20th century. Politically, our class has ceased to exist.
Inevitably, this ruinous process produced its dissenters and opponents. The most prominent of these - Trotskyism and its various critical children - had (for the most part) an honourable tradition. Yet in the aftermath of the implosions of 1991, it has become increasingly clear much of the source of its vigour sprang from its oppositional character. It was against Stalinism. But left to its own devices in the aftermath of the collapse of Eastern Europe, the USSR and the world political movement it spawned, its manifest inadequacies are being ruthlessly exposed. Prominent amongst these is economism.
Thus, apart from the lessons of the USSR, I believe the other dominant theme of our school this year was the confrontation between our Leninist politics and those of the overwhelming majority of the left. These unconsciously separate the struggle of the working class to become a class for itself from the revolutionary fight for democracy. Thus, it is clear that during the course of exploring the relationship between democracy and the fight for workers’ power, we will not simply draw lessons about, for example, self-determination for Scotland, or where the demand for the abolition of the monarchy should appear in our programme. This most fundamental question will also inform our understanding of USSR and the nature of its degeneration.
In the view of the leadership of our Party, this problem has been sharply delineated over the past few years or so, although it has been implicitly present in our critique of the left since the origins of our group. To begin this task in earnest, to start to give it more conscious, programmatic expression, we have decided to organise a weekend school under the banner of ‘Against economism’ in November of this year to coincide with our celebrations of the Russian Revolution. Details are still provisional, but the event is likely to be in London over the weekend of November 7-8. Contact Party centre for more details.
Once again, let me extend thanks to all participants in this year’s CU for making it one of the most politically successful we have organised.
Mark Fischer
national organiser