24.09.1998

Party aggregate

The September 13 aggregate of the Communist Party began discussions that will feed into the production of our Perspectives ’99 document. Two items were agendaed - one on forthcoming elections next year and the other on work in the Socialist Alliances. These were uncontentious and quickly dealt with.

The afternoon session saw more controversy. Three resolutions were submitted by Dave Craig, leading member of the Revolutionary Democratic Group. Strong opposition was voiced by some comrades to this. They angrily suggested that the RDG had “no right” to submit resolutions to a CPGB members’ aggregate.

Other comrades agreed that the aggregate was indeed under no obligation to take the resolutions, but that it was positive that the RDG - or individual RDGers, perhaps - were now submitting such items to a Party meeting. This should be looked on as a healthy development in the process of rapprochement. The aggregate had the right to consider anything put to it and in this spirit, it was correct to debate the items. This position won a big majority against a procedural motion to disallow the resolutions.

Strangely, the aggregate not only debated these resolutions against the opposition of a Party minority, but also against the wishes of the RDG proposer. He announced that he intended to withdraw all three resolutions as the discussion around them would be “premature”.

Again, the aggregate disagreed. Material submitted becomes its collective property. The fate of these resolutions was now out of the hands of the original drafter in that sense. Thus, while it noted the opposition of the RDG comrade to us engaging in the debate, the majority again decided that a discussion would be fruitful.

Resolution 1 was on the right of reply, proposing elaborate procedures involving Provisional Central Committee statements if replies were not published, then the right of reply to these leadership statements (and so on, presumably).

The meeting was puzzled by the need for this resolution. We regularly print highly critical pieces from members and others. The bureaucratic monstrosity proposed by comrade Craig would do nothing to enhance this. Fear was expressed that this resolution was in fact a part of the comrade’s continuing brief for certain ex-members. The resolution was amended to restate the importance we attach to openness, but to reiterate that the contents of this paper are assessed politically by the editor and Party leadership and they have the right and duty to edit.

The meeting sharply criticised the original Craig drafts for resolutions 2 and 3. It was proposed that amongst other things, the aggregate must ‘uphold’ and ‘defend’ the idea that the task of “Marxist science” was to “uncover the economic and social basis of the Soviet ruling class” (resolution 3) and to ‘recognise’ that “it was possible and necessary to rebuild the dictatorship of the proletariat” in the USSR towards the end of 1920 (resolution 2).

This organisation is certainly not averse to passing resolutions on historically specific questions, but the USSR is the subject of ongoing debate, controversy and study. Indeed, this particular RDG comrade is fully aware of this, given his full participation in our recent Communist University, which had the USSR as a recurring theme. Thus, his stated reason for tabling the resolutions - to register the ‘stage’ of the debate - was superfluous.

By a large majority, the meeting agreed to amend these two resolutions to emphasise the open-ended nature of the study we are engaged in and also to underline our commitment to an inclusive Partyism. The resolutions were altered to reaffirm that “there is a place in the Communist Party for revolutionaries who believe” that there was a definite Soviet ruling class or for those who have a particular slant on events in the early 1920s around Kronstadt or the banning of factions in the Bolshevik Party.

The amended resolutions were passed by a big majority, with a minority voting against them, not because of political disagreements, but seemingly out of a lingering sentiment to ‘punish’ the RDGer for putting them forward in the first place.

Ian Mahoney