29.10.1998

Trotskyist critique

Edited version of the analysis by Ian Donovan of the Draft Programme of the CPGB

The grouping known as the Communist Party of Great Britain, despite its small size, is one of the most subjectively revolutionary currents on the left today. It was founded at the beginning of the 1980s by a small collective of leftist militants from the Stalinist tradition. The Weekly Worker has played quite an influential role in promoting political debate on the British left. However, while the CPGB has been opening up to political debate with those claiming the tradition of Trotskyism, at the same time there are disturbing signs that it also is beginning to move in a rightward direction. The apparent adoption by the majority of the CPGB of an essentially ‘third-campist’ view of the former Soviet bloc states, denying that these states in any way represented gains for the working class, is a step away from revolutionary Marxism.

However, the CPGBtendency is very different from Eurocommunism, and in fact represented a subjectively revolutionary split away from the most anti-revolutionary aspects of Stalinism. Rather, it is the case that, despite their subjective revolution-ism, there are concepts deeply embedded in the political consciousness and understanding of the CPGB cadres that are in an immediate sense derived from Stalinism. Because of their Stalinist training, ‘socialism’/‘democracy’-related questions are an Achilles heel that can despite the best of intentions act as a draw to the right.

The CPGB has many times spoken of the need for a revolutionary programme, but in practice its politics have been so riven by contradictions and flux that it has been unable to elaborate a document on which it can unambiguously stand. However, that is not to say that it has not made a serious attempt to do so. In 1995 it published a quite lengthy document titled Draft Programme, which according to the introduction was prepared by

“40 seminars covering virtually every aspect of the revolutionary programme. Beginning on January 6 1991, the series was concluded just under 12 months later on December 8 1991. In all 20 comrades gave submissions.”

Such efforts to elaborate a revolutionary programme should be taken seriously, especially since the document it produced contains much that is healthy in intention, despite a great deal of confusion.

In the preamble the authors give the following outline:

“The first section outlines the main features of the epoch, the epoch of the transition from capitalism to communism. Then comes the nature of capitalism in Britain and the consequences of its development. Following on from here are the immediate economic and political measures which are required if the peoples of Britain are to live a full and decent life in the here and now. Such a minimum programme is, admittedly, technically feasible within the confines of present-day advanced capitalism. In actual fact, though, it can only be genuinely realised by way of insurrection.”

The last two sentences provide an introduction to the fundamental confusions in the programme as a whole. These are, as will be shown in this critique, related to the CPGB’s confusions on even more fundamental issues such as the nature of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The CPGB seems to be unable to make up its mind whether its “minimum programme” really is a minimum programme of reforms under capitalism, or whether it is a transitional programme aimed at providing a bridge from ‘bread and butter’ reforms to the overthrow of capitalism itself. The introduction states:

“From these radical foundations the character of the British revolution and the position of the various classes and strata can be presented. Next, again logically, comes the workers’ government in Britain and the worldwide transition to communism. Here is the maximum programme of the communists. Finally the inescapable need for all partisans of the working class to unite in the Communist Party itself is dealt with. Our essential organisational principles are stated and show in no uncertain terms why the Communist Party is the most powerful weapon available to the working class.”

Despite the obvious subjective revolutionism of these sentences, a similar confusion manifests itself. The workers’ government in Britain, which is the culmination of that part of the communist programme which guides the struggle for working class state power against the current capitalist status quo, is placed in the same maximum part of the programme as the “worldwide transition to communism”. In reality, the latter certainly belongs to that part of the programme (the maximum) which guides communists after the establishment of the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas the former belongs, again, in the transitional programme as its crowning demand. Behind these differences of placement, as will be shown later, lie fundamental misconceptions about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the road to socialism, and indeed what socialism is.

Section 1 - Our epoch

There is little, if anything wrong with this section of the document dealing with the nature of the world economy, the danger of war under capitalism, the economic contradictions of capitalism, the need for a genuinely international struggle for socialism, and for a struggle against all opportunism and sectionalism in the world working class.

Section 2 - Capitalism in Britain

Again, this section is pretty much unexceptionable. In fact an accurate sketch of the history of British capitalism and the rise and decline of Britain’s imperial power.

Section 3 - Immediate demands

This section contains the germ of the fundamental confusions that mar this programme. It begins well by outlining the need for communist leadership of the struggles of workers and the oppressed, and states correctly that the working class movement must “consciously oppose every violation of democracy and example of discrimination” and “defend every oppressed minority and elevate itself to a ruling class by winning the battle for democracy”. It introduces their programme of immediate demands thus:

“The demands we communists put forward are based on what the masses need if they are to live any sort of a decent life in Britain. They are not based on what the capitalist system says it can afford. Our intention is to provide a plan of action and at the same time make the workers aware of their power to refashion society so that it serves human interests. The formulation of our demands thereby connects today’s conditions and consciousness to the aim of revolution and the establishment of socialism.”

This, though the authors do not seem to know it, is a pretty accurate description of the purpose of a transitional programme: that is, to provide a bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution, to paraphrase Trotsky. In this, it seems somewhat at odds with the section in the introduction that describes this part as a “minimum” programme, as well as the title of the section itself: ie, “Immediate demands”.

3.1. Working conditions and wage workers

This section raises a whole list of demands for the reduction of the working week to a tolerable level for all workers, for equal pay for all, for the abolition of compulsory overtime, for a minimum net wage, for six weeks’ paid holiday, for proper training, for the proper regulation of child labour, for full trade union rights, etc. All these are unexceptionable as reforms, and there are no transitional demands raised here, which makes it entirely consistent with the description of this section of the programme as a minimum programme. Such demands are entirely achievable under a reformed capitalism, though of course, like all such reforms, they would be open to being reversed.

3.2. Migrant workers

This section is basically a series of supportable, though at times too minimal, demands for increased democratic rights, including the right to speak and be educated in one’s own language. The demand for the right to become citizens with full rights after three months’ residence is too minimal: revolutionaries should go further than this and demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants and their families from day one.

Other than that, the statement that “Communists are for the free movement of people and against all measures preventing them from entering or leaving countries” is too categorical. A workers’ state, for instance, might have good reason for limiting the ability of some types of skilled people, of whatever ethnic group, from leaving.

3.3. The Unemployed

Once again, this section contains a list of supportable, if minimal, trade union demands. However, what is glaringly absent from this programme supposedly dealing with unemployment, is any demand(s) raised directly at abolishing unemployment!

For instance, there is no demand for a sliding scale of working hours: that is, for the reduction of the working hours of employed workers without loss of pay, so that unemployed workers can be taken on. Such a demand strikes right at the heart of capitalist profitability, and hence points the way towards the need to abolish the capitalist system itself. The absence of this key transitional demand is a serious flaw, and appears to imply an acceptance of capitalist mass unemployment and a failure to see the potential of this question. For a tendency that continually attacks other leftists for being allegedly ‘economistic’, this omission in favour of a mere series of reforms is itself a piece of pure economism.

3.4. Nationalisation

This section is utterly self-contradictory. It begins:

“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.”

It is of course true that many states that have considerable degrees of state ownership are in fact still capitalist states, and have nothing whatsoever to do with socialism. But from this it does not follow that the dictatorship of the proletariat is even possible without the expropriation of transnational companies. For a workers’ state to condemn as “reactionary” the expropriation (“nationalisation”) of the property of transnational companies would be to commit economic and political suicide, as their economic power would inevitably be the prime means of subverting the workers’ state. Indeed, such a commitment would tend to negate the class character of the workers’ state itself. That state would inevitably find itself, in the event of any ‘time lag’ between the victory of the revolution in a given country and the victory of the world revolution, defending the property of the transnationals against the working class itself.

The CPGB’s Stalinist methodology equates ‘socialism’ (that is, the lower stage of communism) with the dictatorship of the proletariat. But, whether we like it or not, the dictatorship of the proletariat is most unlikely to be achieved simultaneously in all countries, and in an epoch of wars and revolutions the international productive capacities of transnational companies will be used as a weapon against the workers’ states.

The remainder of this section contains a transitional element, ironically for something that claims to be a “minimum” programme. It continues: “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

“Against closures and mass sackings communists demand:

“1. No redundancies. Nationalise threatened workplaces or industries under workers’ control.

“2. Compensation to former owners should be paid only in cases of proven need.

“3. There must be no business secrets hidden from the workers. The books and data banks of every company must be open to the inspection of specialists appointed by and responsible to the workers.”

This is broadly correct, and involves an attack on the ‘right’ of the capitalists to freely dispose of ‘their’ workers and property. But where is the logic of advocating that the capitalist state seize the goods of bankrupt capitalists, while at the same time attacking the idea that the working class in power should seize the property of ‘transnational’ companies?

3.5. Trade unions

This section makes correct points about the ruinous influence of sectionalism in the trade union movement, and the limits of trade union consciousness. Its explanation for the role of the trade union bureaucracy is thus:

“Bargaining is a specialist activity. Consequently the trade unions need a layer of functionaries. However, due to the passivity of most rank and file members and lack of democratic accountability, these functionaries consolidated themselves into a conservative caste.

“The trade union bureaucracy is more concerned with amicable deals and preserving union funds than with the class struggle. Operating as an intermediary between labour and capital, it has a material interest in the continued existence of the wage system.”

This is OK as far as it goes, though it leaves out the most fundamental cause of the existence of this caste - the labour aristocracy which obtains special favours from the bosses, and provides a social base for this bureaucracy. Thus the cure that the CPGB advocates is largely technical. Correctly, they demand the independence of the trade unions from the state. They demand the payment to trade union officials of a worker’s wage, election and recall of trade union officials, industrial unionism. All supportable demands.

They also call on workers to support trade union officials “only to the extent that they fight for the long-term interest of the class as a whole”. It would have been better to explain the criteria whereby communists could give critical support while also explaining that only a fully communist programme can defend the “long-term interest of the class as a whole”.

Tacked onto this list is the demand for “all-embracing workplace committees”. The CPGB make the call to “organise all workers, whatever their trade, whether or not they are in trade unions”; and demand that “workplace committees should fight to exercise control over hiring and firing, production and investment”. Here we have one of the stranger features of this “minimum” programme. In reality, these demands, and others that will be dealt with shortly, are not “feasible within the confines” of capitalism at all. They are negations of capitalist power, and their emergence signifies the emergence of dual power and a pre-revolutionary situation. “Workplace committees” are organs of class collaboration, and certainly cannot “exercise control over hiring and firing, production and investment”. If they tried, the bosses would move to crush them as soon as possible.

3.6. Councils of action

The CPGB write:

“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 raetes, 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.”

Of course, all this is completely correct. But why on earth is this demand for organs of dual power at the level of the state, which by its very nature can only become feasible in a pre-revolutionary situation, and which poses point blank the need for the revolutionary overturn of the existing capitalist state in the immediate period, included in a programme of “immediate demands”? The conception that the prolonged existence of soviets or ‘raete’ is possible under the existing state was one of the worst absurdities of the centrists in Germany in the period after World WarI. One hopes this is not what the CPGB means by including this demand in a minimum programme.

3.7. Workers’ militia

Just as much as “councils of action” are out of place in a minimum programme, so is the demand for a workers’ militia! According to the CPGB, these demands are “technically feasible within the confines of present-day capitalism” but can only be genuinely realised by means of “insurrection”. But the workers’ militia is the means of insurrection itself! Far from belonging in the “minimum” programme, in reality it belongs in the ‘bridge’: that is, the transitional programme. This would, of course, be an utterly pointless and scholastic discussion if the CPGB had not repeatedly expressed its disdain and mockery for the whole concept of a transitional programme, for the reason that there is not a revolutionary situation at present!

3.8. The national question

The brief preamble to this subsection is unexceptionable, in its call for the defence of democratic rights and self-determination for all nations and nationalities, though so vague as to be totally abstract. However, there are some situations where the national configurations are intertwined in such a way that they can only be solved by a combination of democratic demands that belong in the ‘minimum’ programme, and some demands that come from the transitional programme, thereby pointing more directly towards proletarian power. This happens when conflicting ‘rights’ of different national or communal groupings create a situation where the application of ‘self-determination’ will create an outcome that itself violates the basic principles of democracy. Such situations exist in Ireland, the Middle East, Bosnia, etc. Unfortunately, the vulgar democratism of the CPGB means that such questions are not addressed in this programme.

3.8.1. England, Scotland and Wales

As a description of the evolution of the national question regarding England, Wales and Scotland, this section is fine. It correctly defends the right of separation of Scotland and Wales, while opposing separatism. Yet it contains the demand for a “federal republic” of England, Scotland and Wales without specifying the class nature of that republic. This is one of the strangest features of this CPGB programme, and underlines its confusion. It does not contain the demand for a workers’ government (even a federal one), the achievement of which is the only non-counterrevolutionary outcome of a situation where workplace committees, workers’ militias, etc have actually appeared! Presumably, then, the purpose of these is to create by means of “insurrection” a bourgeois federal republic which (by definition!!) would not expropriate the property of “transnational” companies because that would be “reactionary”. Such a schema could most charitably be characterised as a ‘critical’ left-Stalinist-Menshevik admixture, reductio ad absurdum.

3.8.2. Ireland

This is the classic British left position on Ireland and, for a tendency that talks so much about ‘democracy’, takes no account of the hardened and consolidated communal divisions in the population of Ireland. While it is correct to state that “working class opposition to British imperialism in Ireland is a necessary condition for our own liberation”, in demanding unconditional support for “the right of Ireland to unite” it does not address what will happen if the protestant population in the North, who do not generally see themselves as part of “Ireland”, do not choose to “unite”.

3.9. Peace

This section is a little abstract, but there is nothing particularly wrong with it. However, it does state: “Communists are not pacifists. Everywhere we support just wars, above all revolutionary civil wars for socialism.” Since the CPGB have in the past equated backward capitalist states such as Iraq, which come into conflict with imperialism, with the imperialists themselves, and refused to defend these states, some expansion on what this section means would be in order.

3.10. Women; 3.11. Youth; 3.12. Pensioners; 3.13. Homosexuals

All these sections, which deal with social oppression, and raise a whole series of democratic and social demands to deal with these matters, appear to be basically OK.

3.14. Freedom of information

This demands an end to all censorship, etc. It may seem to be a little utopian to demand that “the affairs of the bourgeois state are conducted in complete openness on all matters”, but such demands can have an agitational significance, and should not therefore be rejected out of hand.

3.15. Crime and prison

This contains a series of demands for prison reforms, and reforms of the judicial system. Again, many of the matters dealt with here have an agitational significance and potentially transitional element to them, but there is an impermissible ambiguity. It calls for “workers’ supervision of prisons”, but does not make it clear as to whether it is talking about a workers’ state or a capitalist state. If it is a capitalist state, there is a very fine line between a negative exercise of veto (this is part of workers’ control in general) and the workers’ movement being sucked into taking responsibility for the bosses’ prison system.

3.16. Religion

This section, dealing with the struggle against religion, the separation of religion and the state, and the rights of believers and atheists, is basically OK.

3.17. Small businesses and farms

Some of this is valid, such as the demand for “security of tenure” for owner-occupiers and small farmers, but such demands as “guaranteed prompt payment of bills by big business to small business” are really out of place in a communist programme. But of course, if the expropriation of transnational companies by a workers state is deemed “reactionary” in the absence of the world revolution materialising all at once, then all we are left with is trying to ensure that the big boys behave as good boys to the little boys. If one rejects the economic aspect of the dictatorship of the proletariat, then one is left aping the programme of the Liberal Democrats.

Section 4 - Character of the revolution

This section opens with the bald phrase, “Britain is materially ready for socialism”. This is completely false. No one country is materially ready for socialism. That such a claim can be made shows that, no matter what the accusations of ‘national socialism’ that they make against other currents, the CPGB have not clearly broken themselves from the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in one country’.

In this section is raised the call for “the overthrow of the main enemy, the capitalist state”. Yet nowhere in its programme of immediate demands does the CPGB make explicit the connection between demands for dual power institutions and the demand for the seizure of power by the working class. It instead appears to pose an extended period when these dual power institutions exist under capitalism. Indeed, in polemic after polemic, it has attacked the demand for a workers’ republic as being ‘economistic’.

A lot of this sounds like pure confusion, perhaps genuinely in the minds of the authors, perhaps a deliberate attempt to accommodate its rightist ex-Cliffite co-thinkers in the Revolutionary Democratic Group. The CPGB is trying to find a form of words that will please both those of its supporters who think there ought to be a straightforward social overturn of capitalism, and those who believe that there ought to be some sort of ‘democratic’ stage first.

4.1. Classes in the revolution

There is much in this section that is correct. The CPGB makes a great show of addressing some of the issues around the ‘non-monopoly’ bourgeoisie: “There can be no revolutionary alliance with the non-monopoly bourgeoisie. Individuals from the bourgeoisie can come over to the side of the working class, but never any section of it.”

This is a rejection of the basis of Stalinist/Eurocommunist popular frontism in Britain, and all to the good.

Regarding the organisations of the middle class “lawyers, doctors, middle management, middle-grade civil servants, the self-employed, well-paid professionals”, it writes:

“Workers ought to seek, as opportunities present themselves, alliances with the various organisations and manifestations of this intermediate strata. Indeed, the working class must represent the middle class against capital.”

Again, this seems a reasonable enough perspective.

4.2. The socialist constitution

There is much that is correct and positive, again, in this section. It lays out a blueprint, familiar on the left, for a republic run by the workers as a class, derived from the experience of the Paris Commune and the early Soviet state. It also states:

“The principles of our constitution are born out of a scientific understanding of the class struggle. Crucially that in the process of smashing the bourgeois state organs of working class struggle become organs of working class power. Our principles are not gleaming abstractions nor are they a utopian dream. They reflect historic experience and the necessity for the workers to continue the class struggle even when they are the ruling class.”

One wonders, therefore, why they could not make clear in the section on immediate demands that the workers’ militia, the councils of action, etc as “organs of working class struggle” were destined to become “organs of working class state power”. One wonders, again, why the culminating point of the programme of “immediate” demands could not be explicitly stated to be “working class power”: ie, a workers’ republic.

4.3. Economic measures

This subsection begins with the following assertion:

“The workers’ state would be wrong to nationalise some pre-set number of companies or list of industries. Nationalisation could be used tactically as a political weapon against those who refuse to cooperate or who rebel. But the full socialisation of production in Britain is dependent on and can only proceed in line with the completion of the world revolution.”

Earlier in the programme it was stated that “Britain is materially ready for socialism”. Now it is stated that “the full socialisation of production in Britain” is “dependent … on the world revolution”. Obviously then, if the latter is true, the former cannot be also!

In reality, Britain is “materially ready” for the dictatorship of the proletariat, not socialism. Socialism cannot be built in one country, and the real socialisation of nationalised property cannot take place until it is internationalised by the spread of the world revolution. But to leave industry in private hands for a prolonged period is to allow a ‘fifth column’ to continue to accumulate wealth and influence in a workers’ state. This does not mean, of course, that every single small capitalist enterprise would be on the list for expropriation from day one of the creation of a workers’ state. But it does mean that those industries that are decisive for the well-being of the state would be quickly seized by the victorious proletariat to fortify its position for the battles to come.

What is also missing from the list of “economic measures” is the demand for a state monopoly of foreign trade, which was part of the Communist Manifesto and an elementary part of the armoury of the Bolsheviks.

Section 5 - The transition to communism

In this section the incomplete break of the CPGB with Stalinist concepts of ‘socialism’ becomes most clear. For instance, the preamble subsection begins:

“Socialism is not a mode of production. It is the transition from capitalism to communism. Socialism is the communism that emerges from capitalist society. It begins as capitalism with a workers’ state. Socialism therefore bears the moral, economic and intellectual imprint of capitalism; it is the lower stage of communism.”

The CPGB often makes a great deal of its comparatively recent discovery that socialism cannot be built in one country. But if socialism is not a mode of production, then what is so special about it that it cannot be built in one country? It cannot precisely because it is a mode of production. Socialism in its lower stage bears many of the birthmarks of capitalism from which it has emerged. Thus the lower stage of communism (socialism) has a residual form of the state, which is not there to regulate class antagonisms between the proletariat and the defeated bourgeoisie, but to regulate potential conflict and disputes within the same class or with residual classes that do not have fundamentally antagonistic interests. But by this time there is no question of the former bourgeoisie regaining power. It has already disappeared as a class.

In this context, the statement, “In general, socialism is defined as the rule of the working class”, is flatly wrong. Under socialism, the proletariat has been superseded by the associated producers, administering the lower stage of a new mode of production. The proletariat has ceased to be a proletariat. Likewise, the statement, “Classes and social strata exist under socialism because of different positions occupied in relation to the means of production, the roles played in society and the way they receive their income”, is also false. There is nothing described in this passage that does not exist in a workers’ state encircled by hostile capitalist powers. It is certainly possible to build a society that fits that description in one country. Several have existed this century!

Thus they go on:

“The class struggle can, in the last analysis, go in two directions depending on the balance of forces inside and outside [!!!] the country and the class policy being followed. It can go backwards to capitalism or it can advance towards communism.”

Here we have a chemically pure example of a Stalinist view. It was made explicit by Mao, in saying that the class struggle continues under socialism. The CPGB say that socialism cannot be built in one country, but here they say that the class struggle under socialism can go in different directions according to events inside or outside the country. Presumably, this is after the victory of the world revolution. The meaning of the exclamation marks should not need explaining!

5.1. The socialist state

This subsection contains a generally accurate description of the concept of ‘bourgeois right’ and how it persists under socialism until the higher stage of communism. Unfortunately, it is again marred by classic Stalinist conflation of socialism with the dictatorship of the proletariat: “The socialist state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) is needed in the first place against the forces of capitalism.” But the dictatorship of the proletariat can exist in one country. Indeed, according to Marx, it existed in one city (Paris in 1871).

5.2. Socialism and democracy

Considering it is marred by the shortcomings and confusions mentioned above, this subsection is not that bad. The statement that “socialism and democracy are inseparable” cannot be let through without a few caveats, however. Though, of course, the soviet form of the dictatorship of the proletariat is infinitely more democratic in content than the most advanced bourgeois democracy, it should be noted that all will not most likely be sweetness and light for all under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In particular, the bourgeoisie is deprived of its property. It is also deprived of the means to politically organise to gain the return of its property and, depending on circumstances, that can involve repression to a greater or lesser degree. However, it is true that under socialism even such class-based repression will no longer be necessary, as there will be no enemy left to repress.

5.3. Communism

Unfortunately, again this subsection is marred in the same way. However, discounting that, it is not that bad, and accurately sums up the historic aim of the communist movement - a society of equality and abundance for all.

Section 6 - The Communist Party

The cell structure advocated here is not necessarily the best method of organisation by any means, and has had a bad history at times, having been used by Zinoviev and Stalin to fragment the membership of mass communist parties and undermine the possibility of political opposition emerging. A party of geographically-based larger branches and fractions for carrying out specific areas of work is at least as effective a method of organisation, and allows for more contact between comrades and hence a better internal life.

However, the following statement of what constitutes communist discipline goes down well with the author of this critique:

“Party discipline consists of the duty to voice differences, complete fulfilment of assigned tasks and not withholding financial resources. Communist discipline develops on the basis of positively resolving differences and successfully developing ties with the masses. Mutual respect and the strength of the working class increases the level of communist discipline.”

It is to be hoped that this critique will gain a serious consideration according to the same principle.