07.10.1999
Private Godfrey
Party notes
Michael Farmer is not serious when he talks about “miscreants” in the Party’s current controversy over the British-Irish being “thrown out” of the organisation (Weekly Worker September 30).
Comrades are well aware that the conclusion of any sharp, even occasionally discourteous, debate in our ranks does not augur a purge of the defeated minority. Indeed, it is not in our culture to impose the sort of crude political gagging order that masquerades as ‘democratic centralism’ in other revolutionary groups. Our minority - whatever its political physiognomy - will be able to continue to agitate, organise and polemicise openly for its point of view as a component element of this Party.
However, the comrade raises important questions over the tone of the debate, setting his face against what he classifies as “name-calling” on the part of Jack Conrad. Unfortunately for his case, the only examples of this “worrying trend to vilify” those who refuse to agree is Conrad’s accusation that his opponents exhibit “vicarious Irish nationalism, residual bureaucratic socialism”. In fact, these are political characterisations - and pretty mild and qualified ones at that. The comrades these charges are aimed at can disagree with them, but they can hardly complain that they overstep the boundaries of comradely debate.
In fact, it is comrade Farmer who seems to be light-mindedly tripping into the minefield of political exclusion and purge. First, he equates bureaucratic socialism with Stalinism. This is too narrow. In my opinion the very different trends of Stalinism, Trotskyism and social democracy all adhere to particular forms of what could be characterised as bureaucratic socialism. But then, in his final sentence, he calls for these “Stalinists” in the Communist Party to be “expunged”. This is surely polemical excess, particularly given the views on the nature of the Soviet Union held by some of our comrades who also disagree with Jack Conrad over the British-Irish. There are no plans afoot by the leadership to institute political expulsions in our organisation, now or in the future.
The culture we fight for is robust, open and democratic. Comrades have the right (although not the duty) to express themselves in tones that others claim to find insulting or even abusive. In the pages of our press, you will find a variety of different styles and tempos of polemic. While it is certainly true that comrade Conrad is among the more robustly pugnacious, he is hardly uniquely belligerent. In general, the exchanges between our comrades are marked by a communist candour, a sincere search for clarity and truth. The angularity and sharpness of our language is a product of this fundamental fact.
This is fully in the best traditions of our movement. Martov - then a rather ‘soft’ member of the Iskra editorial - neatly captured this blunt, no-nonsense expositional style when he commented that the paper “strove to make sure that ‘all that is ridiculous’ appears in ‘a ridiculous form’”, and to “expose ‘the very embryo of a reactionary idea hidden behind a revolutionary phrase’” (cited in M Liebman Leninism under Lenin London 1985, p29). The search for truth is an active process of sharp, sometimes harsh conflict, in other words.
Thus, this ruthless exposure of “the very embryo of a reactionary idea hidden behind a revolutionary phrase” - a “polemical style that was destined to enjoy a brilliant future in the Bolshevik party” - was damned by the rest of the left: “On all sides, Iskra’s opponents condemned the polemical methods of this journal, which was accused, to quote Trotsky’s testimony at the time, of ‘fighting not so much against the autocracy as against the other factions in the revolutionary movement’” (ibid).
Now, doesn’t this sound familiar? I refer readers to the Socialist Democracy Group’s charming appraisal of this paper (Weekly Worker September 30) as a “poisonous shit sheet denouncing the whole left (including their own correspondents) …” For such philistines, our barbed debates are the very opposite of the two-faced diplomacy that passes for ‘comradely relations’. This simply underlines how far a sect like the SDG is from Leninist politics.
Contrasting the Bolshevik Party before and after the ascendancy of Stalin, Leopold Trepper noted that, far from introducing rancour and schism, frank and occasionally very violent exchanges helped fuse those who were actually revolutionaries:
“During Lenin’s lifetime, political life among the Bolsheviks was always very animated. At the congresses, in the plenums, at the meetings of the central committee, militants said frankly what they thought. This democratic and often bitter clash of opinions gave the party its cohesion and vitality” (my emphasis L Trepper The great game p44).
It should be obvious to us as Leninist politicians that when a political opponent starts at our use of a particular phrase, when they make demands that we ‘withdraw’ these accusations, the likelihood is that we have touched a soft spot. Here is Lenin gleefully poking at one of Plekhanov’s weaknesses:
“ ... In the original draft of the Menshevik resolution on the state duma proposed by the committee, clause 5 (on the armed forces) contained the following sentence: ... ‘Seeing for the first time on Russian soil a new authority, sprung from the depths of the nation, called into being by the tsar and recognised by the law’, etc. In criticising the Menshevik resolution for what may mildly be called its imprudent and optimistic attitude towards the state duma, I also criticised the words I have underlined and said jestingly: should we not add ‘and sent by god’s grace’ (meaning authority)? Comrade Plekhanov, a member of the committee, was frightfully angry with me for cracking this joke. ‘What!’ he exclaimed in his speech, must I listen to these ‘suspicions of being an opportunist’? (his exact words, as I wrote them down) ... Comrade Plekhanov’s resentment exposed his vulnerable spot ... In my speech in reply to the debate, I said it was not a matter of ‘suspicions’ and it was ridiculous to use such pitiful expressions. Nobody was accusing Plekhanov of believing in the tsar. But resolutions are not written for Plekhanov: they are written for the people. And it was indecent to disseminate among the people such ambiguous arguments” (VI Lenin CW Vol 10, Moscow 1977, pp363-64).
Today, we believe the politics of much of the left to be “indecent” from the viewpoint of Marxism and their dissemination amongst our class positively harmful. It is our duty therefore to counter this, to sharply draw clear and unambiguous lines of political demarcation between communist politics and the swamp. And if a comrade peddling opportunism reacts to being called an opportunist, all to the good. Perhaps the shock will precipitate reappraisal and change.
What is the alternative? That we should behave as ‘gentlemen’? That we should deal with each other in the manner of that epitome of addle-brained English courteousness, private Godfrey of Dad’s Army? There would be no better way to blur political questions, to smudge the distinct lines we are trying to draw. It would not produce communist politics or anything like it.
Mark Fischer
national organiser