19.07.2000

Correct the political bias

RCN Republican Communist No3, summer 2000, pp36, £2

Issue three of the Republican Communist Network's quarterly discussion journal is, like the first two, a well produced magazine containing some interesting contributions. In the Scottish Socialist Party, where the RCN presence as a left faction is the most strongly felt, it is sure to strengthen the RCN's reputation, in sharp contrast to the other SSP components, as a group of comrades sufficiently committed to produce a regular, attractively presented publication.

The editorial team of Allan Armstrong, Nick Clarke and Steve Kaczynski are therefore to be congratulated on their efforts. Having said that, however, there is a criticism that needs to be made - and that is the disproportional bias contained within its pages towards one particular RCN faction (the Communist Tendency), and to contributions which could be described as being sympathetic to the CT's left communist and left nationalist trajectory. In this sense Republican Communist bears the unmistakable stamp of comrade Armstrong.

As a result, a totally false impression of the main political trends to be found within the RCN is given - an impression more than enhanced by comrade Armstrong's editorial interventions. He is perfectly entitled to his own opinions, however bizarre, and so there can be no objection to his article, 'Why we need a new human emancipatory communism' (part one), in which he lays the ground for his argument in favour of the immediate abolition of the wages system under workers' power in a single country (see below). Nor am I objecting to the inclusion of his letter responding to Jack Conrad's article on the British-Irish in RC No2.

However, what about his third major contribution, 'Prospects for Socialist Alliances in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland'? This piece, which appears on page one, carries the sub-heading, "Allan Armstrong introduces four articles examining the state of socialist unity in the component parts of the British Isles", and bears all the appearances of an editorial comment - the RCN 'line'.

In this article comrade Armstrong outlines his view that the main task for communists in Britain and Ireland is to combat notions of 'Britishness' and work for the break-up of the UK state (two contributions from members of Cymru Goch serve to back him up with their call for a "Welsh socialist republic"). Indeed he cannot bear to mention the geo-political entities 'Great Britain' or the 'British Isles' without placing them in dismissive quotation marks. For my part, as a communist and internationalist, I am just as much opposed to the dominant nationalist ideology built up around Britishness as to that around Scottishness. Nevertheless I recognise that both are real phenomena. Comrade Armstrong, however, has a distinct preference for the latter.

Thus he writes approvingly of "the rise of national movements in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland" and their "democratic challenge to the UK state". It is in this context - ie, the extent to which the break-up of the UK is being fostered - that the articles that follow are supposed to be read. According to the comrade, Anne Murphy and myself, the authors of the article on the London Socialist Alliance that follows his introduction, are, along with the other contributors, said to "take stock of the situation in their respective nations" (he means England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales).

Our article does no such thing. The thrust of its argument, far from reporting on an 'English' challenge to the state, is for the left throughout the country to learn from the Greater London Authority campaign "in order to generalise it across Britain" - to quote our words.

Comrade Armstrong ends his introductory piece in this way: "How do we achieve the all-round unity needed to take on Blair and New Labour's attempt to maintain and widen British imperial power? Should this unity be achieved by an all-British/UK party, inspired by a federal republic? Or do we build our 'internationalism from below', inspired by the workers' republican tradition of Connolly and Maclean? The debate commences!" The phrasing of the questions leaves no doubt as to which alternative the 'editorial' wants us to opt for. (It is, as an aside, somewhat strange, that workers are advised to unite in order to achieve separation - even if this left nationalism is disguised with phrases about workers' republics and "internationalism from below".)

And there is another partisan intervention from comrade Armstrong. Bob Paul of the CPGB has a letter published in which he opposes the call for a Scottish workers' republic and calls for clarification of the CT's "jumbled and contradictory" views. An unsigned 'editorial' reply retorts that, "The Communist Tendency has produced a paper explaining our position ..." (my emphasis), and directs readers to the CT's address. A casual reader would assume that there is, at the very least, a close connection between the politics of the RCN and the "position" of the CT, or even that the two organisations are one and the same.

In fact supporters of the CT constitute a tiny minority within the RCN. Essentially the same can be said for left nationalists in general. Yet on the inside of the back cover - where perhaps you might look for a 'What we stand for' column - the Red Republicans' platform, 'For a Scottish workers' republic', is prominently displayed (the grouping is now defunct). True, an opposing platform from the Campaign for a Federal Republic appears underneath, but this takes up less than half the space. The eye is naturally drawn to the top of the page. There is no box for the views of any other RCN components, including the CPGB.

On the back cover there appears the 'Republic of Letters' - seemingly a list of 'approved' publications. The Weekly Worker is there, alongside other, rather less well known, journals, such as Rebel City, "paper of Cork Unemployed and Workers Action Group". The only other all-Britain publications to feature are Hobgoblin, What Next? and the even more obscure Class Struggle, journal of the International Communist Union (Trotskyist) Britain. Socialist Worker and Workers' Liberty, for example, are absent. What is the point of this list and who decides what is included?

Let us now turn to the main articles themselves. Comrade Armstrong's piece on 'emancipatory communism' ends with a pretty orthodox (and competent) discussion on capital and the law of value. But its beginning is more controversial. It is marked by the 'theory' which distinguishes "The Communist Tendency" (note the upper case) as the only genuine communists in Britain (all three of them) - as opposed to "'revolutionary' social democrats" like the rest of us.

For example: "Some members of the CPGB (Weekly Worker) have also involved themselves in the RCN. They also see little need to develop a genuine new communism. They give absolute priority to organisation, claiming to be the Provisional Central Committee of 'the Party' yet to be reforged. Upholding 'the Party' takes precedence over all else. There is nothing new to be learned from the experiences of the 'century of revolutions'. All that needs to be done is to re-establish Lenin's party today. Their defence of 'communism' is the defence of what they see as Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, despite marked differences between Marx and Lenin on both communism and communist organisation."

There is much here to dispute, but restrictions of space do not permit a full response in this short review. Suffice it to say, the CPGB has indeed learned much from the 20th century (read what we have written over the past two decades), but that does not lead us to reject the rich lessons of Bolshevism as a development of Marxism. Furthermore, it is surprising that 'genuine' communists like comrade Armstrong seem to think that emancipation can be achieved without making our first priority the forging of our most essential weapon - a Communist Party.

Be that as it may, it appears that what distinguishes comrade Armstrong from the rest of us is his vision of instant communism. As he writes, "For TCT, communism is the next rung up from [left nationalist] republicanism on the revolutionary ladder." He goes on to spell out the difference with others on the left:

"Yet when we examine the society that 'revolutionary' social democrats want to build immediately after their revolution, it is most peculiar. The wages system is to be retained under socialism. This is a bit like the black slaves of pre-civil war USA rising up against their slave masters - but once they have expelled them not proceeding to abolish slavery! Instead, slavery would remain, but the slaves would elect and emancipate a select few of their number to manage the affairs of the plantation."

It seems to have escaped comrade Armstrong's notice, but blacks in the US exchanged slavery for wage slavery. Socialism is necessary as a transitional period between capitalism and communism because working class power begins with the moral, material and cultural level inherited from the past. So in his own peculiar way comrade Armstrong casually dismisses the act of our class beginning for the first time to take control of their own destiny. Personally speaking, after 200 years of "the wages system", I am prepared to put up with it in a radically modified form in the immediate aftermath of the revolution - along with the state, money and the existence of nations. Communism can only be achieved as a worldwide system. But, as I said, comrade Armstrong's version is most unusual: it can be applied instantly in Scotland alone.

And comrade Armstrong is backed up by Terry Liddle, who sings paeans of praise to the "impossibilists and left communists", and whose piece, entitled 'International socialism: what can we learn from the past?', seems to dovetail with comrade Armstrong's. His implication seems to be that international socialism, as a concept ought to be rejected. Hence one begins to see why comrade Armstrong was arguing against it as a slogan for the RCN. After all, why bother with international socialism if you can have national communism? It makes me wonder whether Dave Craig's compromise of 'international socialist revolution' - apparently acceptable to comrade Armstrong - despite the strong arguments put forward in its favour in another article, is in fact a compromise too far.

But back to comrade Liddle, the chair of the RCN England. He may have a soft spot for left communism, but, although you would never have guessed it from his article (apart from an aside about the need to include "sustainability" in today's definition of communism), in fact he is a prominent member of the oh-so-respectable Green Party. Comrade Liddle can talk a good revolution when it suits him, but he stood on his party's official platform as a Green candidate in May's Greater London Assembly elections against the LSA.

In the same vein, Phil Sharpe extols the virtues of Sylvia Pankhurst in his review of Mary Davis's recent biography. He is 100% on Pankhurst's side in her dispute with the fledgling CPGB which led to her expulsion. In fact comrade Sharpe would have preferred it if she had never joined in the first place, as it was from the beginning "dominated by opportunism on the basis of mediocrity, dogma and mechanical conformity". The CPGB was indeed riddled with all sorts of faults, failings and shortcomings, but in my view it was the highest organisational achievement of the working class in Britain and it was the duty of all revolutionaries to unite within its ranks, warts and all.

The second review is a reprint taken from the anarchist publication Black Flag. Perhaps an anarchist contribution in a communist journal may strike you as peculiar - until you realise that the pamphlet reviewed is A short history of the Building Worker Group and its author is a certain Brian Higgins - another third of the CT membership.

The other articles in this edition of Republican Communist are by Mary Ward, Joseph Roth and Tom Delargy. Comrade Ward, the RCN national secretary, competently describes the tensions and rivalries within the Scottish Socialist Party - primarily between the two factions of the Committee for a Workers International (ex-Scottish Militant Labour) and the RCN itself. But she does not mention the main contradiction within the SSP: the struggle between, on the one hand, supporters of an "independent socialist Scotland" (or its left communist variant, a "Scottish workers' republic"), and, on the other hand, partisans of all-Britain working class unity. Perhaps she is too diplomatic, not wishing to offend comrade Armstrong - although it has to said that the editor-in-chief has no such compunctions.

Comrade Roth's piece on the Kurdish revolutionary nationalists, the PKK, is most informative, while comrade Delargy's article on Cuba and revolutionary democracy also strikes home with some telling points.

As can be seen, however, there is an unfortunate one-sidedness, not to say wackiness, about this issue. Let me make it clear that I am not objecting to any one article as such: all are interesting in their own way as expressions of minority viewpoints. But I am objecting to the overall balance, resulting in an end-product that is hardly an accurate reflection of the contending trends to be found within the RCN.

In view of this, the CPGB will be proposing an expansion of the editorial team at the October annual general meeting of the network to be held in Edinburgh. Hopefully, if this is agreed, future editions of Republican Communist will strike a better balance.