02.06.2004

An infantile disorder?

This week, the Red Platform of the CPGB looks at Lenin's pamphlet Leftwing communism - an infantile disorder - and finds many parallels to the political landscape today

This being the last Weekly Worker before the election, the leadership of the CPGB has decided that the paper should be given over to supporting the resolution passed at the March 21 aggregate, to win the biggest possible vote for Respect. It would be nonsensical for the Red Platform to argue this case, given its well publicised position opposing it - which presents us with something of a problem.
However, the leadership has also argued that the very existence of the Red Platform reflects a weakness in the level of political education within the party, and particularly recommended study of Lenin's Leftwing communism: an infantile disorder. To that end, this week's 'Seeing red' is entirely given over to reprinting extracts from this important work. The words are Lenin's; the emphasis, where indicated, is ours.

On the nature of tactical support
At present, British communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing.

And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois 'democracy'), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man [our emphasis] - that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens, just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany (Leftwing communism: an infantile disorder chapter 9: '"Leftwing" communism in Great Britain').

On the purpose of electoral work for communists
In western Europe and in America, the communists must learn to create a new, uncustomary, non-opportunist, and non-careerist parliamentarianism; the communist parties must issue their slogans; true proletarians, with the help of the unorganised and downtrodden poor, should distribute leaflets, canvass workers' houses and cottages of the rural proletarians and peasants in the remote villages (fortunately there are many times fewer remote villages in Europe than in Russia, and in Britain the number is very small); they should go into the public houses, penetrate into unions, societies and chance gatherings of the common people, and speak to the people, not in learned (or very parliamentary) language - they should not at all strive to 'get seats' in parliament, but should everywhere try to get people to think, and draw the masses into the struggle [our emphasis], to take the bourgeoisie at its word and utilise the machinery it has set up, the elections it has appointed and the appeals it has made to the people; they should try to explain to the people what Bolshevism is, in a way that was never possible (under bourgeois rule) outside of election times (exclusive, of course, of times of big strikes, when in Russia a similar apparatus for widespread popular agitation worked even more intensively). 

It is very difficult to do this in western Europe and extremely difficult in America, but it can and must be done, for the objectives of communism cannot be achieved without effort. We must work to accomplish practical tasks, ever more varied and ever more closely connected with all branches of social life, winning branch after branch, and sphere after sphere from the bourgeoisie (ibid chapter 10: 'Some conclusions').

On maintaining full-blooded criticism even during electoral support
I will put it more concretely. 

In my opinion, the British communists should unite their four parties and groups (all very weak, and some of them very, very weak) into a single Communist Party on the basis of the principles of the Third International and of obligatory participation in parliament. 

The Communist Party should propose the following 'compromise' election agreement to the Hendersons and Snowdens: let us jointly fight against the alliance between Lloyd George and the Conservatives; let us share parliamentary seats in proportion to the number of workers' votes polled for the Labour Party and for the Communist Party (not in elections, but in a special ballot), and let us retain complete freedom of agitation, propaganda and political activity. Of course, without this latter condition, we cannot agree to a bloc, for that would be treachery [our emphasis]; the British communists must demand and get complete freedom to expose the Hendersons and the Snowdens in the same way as (for 15 years: 1903-17) the Russian Bolsheviks demanded and got it in respect of the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens: ie, the Mensheviks (ibid chapter 9: '"Leftwing" communism in Great Britain').