10.05.2007

Build a halfway house

The formation in 1920 of the CPGB was an error resulting from rigid dogma, argues Phil Sharpe of the Democratic Socialist Alliance

CPGB theorist Mike Macnair considers that any attempt to relate to the possible development of the workers' party represents opportunism because organisational forms are equated with political principles. Thus, only the revolutionary party form can uphold revolutionary principles, and the workers' party will generate support for opportunism.

This means a modern workers' party is understood in terms of a replica of the situation in Brazil, the formation of a mass reformist party that supports a neoliberal agenda when in political office. Consequently, the CPGB will only relate to the possible formation of a workers' party pragmatically, as a forum for the propagation of revolutionary principles. To do more, such as build the workers' party, would be to adapt to the reformist logic of the leadership of the workers' party. Hence, the membership of the workers' party are not considered to be in a possible state of flux, people receptive to new ideas and willing to listen to the revolutionary alternative. Instead, to the CPGB, what is only historically possible is the formation of a new Communist Party that regroups the left. Thus, the elite party of the left is counterposed to a party of the working class. But are these the only two options that we have?

What Mike Macnair and the CPGB are effectively advocating is an approach that argues that only when the party acts on behalf of the working class can the class acquire revolutionary capacities. This is why the party cannot be a party of the working class - because such a party by definition will be reformist, which is said to be the prevailing consciousness within the class. Instead only when the party is a tightly knit group of professional revolutionaries can the relationship between party and class develop in a principled manner. This implies that the party is the active aspect of this relationship, and the class is the passive and secondary element. So to argue that we need a workers' party is to apparently represent support for a broad-based organisation that will undermine and dilute revolutionary principles.

Thus, no context is envisaged where the formation of a workers' party could be considered to be more principled. However, the above perspective represents a schema that does not allow for the complexity of conditions in which political parties claiming to be Marxist have been formed. Instead the German Social Democrats before 1914 and the Bolsheviks are given as examples of the revolutionary party that is required in the present. Such a standpoint implies a theory and practice of inconsistency, or a contradiction between the practical implications in relation to the formal standpoint of the theory. The theory suggests one organisational outcome, but the unintended consequences of the political conditions suggests something else. For example, in theory the German Social Democrats were a Marxist-based revolutionary party; in practice they represented the contradictions of a mass-based workers' party. The Bolsheviks could only accept the necessity to become a workers' party, and diluted the revolutionary conception in both the Russian Revolutions.

German SDP

To the CPGB German Social Democracy was a model party because it was based on the minimum-maximum programme of the Erfurt platform of the early 1890s. This analysis is immediately contentious, because Rosa Luxemburg considered that such a platform became the justification for the refusal of Social Democracy to champion the democratic republic and call for the overthrow of the absolute monarchy.

In other words, the Erfurt platform was not a sufficient basis to sustain even the semblance of a principled minimum-maximum programme that related immediate demands to the promotion of the political conditions - namely a democratic republic - that could advance the struggle for communism. At the very best, the opportunist practice of the Social Democratic leadership had reduced the Erfurt platform to a dead letter that could not generate adherence to the principled tactics necessary to promote revolutionary leadership of the class struggle.

It was precisely these contradictions that promoted Bernstein's critique of Social Democracy, the view that the theory of Social Democracy was not consistent with the more realistic practice, which represented a reformist adaptation to capitalism, and a connected emphasis on the material improvement of the conditions of the working class. Kautsky replied in orthodox terms, and argued that economic crisis would create the conditions for revolutionary class struggle. He did not effectively challenge Bernstein's view that capitalist development had modified the political practice of Social Democracy, and so facilitated the reformist transformation of Social Democracy. Thus Kautsky did not call for Social Democracy to change in practice - only that it formally reject in theory the revisionism of Bernstein.

Only Luxemburg, from a revolutionary standpoint, accepted the political validity of the conclusions of Bernstein, whilst rejecting the method and premises of his economic analysis, and the understanding that class contradictions had been modified by capitalist development - she effectively agreed with him that the practice of Social Democracy had become reformist. She argued that the opportunist relations between the trade union leadership and the Social Democratic leadership explained this development. In other words, the open formation of a reformist wing of Social Democracy showed that it was no longer decisively committed to revolutionary goals. Instead German Social Democracy was shown to have a reformist trend, the centrist orthodoxy of Kautsky, and a revolutionary minority led by Luxemburg. The Kautskyites vacillated between the reformist and the revolutionary trend, but the reformist wing was dominant.

This historical analysis shows that German Social Democracy was no longer a classical Marxist party - it may have formally had a Marxist programme, but the increasing sway of reformist practice gutted the very validity of the programme. On occasion, Kautsky would elaborate orthodox-sounding pronouncements, but this did not challenge the increasing domination of the alliance between the trade union bureaucracy and the most opportunist strand of Social Democracy. Indeed, Kautsky was prepared to dilute the call for a general strike in order to appease the alarm of the trade union leaders.

In other words, the opportunist relations of the Social Democratic apparatus indicated that it could not act in a revolutionary manner, and this was shown by the very concerted attempts to ensure that the mass strike tactic of the Russian Revolution of 1905 was not copied in Germany. Such an attempt was not successful, but the point was that German Social Democracy did not try to provide leadership to such strikes in order to extend their scope and ambition. Instead they consciously acted to limit them, and to deny the revolutionary potential of the mass strike. Indeed, German Social Democracy would have been a classically reformist party, if it was not for the important influence of a revolutionary trend led by Luxemburg.

Thus German Social Democracy before 1914 was not a classical reformist party, in which the domination of the right wing was unchallenged. Instead the hegemony of the right was frequently challenged by the revolutionary trend, and this challenge was occasionally supported by the centrists led by Kautsky. Indeed, Kautsky vacillated between the reformists and the revolutionaries. The very capacity to oppose the actions of the reformist meant that German Social Democracy before 1914 was not merely an instrument for bourgeois ideology within the working class. What had occurred was the opportunist degeneration of a mass Marxist party into a workers' party with conflicting tendencies.

However, it would have been sectarian for the revolutionary trend to leave such a formation, because the result would have been to leave the reformists with an unchallenged domination, and in these conditions the centrists would have become consistently subordinated to the centrists. Hence, what was necessary was for the revolutionary tendency to try and create a principled alliance with the centrists in order to undermine the domination of the reformists. The situation was in flux, and the success of the astute tactics of the revolutionary wing could have transformed the relations of power within the party. Obviously, August 1914 changed everything, and this showed the tight domination of the parliamentary wing of the party, in alliance with the trade union leaders. The final degeneration of the German Social Democrats into reformism was complete.

So the party that the CPGB considers to be one of their models to be emulated was actually a mass workers' party in a state of transition, in which the reformist wing was dominant, but its victory was not inevitable. Rather it was necessary for the revolutionary wing to advocate the revolutionary programme within the mass workers' party, and to oppose the vacillations of the centrists and the opportunism of the reformist. This was what they did, which meant that the political practice of the revolutionaries was entirely principled. They did not advocate the formation of a reformist party with influential centrist and revolutionary trends, which was precisely why in Poland Rosa Luxemburg formed and led a revolutionary party, but in the circumstances of Germany what had happened was that a mass Marxist party had degenerated into a party with competing political trends. It had become a type of workers' party that lacked a definitive and completed political content, and therefore it would have been foolish to abstain from the attempt to defeat the influence of reformism and regenerate the party into a revolutionary formation.

In order to deny, the influence of the workers' party, or the so-called halfway house, upon their thinking, the CPGB deny the actual flux and respective strength of the various tendencies within German Social Democracy. Instead they maintain the fiction that Kautsky represented the dominant political strength within German Social Democracy, and this was sustained by the Luxemburg wing and the influence of Marxism within the working class. Thus the influential role of Kautsky as a theoretician is abstracted from the balance of contending social forces within German Social Democracy. Hence, the influence of opportunism is considered to be effectively external before 1914.

In this formal manner, the internal tensions within German Social Democracy can be denied, and the fiction of the essentially revolutionary party be maintained. Consequently, the empirical fact that German Social Democracy before 1914 was the classical model of the workers' party, a party linked to the trade unions, and influenced by Marxism, with mass support for centrist, reformist and revolutionary ideas, is denied by the CPGB. Historical fact cannot be allowed to obscure the myth of what is a revolutionary party - a party supposedly sustained by the minimum-maximum programme rather than by opportunist and reformist practice.

Russian SDLP

With this mythology intact, the CPGB is then able to argue that, with the opportunist degeneration of 1914, the banner of the revolutionary party is passed over to the Bolsheviks, and the result is the formation of the CPGB in 1920. Yet reality is once again at odds with the ideological requirements of the myth.

The reality is that the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks maintained some type of organisational relation as being components of one social democratic party until 1912. This was a party in flux, in which the opportunist rightwing strand of legal Marxism, based upon accommodation to the institutions of the tsarist state, was influential and not dominant, and Martov had a similar centrist relationship to this reformist wing as Kautsky had in 1914.

One of Lenin's main arguments of this period was that Martov and Trotsky were unprincipled to reject a definitive break with the legal Marxists. The formation of a revolutionary party meant a break with the liquidators and reformists. But as long the situation seemed to be in flux, and the centrists could possibly be won to the revolutionary standpoint, Lenin resisted an emphatic break with them. In other words, Russian Social Democracy was organisationally fragmented and in political flux, and was based upon the tensions between reformist, centrist and revolutionary wings. This social democracy had mass influence in the working class, and represented an unstable type of workers' party.

In 1914, the conditions were created for unity between the centrist and revolutionary trends when the right wing of the reformists, led by Plekhanov, openly adopted a social-chauvinist stance. Lenin insisted that the centrists definitively break with the Plekhanov wing, but they were reluctant to do so, and the result was a definitive split between the revolutionary and centrist tendencies. Only the failure to unite with the centrists meant that in 1914 the Bolsheviks presented themselves to the working class as a revolutionary party. In a sense, the Bolsheviks had applied the workers' party approach, in different forms, until 1914, when it was necessary to make an open a break with the social chauvinists, and also with the centrists, who refused to make this break. Political tactics were dictated by the events of 1914, just as the revolutionary wing of German Social Democracy had to re-evaluate tactics because of the social-chauvinist degeneration of the German party.

Consequently, the formation of a revolutionary party that was organisationally separate from the centrists and reformists was not an expression of a dogma, but was instead an immediate response dictated by the seriousness of the events in 1914. The impact of the imperialist war meant that adherence to revolutionary principles could no longer be realised within what had been unstable workers' parties that had degenerated into social-chauvinist and pro-imperialist organisations.

Lenin's decision was vindicated in 1917, when the Mensheviks moved to the right as a response to the first Russian Revolution of February 1917 and therefore decided to join the provisional government. The policy of the centrists led by Martov seemed to be identical to that of the reformist right wing. On the other hand, those centrists who moved to the left, like Trotsky, or at least accepted that they were always really Bolsheviks, joined Bolshevism and opposed the social chauvinists of the Mensheviks. Hence, it was entirely logical to build the revolutionary party in opposition to what had become the reformist Mensheviks. There was no basis for centrist and revolutionary unity in a broad workers' party. The October revolution was a vindication of this stance, even the formally centrist Martov opposed it in terms of reformist reasoning.

Formation of CPGB

But did these conditions apply everywhere? What about the situation in Britain? The supposedly revolutionary party, the Social Democratic Federation, was actually an unstable formation that represented a struggle between reformist and revolutionary wings for domination. The reformist strand, led by Henry Hyndman, became openly social-chauvinist, and this necessitated an organisational break, which was completed in the period 1915-16. The revolutionary party, called the British Socialist Party, was faced with the possibility of relating to the Independent Labour Party, which had a generally pacifist and centrist position on the war. What complicated the situation was that that the ILP was subject to the discipline of the Labour Party, which generally adopted a social-chauvinist stance.

The BSP and ILP developed a united-front type of alliance against the war, and therefore opposed the class collaboration of the Labour Party. What was emerging was the possibility of a party composed of a revolutionary and centrist wing, although the situation was complicated by the loyalty of the ILP to Labour. However, the federal structure of the Labour Party allowed the BSP to join, and therefore develop its relations with the ILP. The dynamics were being developed for the emergence of a workers' party based upon centrists and revolutionaries, a party that would oppose the reformism of the Labour Party, whose loose federal constitution allowed this possibility to occur.

The strength of the anti-war alliance, and the effect of changing moods in the working class, led the Labour Party to leave the wartime coalition. Labour was still social-chauvinist, but the character of its political developments was being influenced by centrists and revolutionaries. In order to offset this influence, Labour adopted the constitution of 1918, which called for extensive nationalisation. State socialism from above was being elaborated in order to undermine the challenge from socialism from below.

This promotion of socialism from below was based upon the de facto emergence of a workers' party to challenge the reformism of Labour. A crucial step forward would have been for the ILP and BSP to merge within the Labour Party, and therefore promote the defeat of reformism. However, this did not happen. Instead of following this dynamic, the Communist Party was formed in 1920, and the young CPGB put its own organisational independence before the interests of forming a workers' party to oppose the reformist influence of Labour. As a result relations with the ILP deteriorated, and the opportunity to form a workers' party was lost.

This also meant that the revolutionary influence over centrism was undermined, and instead the ILP was drawn into the institutional orbit of Labour, where it became a loyal critic, until centralisation of the Labour Party in 1931 forced the ILP out because of its objection to adherence to the new standing orders. So until 1931 reformism regained its influence over centrism, whilst the influence of revolutionary Marxism over the centrists was lost because of the formation of the CPGB.

In other words, the reduction of the call for a revolutionary party to a rigid dogma meant in Britain that the possibility of forming a mass workers' party based upon the organisational alliance of the centrist ILP with the revolutionary tendency was lost. When this opportunity presented itself again in the period 1931-35, the CPGB had become thoroughly Stalinised, and so was effectively to the right of the centrist ILP.

Would history had been different if a mass workers' party had been created in the early 1920s, when the opportunities were favourable for this possibility? No-one can answer this question with certainty, but it can be argued convincingly that the formation of a mass workers' party, rather than an isolated revolutionary party, would have advanced the cause of socialism from below rather than reformism.

It could be argued that the problem was the Stalinist degeneration of the CPGB. Undoubtedly, this was the major problem. Thus the sectarianism of the third period was connected to the process of the Stalinisation of the CPGB. But what facilitated this regression was the organisational isolation of the CPGB, which put its organisational independence before the possibility of unity with the ILP on the basis of a principled programme. The ILP was considering unity with the CPGB in the early 1920s, but the CPGB wanted the ILP to submit to its political programme as a condition for unification. Hence, the CPGB put the dogma of the development of a small, elite revolutionary party before the potential progress that could be made by the formation of a workers' party based upon a political relationship between the revolutionaries and the centrists.

What made this situation tragic was the fact that the ILP did not have major objections to the programme of the CPGB - it accepted the importance of soviets and revolutionary struggle, but what it was concerned about was the prospect that the ILP could not even be a faction of the newly unified CPGB. Instead, to the ILP, it seemed to be preferable to be a federal part of the Labour Party, because at least in the reformist organisation it could maintain its own programme and theoretical independence. Only in 1931, when the standing orders of the Labour Party threatened this political capacity to propagate their version of socialism, did the ILP leave.

The result of all this disunity was that the influence of reformism was maintained despite the political crisis of 1929-31, and the ILP and CPGB were fragmented into organisationally distinct and competing blocs. What could have been the unity of centrism and revolutionary tendencies against reformism was never realised.

Programme first

The above argument is not meant as a dogma, and support for a schema that is applied to all conditions regardless of circumstances. Indeed, such dogmatism would be an inversion of the approach of the CPGB, in that, where the CPGB puts a plus sign we put a minus, and vice versa. Instead what is being suggested is that tactics should be flexible in relation to changing circumstances.

What should be inflexible should be support for a revolutionary programme. Thus in the Germany of the 1920s it was entirely necessary and principled to support the formation of a revolutionary party. The Social Democrats formed a centralised party that was dedicated to the rationalisation strategy of monopoly capital and the connected necessity to undermine the social conditions of the working class. Furthermore, the Independent Social Democrats, after the brief radical period of 1919-20, were increasingly rightwing and led by Kautsky, who was prepared to essentially unconditionally rejoin the Social Democrats despite their counterrevolutionary and explicitly pro-capitalist stance. The rightwing trajectory of the centrists, combined with the extreme rightwing stance of the Social Democrats, meant there was effectively no alternative then but to build the Communist Party, the only principled opponent of monopoly capital.

Obviously, this did not rule out the necessity of the united front tactic in order to oppose fascism, and the rationalisation plans of monopoly capital, but any premature and unprincipled unity with the rightwing centrists would have undermined the application of the united front. Only the revolutionary party could have applied the united front, and combated the influence of centrism and reformism within the working class. Third periodism, and the Stalinist degeneration of the Communist Party, meant that the role of what had been a revolutionary party was discredited, but a revolutionary party was what was required in order to oppose the terrible reactionary role of Social Democracy. This point was shown by the willingness of Social Democracy to accommodate to the ascent of power of fascism as the alternative to any possibility of proletarian revolution.

What about the situation today? We have a new situation in terms of the continued degeneration of social democracy, which has become similar to the role of German Social Democracy in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the decline of Stalinism has also contributed to the discrediting of the concept of the vanguard party, and in addition important political developments, such as the crisis of Marxism means we have a situation where the party is marginalised from the class. Clever tactics cannot overcome this situation, whether this means the application of a workers' party tactic, or rigid adherence to the call for a revolutionary party. Instead we have to analyse how it is possible to facilitate the conditions to overcome the marginalisation of party from class.

This does not mean the promotion of various schemas that actually avoid this question by the substitutionist logic of justifying formations that act on behalf of the class. Such substitutionist logic can take the form of an emphasis on the vanguard party, which by its very elitism is considered to have the necessary political answers, and this is possibly the approach of the CPGB. Hence, the party provides the revolutionary programme, which the class apparently uncritically accepts, and in terms of this active-passive relationship the process of socialist transition is generated.

Alternatively, this vanguardism can take the form of open advocacy of reformism, as with the Socialist Workers Party and its Respect project, or the 10-point principles of the Campaign for a New Workers' Party, which explicitly rejects revolutionary politics and argues for an adaptation to what it considers to be the existing consciousness of the working class. In other words, the effective repudiation of revolutionary politics means that there is a basic rejection of the necessity of socialism from below, and instead the vanguard party introduces socialism from above via the role of the state, with the working class at the level of reformist consciousness acting as the necessary political pressure point of change.

What is the alternative to these two types of elitism? The answer is that there is no principled alternative to the development of a revolutionary programme that can facilitate the conscious action of the class to realise its own self-emancipation, and the first step of this process may well be the development of a propaganda programme that attempts to understand the world in order to enhance the ideological conditions for its transformation. This emphasis on the role of programme is what is important and primary, and organisational aspects - such as whether we promote a workers' party or revolutionary party - are secondary.

Thus the first tactical question we ask is: what are the organisational conditions that enable us to promote a programme that facilitates answers to the problem of the isolation of party from class and develops the political basis for self-emancipation? Only in this context was the workers' party tactic in the 1920s principled in Britain and unprincipled for Germany. We aim to build a revolutionary party that can facilitate the realisation of the tasks from A to B - the establishment of connection between party and class that can promote the self-emancipation of the working class.

In this context, the workers' party tactic may become a necessary tactic, but it is still part of the process of forming a revolutionary party that can promote the self-emancipation of the class via the explanatory coherence of its programme. This is the very lesson of the tragic failure to unite the ILP and CPGB: the result was that the revolutionary party did not become a mass workers' party that would have remained revolutionary.

This is a valuable lesson for today. We should not become so dogmatically opposed to the workers' party tactic that we refuse to recognise its potential to become a revolutionary party on a programme that can advance the self-emancipation of the working class.