28.01.2010

Communists meet to debate perspectives

What will be the outcome of the left's intervention in the general election? Should the CPGB downgrade the printing of the Weekly Worker in favour of an increased web presence? Laurie McCauley reports on the CPGB aggregate

The January 23 aggregate of CPGB members and sympathisers saw a thoroughgoing discussion on our perspectives for 2010 and beyond, not least the CPGB role in the general election and plans for upgrading our website.

Comrade John Bridge introduced the first session, saying that we had to look both at the nature of the present period and at where the CPGB is currently. Was capitalism really in decline? Many on the left have taken the view that this cannot be so until it has expanded to cover the whole globe and destroyed all remnants of earlier modes of production - only then will it run out of opportunities for investment, enter terminal crisis and make revolution possible. This view is partly the result of disappointment when economic crisis has failed to produce revolution, and partly due to an incorrect reading of Marx and his statement that no mode of production can disappear until it has “exhausted all its possibilities”.

It was useful to look back at feudalism, and study its decline, said comrade Bridge. What one finds is not that feudalism was destroyed and capitalism created overnight, but that the declining system contained the seeds of the new; capitalism began to grow within feudalism. This cannot be used as a direct analogy with late-stage capitalism. But it is clear that the system we live in now is not capitalism ‘pure and simple’. The state’s role in organising and subsidising markets and in the organisation of production has been continually increasing - that in part is why it is correct to talk about a system in decline.

World capitalism may exhibit an upturn in output in the short term, but this is the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s and we must view it in the context of overall decline. We can expect capitalism to increasingly malfunction and create crisis, just as world wars and the rise of fascism were the product of previous crises. It is true that unemployment has seen a relatively small rise and the major banks have not gone bust, but this is thanks to unprecedented moves by the state to shore up the system. The bourgeoisie is historically aware and does not want another period of inter-imperialist wars and major class confrontations. They have temporaily rescued the system. There can be no return to the 50s and 60s, when the aim of governments was to eliminate unemployment and buy off the working class with the social democratic settlement. No-one is predicting a new boom - rather a double-dip downturn and a decade or two of relative stagnation.

The cuts promised by the Conservative Party would certainly result in another downturn - the slashing of jobs and pay in the huge public sector would massively reduce demand. What is the answer of the capitalist class? They do not have a clear or workable vision of the future. The periphery countries will face increasingly sharp class struggles, which we have already seen in Ireland, Iceland and Greece. The British general election is being fought over which party will impose the most appropriate cuts and there will inevitably be a resistance, almost certainly with the TUC or major unions calling token protests.

Turning to the general election, comrade Bridge said that, while the main parties were bent on attacking our class, the left was in disarray. It is our responsibility to point to a future political fightback. We want to engage with the Labour left and will support any Labour candidate who opposes cuts in services and calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. We will use the Labour Representation Committee’s list of recommended candidates as our starting point.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition for the moment consists effectively of the Socialist Party in England and Wales plus Bob Crow, now that the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain has pulled out (the CPB is to stand its own candidates alongside those of “overseas communists domiciled in Britain”). Some of Tusc’s demands are supportable, but they are characterised by national, remedial, reformist action. Instead we need an emphasis on democracy, Europe and a viable strategy for revolution. Nevertheless, the CPGB will give Tusc critical support and has asked to finance our own candidates standing on our own communist politics under its banner.

The left will most likely receive a humiliating vote. Its continuing sectarianism prevents the building of united Marxist party, but we view its components as opponents, not enemies. The sects are floundering, without a strategy and riven by internal splits: the SWP is still suffering the effects of the Respect crisis, the CPB is split down the middle over Labour. SPEW is wedded to the trade union bureaucracy, to whom it presents itself as a safe pair of hands.

Our call for a single Communist Party is a demand for unity on a principled basis, said comrade Bridge - winning comrades who are sincere about socialism into one organisation and breaking them from the sect mentality. We should “continue coolly” with our existing strategy of going through the left.

Our fight is a theoretical and programmatic one and, with the redraft of the CPGB’s Draft programme nearly complete, we should make 2010 a year of programmatic debate - not just internally, but engaging with other comrades. The draft will be published in the Weekly Worker and discussion will culminate in a party conference. Our annual summer school, Communist University, where we should look to engage with the rest of the left, should be organised under the theme of ‘Party and programme’, comrade Bridge suggested.

In terms of our own organisation, we are still “painfully weak”. There was a political fluidity amongst younger people, but we have to go to them. We have to make better efforts to organise our geographically dispersed membership, particularly comrades on their own, and every branch should be studying something.

The aggregate then discussed Andy Hannah’s motion, which argued that the general election would be the most important for many years and called on the CPGB to allocate the resources and time to improve the party’s website and keep it regularly updated, if necessary suspending the publication of the printed version of our paper. National organiser Mark Fischer said that the Weekly Worker’s web readership dwarfs that of the print version. The present print run costs a lot of money, but it was indispensable for demonstrations, campaigning and as a “calling card” - as a serious paper it was taken seriously. However, websites have unlimited space for longer articles and could be updated immediately. The Weekly Worker article on the Haiti earthquake, for example, was not printed until nine days after the event. The website also enables us to target articles at readers based on what they have read previously. The question would be posed, does the Weekly Worker drive the content on the website or is it the other way round?

Editor Peter Manson said that the publication of a weekly paper represented the current capacity of the CPGB. Its quality and coherence resulted from prior discussion, reproduced on audio files, research into articles and careful editing. Yes, we are now able to publish instantly via our website, but he warned of the loss of quality and a reduction in the clarity of our specific political message that would result from any attempt to do so more frequently without being able to commit the necessary time and effort to make it worthwhile. Comrade Manson pointed out that the updating of our website was currently insufficient and there was an urgent need to appoint a web editor to ensure that this was done and that we actually kept pace with our present publishing schedule.

Tina Becker said that our internet work needed a stimulus such as the one comrade Hannah’s motion attempted to provide, and she thought a daily update - not necessarily a summary of all the news or even a feature-length article - would be a good idea. She agreed this would need an expanded team of editors, but, after all, many comrades already posted on blogs regularly. Yassamine Mather said that the technical training of comrades was an issue and warned that if articles were substandard many readers may not return.

Comrade Bridge questioned whether the upcoming election was as significant as comrade Hannah’s motion made out. However, if we were allowed to participate in Tusc, we should throw ourselves into campaigning, but, far from stopping production of the printed Weekly Worker, that would mean upping its frequency. Although he agreed that the internet was now a vital means of propagandising, a printed paper was essential during the intense campaigning of a general election. Comrade Hannah said that prioritising the print version over the web was like “hitching the Lamborghini to a horse”. We should aim for immediacy and make the CPGB site the first source of daily news for the left.

Most comrades agreed that we have to devote more resources to our web presence and that we must be more systematic about our web work. However, comrade Hannah agreed to withdraw reference in his motion to temporarily ceasing production of the printed Weekly Worker, and his reworded motion calling for improving the website was passed without opposition, being entirely uncontroversial.