16.06.2010

Summer Offensive

Howard Roak emphasises the sinews of war

This year’s Summer Offensive - the CPGB’s annual fundraising drive - will be launched on Saturday June 19. Comrades will set themselves individual targets for the two months up to the end of the campaign, the last day of our Communist University summer school on August 14. As a collective, we have agreed the overall target of £25,000 - a crucial top-up needed to keep the CPGB and the Weekly Worker fighting fit.

The last 12 months of work have been positive for us in many ways. The organisation has not simply held its own, but actually managed to nudge forward - in the context of a continued, seemingly inexorable organisational and political decline of the left as a whole. However, the CPGB is actually a campaign for a genuine Marxist party - inclusive, revolutionary and democratic. Flowing from this, our target audience is made up of advanced workers in and around the sects, the Labour left and trade unions - today’s raw material for at least the core of the mass party of tomorrow.

The fact is that the culture of sectism, not the partyism we need, still dominates this layer of our class. So despite the relative health of our group, despite the fact that we continue to make some progress, particularly in the realm of programme and theory, our work has become harder over the last year. The idiotically complacent response of the left outside Labour to its truly disastrous showing in the general election indicates just how far the rot has gone.

Unlike the rest of the left, we do not delude ourselves that the party our class needs will simply come from our small group adding ones and twos to its ranks. That said, there is no question that the work of the CPGB, with its open culture and implacable fight for principle, can have an important exemplary effect.

Because the Weekly Worker takes its readers seriously as thinking, political actors, each issue has a circulation in the tens of thousands over the month following its publication. Contrast this to the rags of the left, publications that for the most part are an insult to the intelligence of the so-called ‘ordinary people’ who are supposed to read them - and who don’t in their multi-millions, of course.

Meanwhile, the success of Hands Off the People of Iran has shown that it is perfectly possible to organise a campaign that is both principled and effective. Backed and initially sponsored by the CPGB, Hopi opposes all imperialist provocations against Iran, but, at the same time, does not give a millimetre to the reactionary theocratic regime - a position we were told was much too complex for the ‘ordinary’ person in the street to get their head around.

Communist Students - in which young CPGB comrades play an important role - and our annual school, the Communist University, likewise stand in stark contrast to the left’s equivalents. In both, we have no problems with political controversy and the open expression of differences, with the involvement of other organised political trends or individuals with different politics to the CPGB majority (the CPGB is a minority on the CS leadership for example). Also, both embody a commitment to the promotion of Marxism, not non-working class brands of politics.

The Weekly Worker, Hopi and CS - these are examples for the left to emulate. But it goes without saying that all three rely on the support of the CPGB. They all cost money. So our finances are the sinews of war for our ongoing fight for a root-and-branch cultural revolution on the left - an upheaval that is anticipated in the campaigns and features of our organisation I have mentioned. That is why the annual SO is important and that is why - given the unholy mess the left continues to make of itself - this year’s is particularly important.

Of course, there are lurid tales on the left about the source of our funds - but the simple explanation is the one that works. Our serious politics generate serious commitment. The truth is that we rely on our members and, crucially, our supporters and sympathisers to help us meet this important target. Can you get involved?

Weekly Worker readers and supporters will be contacted over the coming weeks for donations and other forms of support for the SO - but don’t wait to be asked! Send donations and pledges to the party office.

I want to report that a sizable chunk has been taken out of the £25k target in the very first week of the campaign!

This year’s Summer Offensive will officially be launched at 17.30 on Saturday June 19 at Caxton House, 129 St John’s Way, London N19.